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STANZAS. APRIL, 1814.

AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,

Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even : Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.

Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away! Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle

mood:

Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;

Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:

The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy

feet:

But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,

Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.

The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the

deep:

Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows ; Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed

sleep.

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Thou in the grave shalt rest yet till the phantoms flee Which that house and heath and garden made dear

to thee erewhile,

Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings

are not free

From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.

MUTABILITY.

WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! - yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

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We rest. A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!

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For, be it joy or sorrow,

The path of its departure still is free:

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER

THOU GOEST.

Ecclesiastes.

THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,

Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul

Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, And the billows of cloud that around thee roll Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,

This world is the mother of all we feel,

And the coming of death is a fearful blow

To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel; When all that we know, or feel, or see,

Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be

With the fears and the love for that which we see?

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD.

LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
And pallid evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day:
Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men,

Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

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