WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAP

I

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent might, The breath of the moist earth is light, Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's

II.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweed strow
I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, th
I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in m

III.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned-
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround-
Smiling they live and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

IV.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are ; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament—for I am one Whom men love not, and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

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?

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.

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 starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.

II.

Come, be happy! — sit near me :
Sad as I may seem to thee,
I am happier far than thou,
Lady, whose imperial brow
Is endiademed with woe.

ΠΙ.

Misery! we have known each other,

Like a sister and a brother

Living in the same lone home,

Come, be happy!-le thee down On the fresh grass newly mown, Where the Grasshopper doth sing

Merrily one joyous thing

In a world of sorrowing!