EARLY POEMS.

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD,

LECHDALE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sun-set'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.

They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea; Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,

Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

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, Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,

Breathed from their wormy beds all living

things around

And mingling with the still night and mute sky Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from
human sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

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.

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!-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.

ON DEATH.

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?

TO ****

ΔΑΚΡΥΕΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΠΟΤΜΟΝ ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ.

On! there are spirits in the air,

And genii of the evening breeze,

And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

As star-beams among twilight trees:

Such lovely ministers to meet

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And mountain seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth;-Tame sacrifice

To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth's inconstancy?
Did thine own mind afford no scope

Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?

That natural scenes or human smiles

Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;

The glory of the moon is dead;

Night's ghost and dreams have now departed;

Thine own soul still is true to thee,

But changed to a foul fiend through misery.