RESTLESS forms of living light
Quivering on your lucid wings,
Cheating still the curious sight
With a thousand shadowings;
Various as the tints of even,
Gorgeous as the hues of heaven,
Reflected on your native streams
In flitting, flashing, billowy gleams!
Harmless warriors, clad in mai!
Of silver breastplate, golden scale; -
Mail of Nature's own bestowing,
With peaceful radiance mildly glow-
ing

Fleet are ye as fleetest galley
Or pirate rover sent from Sallee;
Keener than the Tartar's arrow,
Sport ye in your sea so narrow.

Was the sun himself your sire ?
Were ye born of vital fire?

Or of the shade of golden flowers,
Such as we fetch from Eastern bow-

As gay, as gamesome, and as blithe,
As light, as loving, and as lithe,
As gladly earnest in your play,
As when ye gleamed in far Cathay.

And yet, since on this hapless earth
There's small sincerity in mirth,
And laughter oft is but an art
To drown the outery of the heart;
It may be that your ceaseless gambols,
Your wheelings, dartings, divings,

years,

the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,

Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy-twine.

NO LIFE VAIN.

sion warms,

in vain,

Mariner.]

THE SHIP BECALMED.

THE fair breeze blew, the white foam

flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea,

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,

'Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

And still my body drank.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs:

I was so light- almost

I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.

THE VOICES OF THE ANGELS. AROUND, around, flew each sweet sound,

Then darted to the sun;

Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one.

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing;

Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seemed to fill the sea and air

With their sweet jargoning!

And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song,

That makes the heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook

BY SLEEP AND RAIN.

O SLEEP! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!

To Mary queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven,
That slid into my soul.

The silly buckets on the deck,

That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.

PENANCE OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, AND HIS REVERENT TEACHING. FORTHWITH this frame of mine was wrenched

With a woful agony,

That had so long remained,

dew;

And when I awoke it rained.

And then it left me free.

cold,

My garments all were dank.

And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,

That give away their motion to the stars;

Those stars, that glide behind them or between,

Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:

Yon crescent moon as fixed as if it grew

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;

I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel how beautiful they are!

My genial spirits fail;
And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from
off my breast?

It were a vain endeavor, Though I should gaze forever On that green light that lingers in the west:

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose

fountains are within.

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me

What this strong music in the soul may be!

What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,

This beautiful and beauty-making power.

Joy, virtuous lady, joy that ne'er was given, Save to the pure, and in their purest heur,

Life, and life's effluence, cloud at once and shower

Joy, lady, is the spirit and the power, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower,

A new earth and new heaven, Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud

We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,

All melodies the echoes of that voice,

All colors a suffusion from that light.

There was a time when, though my path was rough,

This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:

For hope grew round me, like the twining vine.

And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth:

Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,

But oh! each visitation Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,