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 ZUCCA.*

• • I.

  • Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,
  • And infant Winter laughed upon the land
  • All cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring
  • More in this world than any understand,
  • Wept o’er the beauty, which like sea retiring,
  • Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
  • Of my poor heart, and o’er the grass and flowers
  • Pale for the falsehood of the flattering hours.

• • II.

  • Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
  • The instability of all but weeping;
  • And on the earth lulled in her winter sleep
  • I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
  • Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
  • The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
  • From unremembered dreams, shalt [[         ]] see
  • No death divide thy immortality.

• • III.

  • I loved—O no, I mean not one of ye,
  • Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
  • As human heart to human heart may be;—
  • I loved, I know not what—but this low sphere
  • And all that it contains, contains not thee,
  • Thou, whom seen no where, I feel everywhere,
  • Dim object of my soul’s idolatry.
  • Veiled art thou like—

• • IV.

  • By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,
  • Neither to be contained, delayed, or hidden,
  • Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
  • When for a moment thou art not forbidden
  • To live within the life which thou bestowest;
  • And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
  • Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight,
  • Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

• • V.

  • In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
  • In music and the sweet unconscious tone
  • Of animals, and voices which are human,
  • Meant to express some feelings of their own;
  • In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
  • In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shewn,
  • Or dying in the autumn, I the most
  • Adore thee present or lament thee lost.

• • VI.

  • And thus I went, lamenting when I saw
  • A plant upon the river’s margin lie,
  • Like one who loved beyond his Nature’s law,
  • And in despair had cast him down to die;
  • Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the thaw
  • Had blighted as a heart which hatred’s eye
  • Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
  • Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.

• • VII.

  • The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth
  • Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast.
  • * * * * * * *

• • VIII.

  • I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
  • It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
  • The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
  • Fell through the window panes, disrobed of cold,
  • Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted
  • In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled
  • Over the horizon’s wave, with looks of light
  • Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.

• • IX.

  • The mitigated influences of air
  • And light revived the plant, and from it grew
  • Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
  • Full as a cup with the vine’s burning dew,
  • O’erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere
  • Of vital warmth infolded it anew,
  • And every impulse sent to every part
  • The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.

• • X.

  • Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,
  • Even if the sun and air had smiled not on it;
  • For one wept o’er it all the winter long
  • Tears pure as Heaven’s rain, which fell upon it
  • Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song
  • Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it
  • To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,
  • Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.

• • XI.

  • Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers
  • On which he wept, the while the savage storm
  • Waked by the darkest of December’s hours
  • Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm;
  • The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,
  • The fish were frozen in the pools, the form
  • Of every summer plant was dead [[         ]]
  • Whilst this * * *

January, 1822.

[* ]Pumpkin.