I. WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:- 2. Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.
3. 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 :
4. 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.
There is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.-ECCLESIASTES.
I. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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?
A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHÝARD, LECHLADE,
1. THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day: Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.
2. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea; Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
3. Thou too, aërial pile, whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obey'st in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
4. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, Half sense half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around; And, mingling with the still night and mute sky, Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
5. Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorless as this serenest night.
Here could I hope, like some enquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.
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.
FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.
I HATED thee, fallen Tyrant! I did groan
To think that a most unambitious slave,
Like thou, should dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer
A frail and bloody pomp, which Time has swept In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre,
For this, I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
And stifled thee their minister. I know Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, Legal Crime, And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved; The wind made thy bosom chill; The night did shed
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie Where the bitter breath of the naked sky Might visit thee at will.
THERE late was one within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and death contended. None may know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath Fail like the trances of the summer air, When, with the lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walked along the pathway of a field, Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk; but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, And the old dandelion's hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown massy woods-and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead.- "Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, "I never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me."
That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep-but when the morning came The lady found her lover dead and cold. Let none believe that God in mercy gave
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