The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

THE PINE FOREST

OF THE CASCINE, NEAR PISA.

• • Dearest, best and brightest,
  • Come away,
  • To the woods and to the fields!
  • Dearer than this fairest day,
  • Which like thee to those in sorrow,
  • Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
  • To the rough year just awake
  • In its cradle in the brake.
• • The eldest of the hours of spring,
  • Into the winter wandering,
  • Looks upon the leafless wood;
  • And the banks all bare and rude
  • Found it seems this halcyon morn,
  • In February’s bosom born,
  • Bending from heaven, in azure mirth,
  • Kissed the cold forehead of the earth,
  • And smiled upon the silent sea,
  • And bade the frozen streams be free;
  • And waked to music all the fountains,
  • And breathed upon the rigid mountains,
  • And made the wintry world appear
  • Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
• • Radiant Sister of the Day,
  • Awake! arise! and come away!
  • To the wild woods and the plains,
  • To the pools where winter rains
  • Image all the roof of leaves,
  • Where the Pine its garland weaves,
  • Sapless, grey, and ivy dun
  • Round stones that never kiss the sun,
  • To the sandhills of the sea,
  • Where the earliest violets be.
• • Now the last day of many days,
  • All beautiful and bright as thou,
  • The loveliest and the last, is dead,
  • Rise Memory, and write its praise,
  • And do thy wonted work and trace
  • The epitaph of glory fled:
  • For the Earth hath changed its face,
  • A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
• • We wandered to the Pine Forest
  • That skirts the Ocean’s foam,
  • The lighest wind was in its nest,
  • The tempest in its home.
• • The whispering waves were half asleep,
  • The clouds were gone to play,
  • And on the woods, and on the deep,
  • The smile of Heaven lay.
• • It seemed as if the day were one
  • Sent from beyond the skies,
  • Which shed to earth above the sun
  • A light of Paradise.
• • We paused amid the Pines that stood
  • The giants of the waste,
  • Tortured by storms to shapes as rude,
  • With stems like serpents interlaced.
• • How calm it was—the silence there
  • By such a chain was bound,
  • That even the busy woodpecker
  • Made stiller by her sound
• • The inviolable quietness;
  • The breath of peace we drew,
  • With its soft motion made not less
  • The calm that round us grew.
• • It seemed that from the remotest seat
  • Of the white mountain’s waste,
  • To the bright flower beneath our feet,
  • A magic circle traced;—
• • A spirit interfused around,
  • A thinking silent life,
  • To momentary peace it bound
  • Our mortal Nature’s strife.—
• • For still it seemed the centre of
  • The magic circle there,
  • Was one whose being filled with love
  • The breathless atmosphere.
• • Were not the crocusses that grew
  • Under that ilex tree,
  • As beautiful in scent and hue
  • As ever fed the bee?
• • We stood beside the pools that lie
  • Under the forest bough,
  • And each seemed like a sky
  • Gulphed in a world below;—
• • A purple firmament of light,
  • Which in the dark earth lay,
  • More boundless than the depth of night,
  • And clearer than the day—
• • In which the massy forests grew,
  • As in the upper air,
  • More perfect both in shape and hue
  • Than any waving there.
• • Like one beloved, the scene had lent
  • To the dark water’s breast
  • Its every leaf and lineament
  • With that clear truth expressed.
• • There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,
  • And through the dark green crowd
  • The white sun twinkling like the dawn
  • Under a speckled cloud.
• • Sweet views, which in our world above
  • Can never well be seen,
  • Were imaged by the water’s love
  • Of that fair forest green.
• • And all was interfused beneath
  • Within an Elysium air,
  • An atmosphere without a breath,
  • A silence sleeping there.
• • Until a wandering wind crept by,
  • Like an unwelcome thought,
  • Which from my mind’s too faithful eye
  • Blots thy bright image out.
• • For thou art good and dear and kind,
  • The forest ever green,
  • But less of peace in S—’s mind,
  • Than calm in waters seen.

February 2, 1822.