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The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer

in

my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

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Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

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Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

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Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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1819.

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SOPHIA.

I.

THOU art fair, and few are fairer
Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;
They are robes that fit the wearer

Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion

Ever falls and shifts and glances

As the life within them dances.

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II.

Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness

With soft clear fire, — the winds that fan it

Are those thoughts of tender gladness Which, like Zephyrs on the billow,

Make thy gentle soul their pillow.

III.

If whatever face thou paintest

In those eyes grows pale with pleasure,

If the fainting soul is faintest

When it hears thy harp's wild measure,
Wonder not that when thou speakest
Of the weak my heart is weakest.

IV.

As dew beneath the wind of morning,

As the sea which Whirlwinds waken,
As the birds at thunder's warning,
As aught mute yet deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit
Is my heart when thine is near it.

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Of the eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,

Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;

Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;

And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode

Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass

Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away :

Thou remainest such alway.

Second Spirit.

Thou art but the mind's first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,

Lighted up by stalactites;

But the portal of the grave, Where a world of new delights Will make thy best glories seem But a dim and noonday gleam From the shadow of a dream!

ΤΟ

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