Robes in its golden beams, ah! thou hast fled! The child of grace and genius. Heartless things Lifts still its solemn voice: - but thou art fled Be shed not even in thought. Nor, when those hues Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone 690 695 700 705 In the frail pauses of this simple strain, Let not high verse, mourning the memory Of that which is no more, or painting's woe Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 710 And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. It is a woe too 'deep for tears,' when all Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 715 The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 720 Autumn, 1815. A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day: Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, 5 Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Thou too, aërial Pile! whose pinnacles Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound And mingling with the still night and mute sky Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild ΙΟ 15 20 25 Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. September, 1815. LINES. I. THE cold earth slept below, Above the cold sky shone; And all around, with a chilling sound, II. The wintry hedge was black, The green grass was not seen, The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast, Which the frost had made between. III. Thine eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon's dying light; As a fenfire's beam on a sluggish stream Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there, And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair, IV. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved The wind made thy bosom chill 20 15 ΙΟ 5 330 The night did shed on thy dear head Where the bitter breath of the naked sky November, 1815. TO WORDSWORTH. POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. I. THE awful shadow of some unseen Power 1816. 5 ΙΟ Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, 5 It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening, Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Like memory of music fled, Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 10 II. Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope? III. No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given Therefore the names of Dæmon, Ghost, and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavour, Frail spells-whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see, Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone-like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night wind sent, Through strings of some still instrument, 15 20 25 30 |