MUTABILITY.

THE flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;

All that we wish to stay,

Tempts and then flies; What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright.

Virtue, how frail it is!

Friendship too rare!

Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!

But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy and all
Which ours we call.

Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night

Make glad the day; Whilst yet the calm hours creep, Dream thou-and from thy sleep Then wake to weep.

FROM THE ARABIC.

AN IMITATION.

My faint spirit was sitting in the light
Of thy looks, my love;

It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks, my love.
Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the
tempest's flight

Bore thee far from me;

My heart, for my weak feet were weary

soon,

Did companion thee.

Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,

Or the death they bear, The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove

With the wings of care;

In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,

Shall mine cling to thee, Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,

It may bring to thee.

ΤΟ

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.

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 oǹ.

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.

No news of your false spring
To my heart's winter bring,
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.

Vultures, who build your bowers
High in the Future's towers,
Withered hopes on hopes are spread,
Dying joys choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. ORPHAN hours, the year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep! Merry hours, smile instead,

For the year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping. As an earthquake rocks a corse In its coffin in the clay, So White Winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the death-cold year to-day; Solemn hours! wait aloud For your mother in her shroud. As the wild air stirs and sways

The tree-swung cradle of a child, So the breath of these rude days

Rocks the year:-be calm and mild, Trembling hours, she will arise With new love within her eyes. January grey is here,

Like a sexton by her grave: February bears the bier,

March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps-but, O ye hours, Follow with May's fairest flowers. January 1st, 1821.

MONT

BLANC.

I.