THE WORLD'S WANDERERS

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?

1820. 1824.

TIME LONG PAST

LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.

A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.

There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past:

And, was it sadness or delight,
Each day a shadow onward cast
Which made us wish it yet might last-
That Time long past.

There is regret, almost remorse,

For Time long past.

"Tis like a child's beloved corse A father watches, till at last Beauty is like remembrance, cast From Time long past. 1820. 1870.

Mind from its object differs most in

this:

Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must

endure.

If you divide suffering and dross, you

may

Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought,

Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not

How much, while any yet remains unshared,

Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:

This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw

The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law

By which those live, to whom this world of life

Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

There was a Being whom my spirit oft

Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,

In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,

Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the

the past;

And in that best philosophy, whose taste Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom

As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.-

Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth

I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,

And towards the loadstar of my one desire,

I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,
When it would seek in Hesper's setting
sphere

A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.-
But She, whom prayers or tears then
could not tame,

Passed, like a God throned on a wingéd planet,

Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,

Into the dreary cone of our life's shade; And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, I would have followed, though the grave between

Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are

That world within this Chaos, mine and

me,

Of which she was the veiled Divinity, The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:

And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear

And every gentle passion sick to death, Feeding my course with expectation's breath,

Into the wintry forest of our life; And struggling through its error with vain strife,

And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,

And half bewildered by new forms, I past Seeking among those untaught foresters If I could find one form resembling hers, In which she might have masked herself from me. There,-One, whose voice was venomed melody

Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers;

The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,

Her touch was as electric poison,-flame Out of her looks into my vitals came, And from her living cheeks and bosom flew

A killing air, which pierced like honeydew

Into the core of my green heart, and lay Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime

With ruins of unseasonable time.

In many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of that idol of my thought. And some were fair-but beauty dies

away:

Others were wise-but honeyed words betray:

And One was true-oh! why not true to me?

Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,

I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,

Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day

Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again

Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed

As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed,