Kingdoms and empires in my little day I have outlived, and yet I am not old; And when I look on this, the petty spray Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd

Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away: Something I know not what-does still uphold

A spirit of slight patience;-not in vain, Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir Within me or perhaps a cold despair, Brought on when ills habitually recur,Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air, (For even to this may change of soul refer,

And with light armor we may learn to bear,)

Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not

The chief companion of a calmer lot.

I feel almost at times as I have felt In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,

Which do remember me of where I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,

Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; And even at moments I could think I

see

Some living thing to love--but none like thee.

Here are the Alpine landscapes which

create

A fund for contemplation;-to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
But something worthier do such scenes
inspire;

Here to be lonely is not desolate,
For much I view which I could most de-
sire,

And, above all, a lake I can behold Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

Oh that thou wert but with me!-but I grow

The fool of my own wishes, and forget
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
There may be others which I less may
show!-

I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.

I did remind thee of our own dear Lake By the old Hall which may be mine no

more.

Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:

Sad havoc Time must with my memory make,

Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;

Though, like all things which I have loved, they are

Resign'd for ever, or divided far.

The world is all before me; I but ask
Of Nature that with which she will
comply-

It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy.
She was my early friend, and now shall
be

My sister-till I look again on thee.

I can reduce all feelings but this one; And that I would not;-for at length I see

Such scenes as those wherein my life begun.

The earliest-even the only paths for

My years have been no slumber, but the prey

Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share Of life which might have fill'd a century, Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.

And for the remnant which may be to

come

I am content; and for the past I feel Not thankless,-for within the crowded

sum

Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,

And for the present, I would not benumb My feelings further.-Nor shall I conceal That with all this I still can look around, And worship Nature with a thought profound.

For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart

I know myself secure, as thou in mine; We were and are-I am, even as thou art

Beings who ne'er each other can resign:
It is the same, together or apart,
From life's commencement to its slow
decline

We are entwined-let death come slow or fast,

The tie which bound the first endures the last! July, 1816. 1830.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC

THEY say that Hope is happiness;

But genuine Love must prize the past, And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless:

They rose the first-they set the last;

And all that Memory loves the most Was once our only Hope to be, And all that Hope adored and lost Hath melted into Memory.

Alas! it is delusion all;

The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are. ?... 1829.

DARKNESS

I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation: and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light;

And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones,

The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,

And men were gather'd round their blazing homes

To look once more into each other's face;

Happy were those who dwelt within the

Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food!

And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again :-a meal was bought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom : no love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was death

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails-men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,

Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save

Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.

The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two

Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy
things

For an unholy usage; they raked up, And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world

A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,

And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths:

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd

They slept on the abyss without a

surge

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them-She was the Universe.

July, 1816, December 5, 1816.

PROMETHEUS

TITAN to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise ;
What was thy pity's recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot
kill;

And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die;
The wretched gift eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from
thee

Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,

And evil dread so ill dissembled, That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure scurce; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny; His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence : To which his Spirit may oppose Itself-and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dare defy, And making Death a Victory.

July, 1816. December, 1816.

SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN

ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and De Staël

Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,

Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more

Their memory thy remembrance would recall:

To them thy banks were lovely as to all,

But they have made them lovelier, for the lore

Of mighty minds doth hallow in the

core

Of human hearts the ruin of a wall Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee

How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,

In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

July, 1816. December 5, 1816.

It will not burn so long as I must watch: My slumbers-if I slumber-are not sleep, But a continuance of enduring thought, Which then I can resist not in my heart There is a vigil, and these eyes but close To look within; and yet I live, and bear The aspect and the form of breathing men. But grief should be the instructor of the wise;

Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most

Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,

The Tree of Knowledge is not that of

Life.

Philosophy and science, and the springs Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world, I have essay'd, and in my mind there is A power to make these subject to itselfBut they avail not : I have done men good, And I have met with good even among

men

But this avail'd not: I have had my foes, And none have baffled, many fallen be

fore me

But this avail'd not:-Good, or evil, life, Powers, passions, all I see in other beings, Have been to me as rain unto the sands, Since that all-nameless hour. I have no dread,

And feel the curse to have no natural fear, Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes,

Or lurking love of something on the earth. Now to my task.—

Mysterious agency! Ye spirits of the unbounded Universe! Whom I have sought in darkness and in light

Ye, who do compass earth about, and

dwell

In subtler essence-ye, to whom the tops Of mountains inaccessible are haunts, And earth's and ocean's caves familiar

things

I call upon ye by the written charm Which gives me power upon you-Rise! Appear! [A pause. They come not yet.-Now by the voice of him

Who is the first among you-by this sign, Which makes you tremble-by the claims of him

Who is undying,-Rise! Appear!-
Appear!
[4 pause.

If it be so-Spirits of earth and air,
Ye shall not thus elude me: by a power,
Deeper than all yet urged, a tyrant-spell,
Which had its birthplace in a star con-
demn'd,

The burning wreck of a demolish'd world,

A wandering hell in the eternal space; By the strong curse which is upon my

soul,

SECOND SPIRIT

Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;

They crown'd him long ago

On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, With a diadem of snow.

Around his waist are forests braced,

The Avalanche in his hand;
But ere it fall, that thundering ball
Must pause for my command.
The Glacier's cold and restless mass
Moves onward day by day;
But I am he who bids it pass,
Or with its ice delay.

I am the spirit of the place,

Could make the mountain bow And quiver to his cavern'd baseAnd what with me wouldst Thou?

THIRD SPIRIT

In the blue depth of the waters, Where the wave hath no strife, Where the wind is a stranger,

And the sea-snake hath life, Where the Mermaid is decking Her green hair with shells, Like the storm on the surface Came the sound of thy spells; O'er my calm Hall of Coral The deep echo roll'd— To the Spirit of Ocean Thy wishes unfold!

FOURTH SPIRIT

Where the slumbering earthquake Lies pillow'd on fire,

And the lakes of bitumen

Rise boilingly higher; Where the roots of the Andes

Strike deep in the earth,

As their summits to heaven

Shoot soaringly forth;

I have quitted my birthplace,
Thy bidding to bide-
Thy spell hath subdued me,
Thy will be my guide!

FIFTH SPIRIT

I am the Rider of the wind,
The stirrer of the storm:
The hurricane I left behind
Is yet with lightning warm;
To speed to thee, o'er shore and sea
I swept upon the blast:
The fleet I met sail'd well, and yet
'Twill sink ere night be past.