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.

TO

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 re-appear;
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,

Heard in its raging ebb and flow

By the captives pent in the cave below.

The Apennine in the light of day

Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim star-light then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.
May 4th, 1818.

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.

SONG OF A SPIRIT.

WITHIN the silent centre of the earth
My mansion is; where I lived insphered
From the beginning, and around my sleep
Have woven all the wondrous imagery
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;
Infinite depths of unknown elements
Mass'd 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.

TO

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.

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 Sca?

To sit and curb the soul's mute rage Which preys upon itself alone; To curse the life which is the cage

Of fetter'd 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.

THE ISLE.

THERE was a little lawny islet
By anemone and violet,

Like mosaic, paven:

And its roof was flowers and leaves

Which the summer's breath enweaves,
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,

Each a gem engraven:

Girt by many an azure wave

With which the clouds and mountains pave A lake's blue chasm.

LINES.

THAT time is dead forever, child,
Drown'd, frozen, dead forever!

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.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air,

Except the mill-wheel's sound.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now ?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest Like the world's rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On the tree or billow?

TO

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 heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

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

A DIRGE.

ROUGH wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches stain,
Deep caves and dreary main,

Wail, for the world's wrong!