For thou art good and dear and kind,

The forest ever green,

But less of peace in S- -'s mind,
Than calm in waters seen.

February 2, 1822.

TO NIGHT.

SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,

Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long sought !

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

And the weary Day turned to his rest,

Lingering like an unloved guest,

I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noon-tide bee,

Shall I nestle near thy side ?

Wouldst thou me ? And I replied,
No, not thee!

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon-

Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

EVENING.

PONT A MARE, PISA.

THY Sun is set

the swallows are asleep;

The boats are flitting fast in the grey air;

The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,

And evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream,

Wakes not one ripple from its silent dream.

There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;

And in the inconstant motion of the breeze
The dust and straws are driven up and down,
And whirled about the pavement of the town.

Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immoveably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it never fades away;
Go to the [
1

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled-but
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
And over it a space of watery blue,
Which the keen evening star is shining through.

ARETHUSA.

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,

From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks

Streaming among the streams ;—
Her steps paved with green

The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleams:
And gliding and springing,

She went, ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her,

And Heaven smiled above her,

As she lingered towards the deep.

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook;

And opened a chasm

In the rocks;-with the spasm

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below:

The beard and the hair
Of the river God were

Seen through the torrent's sweep,

As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph's flight

To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,

For he grasps me now by the hair!"
The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,

And divided at her prayer;
And under the water

The Earth's white daughter

Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended,

Her billows unblended

With the brackish Dorian stream:

Like a gloomy stain

On the emerald main

Alpheus rushed behind,

As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers

Sit on their pearled thrones,

Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,

Over heaps of unvalued stones :

Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams

Weave a net-work of coloured light;
And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night:-
Outspeeding the shark,

And the sword-fish dark,

Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts

They passed to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains

In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted

Grown single-hearted,

They ply their watery tasks.

At sun-rise they leap

From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; At noon-tide they flow

Through the woods helow

And the meadows of Asphodel;