LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

AN IMITATION FROM THE FRENCH.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine ?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea,
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

January, 1820.

DEATH.

DEATH is here and death is there,
Death is busy every where,

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.

LINES.

WHEN the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,

Sweet tones are remembered not ;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute;
No song but sad dirges,

Like the wind through a ruined cell,

Or the mournful surges

That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest, The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possest.

O, Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

For your cradle, your home and your hier?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high:

Bright reason will mock thee,

Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave the naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

THE PAST.

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.

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.

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY,

(With what truth I may say-
Roma! Roma! Roma!

Non è più come era prima!)

My lost William, thou in whom
Some bright spirit lived, and did
That decaying robe consume
Which its lustre faintly hid,

Here its ashes find a tomb,

But beneath this pyramid

Thou art not if a thing divine
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
Is thy mother's grief and mine.

Where art thou, my gentle child?
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
Within its life intense and mild,

The love of living leaves and weeds, Among these tombs and ruins wild ;—

Let me think that through low seeds Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, Into their hues and scents may pass A portion

June, 1819.