Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire
Be man's high hope and unextinct desire

The instrument to work thy will divine!

165

Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, 170 And frowns and fears from Thee,

Would not more swiftly flee

Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.

Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine

Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be

This city of thy worship ever free!

August 17-25, 1820.

175

GOOD NIGHT.

I.

GOOD night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,

Then it will be good night.

II.

How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?

Be it not said, thought, understood,
Then it will be good night.

III.

To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good night.

1820.

5

ΙΟ

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.

I.

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?

ART thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth, -
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

-

5

TIME LONG PAST.

I.

LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.

A tone which is now forever fled,

A hope which is now forever past,

A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.

II.

There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past:

And, was it sadness or delight,

Each day a shadow onward cast

Which made us wish it yet might last-
That Time long past.

III.

There is regret, almost remorse,

For Time long past.

'Tis like a child's beloved corse

A father watches, till at last

Beauty is like remembrance, cast

From Time long past.

1820.

SONNET.

YE hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes

Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?
O thou quick heart which pantest to possess
All that pale Expectation feigneth fair!

5

10

15

Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,
And all that never yet was known would know
Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press,

With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,
Seeking, alike from happiness and woe,

A refuge in the cavern of gray death?

O heart, and mind, and thoughts, what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below?

1820.

ΙΟ

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR.

I.

ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,-
Come and sigh, come and weep!

Merry hours, smile instead,

For the year is but asleep.
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.

II.

As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So White Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the death-cold year to-day;

Solemn hours! wail aloud

For your mother in her shroud.

III.

As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,

So the breath of these rude days

Rocks the year :-be calm and mild,

10

15

Trembling hours, she will arise
With new love within her eyes.

IV.

January gray 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.

20

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
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 Sea?

TO NIGHT.

I.

SWIFTLY walk o'er the western wave,

Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where all the long and lone daylight,

5

ΙΟ

1821.