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We rest-a dream has power to poison sleep; We rise-one wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!-for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

ON DEATH.

There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.-ECCLESIASTES.

THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,

Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul

Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, And the billows of cloud that around thee roll

Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny.

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This world is the nurse of all we know,

This world is the mother of all we feel, And the coming of death is a fearful blow To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel; When all that we know, or feel, or see, Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see

All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?

Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? Who painteth the shadows that are beneath

The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb? Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be

With the fears and the love for that which we see?

TO ****

ΔΑΚΡΥΣΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΠΟΤΜΟΝ ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ.

O, THERE are spirits in the air,

And genii of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

As star-beams among twilight trees

Such lovely ministers to meet

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs, And mountain seas, that are the voice

Of these inexplicable things,

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth;-Tame sacrifice

To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth's inconstancy?
Did thine own mind afford no scope

Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?

That natural scenes or human smiles

Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted; The glory of the moon is dead;

Night's ghost and dreams have now departed;

Thine own soul still is true to thee,

But changed to a foul fiend through misery.

This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase ;-the mad endeavour
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.

Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.

TO WORDSWORTH.

POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return;
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first

glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to

mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine,
Which thou too feel'st; yet I alone deplore :
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar;
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude;
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty ;-
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
"Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be

STANZAS.-APRIL, 1814.

AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,

Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of

even:

Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness

soon,

And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.

Pause not! the time is past! every voice cries, Away!

Tempt not with one last glance thy friend's ungentle mood:

Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;

Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and

come,

And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head,

The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:

But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,

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