Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

Then the weeds which were forms of living death

Fled from the frost to the earth beneath, Their decay and sudden flight from frost Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant The moles and the dormice die for want; The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air, And were caught in the branches naked and bare.

First there came down a thawing rain, And its dull drops froze on the boughs again,

Then there steamed up a freezing dew Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, Shook the boughs thus laden and heavy and stiff,

And snapped them off with his rigid griff.

When winter had gone and spring came back,

The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and

docks, and darnels,

Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that Which within its boughs like a spirit sat Ere its outward form had known decay, Now felt this change, I cannot say.

Whether that Lady's gentle mind
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness, where it left delight,

I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery..

That garden sweet, that Lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.

For love and beauty and delight
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

-O

IANTHE SLEEPING.

HOW WONDERFUL is Death,-
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn,
When throned on ocean's wave
It blushes o'er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!

Hath, then, the gloomy Power,
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,
Seized on her sinless soul?

Must, then, that peerless form,
Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart, those azure veins
Which steal like streams along a field of

snow,

That lovely outline, which is fair
As breathing marble, perish?
Must putrefaction's breath

Leave nothing of this heavenly sight
But loathsomeness and ruin ?—
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it only a sweet slumber
Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness?
Will Ianthe wake again,

And give that faithful bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life, and rapture from her smile?

Yes! she will wake again,

Although her glowing limbs are motionless,
And silent those sweet lips,
Once breathing eloquence

That might have soothed a tiger's rage,
Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror;
Her dewy eyes are closed,

And on their lids, whose texture fine
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,
The baby Sleep is pillowed;

Her golden tresses shade
The bosom's stainless pride,
Curling like tendrils of the parasite
Around a marble column.

[graphic][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me,

For he grasps me now by the hair!"

The loud ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer;

And under the water

The Earth's white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam,

Behind her descended,
Her billows unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main,

Alpheus rushed behind,

As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

[blocks in formation]

I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,

And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the
stream,
[est in dream.
But kissed it and then fled, as thou might-

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearlèd Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth

« AnteriorContinuar »