A BRIDAL SONG. THE golden gates of sleep unbar Where strength and beauty, met together, Kindle their image like a star In a sea of glassy weather! Night, with all thy stars look down,- Let eyes not see their own delight;— Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her! O joy! O fear! what will be done A FRAGMENT. THEY were two cousins, almost like two twins, Nature had razed their love-which could not be And so they grew together, like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Which the same hand will gather-the same clime Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The very idol of its portraiture; He faints, dissolved into a sense of love; Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May Had not brought forth this morn-your wedding-day. DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. GOOD-NIGHT. GOOD-NIGHT? ah! no; the hour is ill Then it will be good night. How can I call the lone night good, To hearts which near each other move DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. ORPHAN hours, the year is dead, For the year is but asleep : As an earthquake rocks a corse So White Winter, that rough nurse, For your mother in her shroud. As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, Rocks the year:-be calm and mild, 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. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. THE ZUCCA.* SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring, More in this world than any understand, Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand Of my poor heart, and o'er the grass and flowers Pale for the falsehood of the flattering hours. Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping. I loved-O no, I mean not one of ye, Or any earthly one, though ye are dear As human heart to human heart may be ; ] see I loved, I know not what-but this low sphere, And all that it contains, contains not thee, Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere, Dim object of my soul's idolatry. By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest, Neither to be contained, delayed, or hidden, Making divine the loftiest and the lowest, When for a moment thou art not forbidden To live within the life which thou bestowest, And leaving noblest things, vacant and chidden, Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight, Blank as the sun after the birth of night. • Pumpkin In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common, In music, and the sweet unconscious tone Of animals, and voices which are human, Meant to express some feelings of their own; In the soft motions and rare smile of woman, In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shown, Or dying in the autumn, I the most Adore thee present, or lament thee lost. And thus I went lamenting, when I saw The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth I bore it to my chamber, and I planted It in a vase full of the lightest mould; Fell through the window panes, disrobed of cold, In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled Over the horizon's wave, with looks of light Smiled on it from the threshold of the night. The mitigated influences of air And light revived the plant, and from it grew And every impulse sent to every part Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong, For one wept o'er it all the winter long Tears pure as Heaven's rain, which fell upon it Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers On which he wept, the while the savage storm Waked by the darkest of December's hours Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm ; The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers, The fish were frozen in the pools, the form Of every summer plant was dead [ Whilst this THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT. "SLEEP, sleep on! forget thy pain; My hand is on thy brow, My spirit on thy brain; My pity on thy heart, poor friend; The powers of life, and like a sign, "Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not; Who made and makes my lot As full of flowers, as thine of weeds, And that a hand which was not mine "Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of The dead and the unborn Forget thy life and love; Forget that thou must wake for ever; Forget the world's dull scorn; Forget lost health, and the divine Feelings which died in youth's brief morn; And forget me, for I can never Be thine. "Like a cloud big with a May shower, On thee, thou withered flower; Its light within thy gloomy breast By mine thy being is to its deep |