LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea,
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

January, 1820.

TO EMELIA VIVIANI. MADONNA, wherefore hast thou sent to me

Sweet basil and mignonette? Embleming love and health, which never yet

In the same wreath might be.

Alas, and they are wet!

Is it with thy kisses or thy tears?
For never rain or dew

Such fragrance drew
From plant or flower-the very doubt

endears

My sadness ever new, The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee.

March, 1821.

ΤΟ

I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
Thou needest not fear mine;

Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

LINES.

WHEN the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies deadWhen the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed.

When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart's echoes render

No song when the spirit is mute:
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges

That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest, The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possest.

O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high:
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home

Leave the naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.

(With what truth I may say-
Roma Roma! Roma!
Non è più come era prima !)

My lost William, thou in whom
Some bright spirit lived, and did
That decaying robe consume

Which its lustre faintly hid,
Here its ashes find a tomb,

But beneath this pyramid
Thou art not-if a thing divine
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
Is thy mother's grief and mine.

Where art thou, my gentle child?
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
Within its life intense and mild,

The love of living leaves and weeds, Among these tombs and ruins wild;

Let me think that through low seeds Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, Into their hues and scents may pass A portion

June, 1819.

ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.
One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother,
And Pity from thee more dear,
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

MUSIC.

I PANT for the music which is divine, My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;

Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,

Loosen the notes in a silver shower; Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,

I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.

Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet

sound,

More, O more,-I am thirsting yet, It loosens the serpent which care has bound

Upon my heart to stifle it; The dissolving strain, through every vein,

Passes into my heart and brain.

As the scent of a violet withered up, Which grew by the brink of a silver lake;

When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,

And mist there was none its thirst

to slake

And the violet lay dead while the odour flew

On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue

As one who drinks from a charmed cup Of foaming, and sparkling and murmuring wine

Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, Invites to love with her kiss divine.

LINES.

THE cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow, The breath of night like death did flow Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black,

The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest

On the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway track, Had bound their folds o'er many a crack

Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glowed in the glare

Of the moon's dying light;
As a fen-fire's beam,

On a sluggish stream,

Gleams dimly-so the moon shone there,

And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair

That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved; The wind made thy bosom chill; The night did shed

On thy dear head

Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.
November, 1815.

DEATH.

DEATH is here and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,

All around, within, beneath,
Above is death-and we are death.
Death has set his mark and seal
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

First our pleasures die-and then
Our hopes, and then our fears-and
when

These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust-and we die too.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish,
Such is our rude mortal lot,
Love itself would, did they not.

ΤΟ

WHEN passion's trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep!

It were enough to feel, to see
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest-and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.
After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets reappear,
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move,
And for all others, life and love.

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. LISTEN, listen, Mary mine,

To the whisper of the Apennine,

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's

roar,

Or like the sea on a northern shore,

Have woven all the wondrous imagery Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;

Infinite depths of unknown elements Massed into one impenetrable mask; Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.

And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven

I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds,

And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns

In the dark space of interstellar air.

LIBERTY.

THE fiery mountains answer each other;

Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;

The tempestuous oceans awake one another,

And the ice-rocks are shaken round winter's zone

When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.

From a single cloud the lightning flashes,

Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,

Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,

An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound

Is bellowing underground. But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare,

And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp;

Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare

Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp

To thine is a fen-fire damp.

From billow and mountain and exhalation

The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;

From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,

From city to hamlet thy dawning is

cast

And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night

In the van of the morning light.

ΤΟ

MINE eyes were dim with tears unshed;
Yes, I was firm-thus did not thou;
My baffled looks did fear yet dread
To meet thy looks-I could not know
How anxiously they sought to shine
With soothing pity upon mine.

To sit and curb the soul's mute rage
Which preys upon itself alone;
To curse the life which is the cage

Of fettered grief that dares not groan,
Hiding from many a careless eye
The scorned load of agony.

Whilst thou alone, then not regarded,
The [ ] thou alone should be,
To spend years thus, and be rewarded,
As thou, sweet love, requited me
When none were near-Oh! I did wake
From torture for that moment's sake.
Upon my heart thy accents sweet
Of peace and pity, fell like dew
On flowers half dead;-thy lips did

meet

Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes

threw

Thy soft persuasion on my brain,
Charming away its dream of pain.
We are not happy, sweet; our state
Is strange and full of doubt and fear;
More need of words that ills abate;

Reserve or censure come not near Our sacred friendship, lest there be No solace left for thou and me.

Gentle and good and mild thou art,

Nor I can live if thou appear Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart Away from me, or stoop to wear The mask of scorn, although it be To hide the love thou feel for me.

THE ISLE. THERE was a little lawny islet By anemone and violet,

Like mosaic, paven: And its roof was flowers and leaves Which the summer's breath enweaves, Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze Pierce the pines and tallest trees,

Each a gem engraven.

Girt by many an azure wave

With which the clouds and mountains

pave

A lake's blue chasm.

ΤΟ

MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art
gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep

woe

Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow

Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,

Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore,

Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,

Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?

LINES.

THAT time is dead for ever, child,
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past
And stare aghast

At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

The stream we gazed on then, rolled by; Its waves are unreturning;

But we yet stand

In a lone land,

Like tombs to mark the memory
Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
In the light of life's dim morning.
November 5th, 1817.

A SONG.

A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her love

Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind kept on above,

The freezing stream below.