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DOMESTIC PIECES,

1816.

FARE THEE WELL.

'Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny, and youth is vain ;"
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness on the brain;

But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining-
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder.
A dreary sea now flows between,

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.'
COLERIDGE'S Christabel

FARE thee well! and if for ever,

Still for ever, fare thee well:

Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee
Which thou ne'er canst know again:

Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show !
Then thou wouldst at last discover

'Twas not well to spurn it so.

Though the world for this commend thee-
Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praises must offend thee,
Founded on another's woe:

Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
To indict a cureless wound?

Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not;
Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:

Still thine own its life retaineṭh,

Still must mine, though bleeding, beat; And the undying thought which paineth Is-that we no more may meet.

These are words of deeper sorrow
Than the wai! above the dead;
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widow'd bed.

And when thou wouldst solace gather,
When our child's first accents flow,
Wilt thou teach her to say 'Father !'
Though his care she must forego?

When her little hand shall press thee,
When her lip to thine is press'd,

Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee,
Think of him thy love had bless'd!

Should her lineaments resemble

Those thou never more mayst see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me.

All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know;
All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
Wither, yet with thee they go.

Every feeling hath been shaken;

Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee-by thee forsaken,

Even my soul forsakes me now:
But 'tis done-all words are idle-
Words from me are yainer still;
But the thoughts ve cannot bridle
Force their way without the will.
Fare thee well! thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie,
Sear'd in heart, and lone, and blighted,
More than this I scarce can die.

A SKETCH.

'Honest-honest Iago!

If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.'
SHAKSPEARE.

BORN in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
Next--for some gracious service unexpress'd,
And from its wages only to be guess'd-
Raised from the toilette to the table, where
Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.
With eye unmoved, and forehead unabash'd,
She dines from off the plate she lately wash'd,
Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
The genial confidante, and general spy,
Who could, ye gods, her next employment guess-
An only infant's earliest governess!

She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
That she herself, by teaching, learn'd to spell.

An adept next in penmanship she grows,
As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
What she had made the pupil of her art,
None know-but that high Soul secured the heart,
And panted for the truth it could not hear,
With longing breast and undeluded car.
Foil'd was perversion by that youthful mind,
Which Flattery fool'd not, Baseness could not blind,
Deceit infect not, near Contagion soil,
Indulgence weaken, nor Example spoil,
Nor master'd Science tempt her to look down
On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
Nor Genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
Nor Envy ruffle to retaliate pain,

Nor Fortune change, Pride raise, nor Passion bow,
Nor Virtue teach austerity-till now.
Serenely purest of her sex that live,

But wanting one sweet weakness-to forgive;
Too shock d at faults her soul can never know,
She deems that all could be like her below:
Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend,
For Virtue pardons those she would amend.

But to the theme, now laid aside too long,
The baleful Burthen of this honest song:
Though all her former functions are no more,
She rules the circle which she served before.
If mothers-none know why-before her quake;
If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;
If early habits-those false links, which bind
At times the loftiest to the meanest mind-
Have given her power too deeply to instil
The angry essence of her deadly will;
If like a snake she steal within your walls,
Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
If like a viper to the heart she wind,

And leave the venom there she did not find;
What marvel that this hag of hatred works
Eternal evil latent as she lurks,

To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
Skill'd by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,

While mingling truth with falsehood-sneers with smiles

A thread of candour with a web of wiles:

A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,

To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd scheming;
A lip of lies-a face form'd to conceal ;
And, without feeling, mock at all who feel:
With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.
Mark, how the channels of her yellow blood
Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud,
Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale-
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colours in that soul or face)-
Look on her features! and behold her mind
As in a mirror of itself defined:

Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged-
There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
Yet true to 'Nature's journeymen,' who made
This monster when their mistress left off trade→→

This female dog-star of her little sky,
Where all beneath her influence droop or die.

Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought, Save joy above the ruin thou hast wroughtThe time shall come, nor long remote, when thou Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now; Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain, And turn thee howling in unpitied pain. May the strong curse of crush'd affections light Back on thy bosom with reflected blight! And make thee in thy leprosy of mind As loathsome to thyself as to mankind! Til all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate. Black-as thy will for others would create: Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust, And thy soul welter in its hideous crust. Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed, The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread! Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with

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STANZAS TO AUGUSTA. WHEN all around grew drear and dark, And reason half withheld her ray, And hope but shed a dying spark Which more misled my lonely way; In that deep midnight of the mind, And that internal strife of heart, When dreading to be deem'd too kind,

The weak despair-the cold depart;

When fortune changed, and love fled far,

And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast, Thou wert the solitary star

Which rose and set not to the last.

Oh! blest be thine unbroken light,

That watch'd me as a seraph's eye, And stood between me and the night,

For ever shining sweetly nigh.

And when the cloud upon us came,
Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray-
Then purer spread its gentle flame,
And dash'd the darkness all away.

Still may thy spirit dwell on mine,
And teach it what to brave or brook-
There's more in one soft word of thine
Than in the world's defied rebuke.
Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree.
That still unbroke, though gently bent,
Still waves with fond fidelity
Its boughs above a monument.

The winds might rend, the skies might pour, But there thou wert-and still wouldst be Devoted in the stormiest hour

To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

But thou and thine shall know no blight,
Whatever fate on ine may fall;
For Heaven in sunshine will requite

The kind-and thee the most of all.
Then let the ties of baffled love

Be broken-thine will never break;
Thy heart can feel, but will not move;
Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.
And these, when all was lost beside,
Were found and still are fix'd in thee;-
And bearing still a breast so tried,
Earth is no desert-ev'n to me.

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA. THOUGH the day of my destiny's over, And the star of my fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,

If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.
Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain-it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemn;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
'Tis of thee that I think-not of them.
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake;
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me;
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one :

If

my soul was not fitted to prize it,

'Twas folly not sooner to shun:

And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could foresee,

I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA.
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim

No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny-
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,

And mine is not the wish to make them less. A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past Recalling, as it lies beyond redress; Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks, The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen My errors with defensive paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward:
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
The gift-a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay :
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

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 armour 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,

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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 desire,
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 me-
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be ;
The passions which have torn me would have slept ;|
I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.

With false Ambition what had I to do?

Little with Love, and least of all with Fame; And yet they came unsought, and with me grew, And made me all which they can make-a name. Yet this was not the end I did pursue;

Surely I once beheld a nobler aim. But all is over-I am one the more

To baffled millions which have gone before.

And for the future, this world's future may.
From me demand but little of my care;

I have outlived myself by many a day,
Having survived so many things that were;
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!

THE DREAM.

I.

OUR life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.

And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;

They pass like spirits of the past,-they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power-
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain:
They make us what we were not-what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanish'd shadows-are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?-What are they?
Creations of the mind?-The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'd
Perchance in sleep; for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

II.

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green, and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men
Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing sinoke
Arising from such rústic roofs;-the hill
Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing-the one on all that was beneath,
Fair as herself-but the boy gazed on her;

And both were young, and one was beautiful;
And both were young-yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,"
And that was shining on him; he had look'd
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers;
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers,
Which colour'd all his objects:-he had ceased
To live within himself; she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all: upon a tone,

A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously-his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.

But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother-but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestow'd on him;
Herself the solitary scion left

Of a time-honour'd race.-It was a name

And mounting on his steed he went his way; And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more,

IV.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood; in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his soul drank their sunbeams: he was girt
With strange and dusky aspect; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couch'd among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruin'd walls that had survived the names
Of those who rear'd them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fasten'd near a fountain; and a man,
Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumber'd around;
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.

V.

Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not-and A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. why?

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A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparison'd:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake;-he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon

He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd
His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion-then arose again,

And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears,
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-enter'd there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved, she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came ;
He dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he pass'd
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,

The lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better:-in her home,
A thousand leagues from his,-her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy,
Daughters and sons of Beauty,-but behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,

As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.
What could her grief be ?-she had all she loved;
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repress'd affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?-she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved;
Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd
Upon her mind-a spectre of the past.

VI.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The Wanderer was return'd.-I saw him stand Before an altar-with a gentle bride;

Her face was fair, but was not that which made

The starlight of his Boyhood. As he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then-
As in that hour-a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reel'd around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been-
But the old mansion, and the accustom'd hall,

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