Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

IV.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent,
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

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Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

40

Thou messenger of sympathies,

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes —

Thou that to human thought art nourishment,

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Like darkness to a dying flame!

Depart not as thy shadow came,

Depart not- lest the grave should be,

Like life and fear, a dark reality.

V.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, I was not heard - I saw them not

When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring

News of birds and blossoming,

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ;

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

VI.

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine

have I not kept the vow?

With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

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I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers 65 Of studious zeal or love's delight

Outwatched with me the envious night They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery,

That thou O awful LOVELINESS,

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

VII.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past - there is a harmony

In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been !
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth

Descended, to my onward life supply

Its calm - to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind. Summer, 1816.

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ON FANNY GODWIN.

HER voice did quiver as we parted,

Yet knew I not that heart was broken
From which it came, and I departed
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery O Misery,

This world is all too wide for thee.

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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 5, 1817.

SONNET.

OZYMANDIAS.

I MET a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, (stamped on these lifeless things,)
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear :
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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 gray,

Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread

On the dim starlight then is spread,

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

THE PAST.

I.

WILT thou forget the happy hours

Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,

Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves instead of mould?

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Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

II.

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.

LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS.

OCTOBER, 1818.

MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on
Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track;
Whilst above the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o'er-brimming deep;
And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;