SONG,

ON A FADED VIOLET.

I.

THE odour from the flower is gone, Which like thy kisses breathed on me ;

The colour from the flower is flown, Which glowed of thee, and only thee !

II.

A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,

It lies on my abandoned breast, And mocks the heart which yet is warm With cold and silent rest.

III.

I weep - my tears revive it not!

I sigh-it breathes no more on me;

Its mute and uncomplaining lot

Is such as mine should be.

STANZAS.

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.

1.

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent might, The breath of the moist earth is light, Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.

п.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweed strown;

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

III.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned -
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround

Smiling they live and call life pleasure ;To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

IV.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;

I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V.

Some might lament that I were cold,

As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament - for I am one

Whom men love not, — and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

THE PAST.

I.

WILT thou forget the happy hours

Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,
Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?

Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

II.

Forget the dead, the past? O yet

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
Memories that make the heart a tomb,

Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,

And with ghastly whispers tell

That joy, once lost, is pain.

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,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow

By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day

Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.