It is her largeness, and her overflow,
Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!

IV.

For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,
But tim'rously beginning to rejoice

Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start
In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.
Beloved! 'tis not thine; thou art not there!
Then melts the bubble into idle air,

And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.

V.

The mother with anticipated glee

Smiles o'er the child, that, standing by her chair
And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare

To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight
She hears her own voice with a new delight;
And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes
aright,

VI.

Then is she tenfold gladder than before!

But should disease or chance the darling take,
What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore
Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake?

Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee
Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee:

Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me?

Of the trim vines, some maid that half believes
The vestal fires, of which her lover grieves,
With that sly satyr peeping through the leaves !

IMPROVED FROM STOLBERG.*

ON A CATARACT FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE.

STROPHE.

UNPERISHING youth!

Thou leapest from forth.

The cell of thy hidden nativity;

Never mortal saw

The cradle of the strong one

Never mortal heard

The gathering of his voices;

The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock, That is lisped evermore at his slumberless fountain. There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;

It embosoms the roses of dawn

It entangles the shafts of the noon,

And into the bed of its stillness

The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,

That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven May be born in a holy twilight!

ANTISTROPHE.

The wild goat in awe

Looks up and beholds

Above thee the cliff inaccessible ;

See Note at the end of the volume.

THE TWO FOUNTS.

STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER

RECOVERY

WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS FROM A SEVERE ATTACK OF PAIN.

"TWAS my last waking thought, how it could be That thou, sweet friend, such anguish shouldst

endure;

When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he

Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure.

Methought he fronted me with peering look
Fixed on my heart; and read aloud in game
The loves and griefs therein, as from a book;
And uttered praise like one who wished to blame.

In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin
Two Founts there are, of suffering and of cheer!
That to let forth, and this to keep within!
But she, whose aspect I find imaged here,

Of Pleasure only will to all dispense,
That Fount alone unlock, by no distress
Choked or turned inward, but still issue thence
Unconquered cheer, persistent loveliness.

As on the driving cloud the shiny bow,
That gracious thing made up of tears and light,
Mid the wild rack and rain that slants below
Stands smiling forth, unmoved and freshly bright;—

As though the spirits of all lovely flowers,
Inweaving each its wreath and dewy crown,

Or ere they sank to earth in vernal showers,
Had built a bridge to tempt the angels down.

Ev'n so, Eliza! on that face of thine,

On that benignant face, whose look alone

(The soul's translucence through her crystal shrine !) Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own,

A beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing,
But with a silent charm compels the stern
And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring,
To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn.

Who then needs wonder, if (no outlet found
In passion, spleen, or strife) the fount of pain
O'erflowing beats against its lovely mound,
And in wild flashes shoots from heart to brain?

Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam
On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile,
Had passed yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile,
Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream;

Till audibly at length I cried, as though
Thou had'st indeed been present to my eyes,
O sweet, sweet sufferer; if the case be so,
I pray thee, be less good, less sweet, less wise!

In

every

look a barbed arrow send,
On those soft lips let scorn and anger live!
Do anything, rather than thus, sweet friend!
Hoard for thyself the pain, thou wilt not give!

With king-cups and daisies, that all the year please, Sprays, petals, and leaflets, that nod in the breeze, With carpets, and garlands, and wreaths, deck the

way,

And tempt the blithe spirit still onward to stray,
Itself its own home;—far away! far away!

The butterflies flutter in pairs round the bower;
The humble-bee sings in each bell of each flower;
The bee hums of heather and breeze-wooing hill,
And forgets in the sunshine his toil and his skill;
The birds carol gladly!—the lark mounts on high;
The swallows on wing make their tune to the eye,
And as birds of good omen, that summer loves well,
Ever wheeling weave ever some magical spell.
The hunt is abroad;—hark! the horn sounds its
note,

And seems to invite us to regions remote.

The horse in the meadow is stirred by the sound, And neighing impatient o'erleaps the low mound; Then proud in his speed o'er the champaign he bounds,

To the whoop of the huntsmen and tongue of the hounds.

Then stay not within, for on such a blest day We can never quit home, while with Nature we stray; far away, far away!

THE

CONSOLATION OF A MANIAC.

HE feverous dream is past! and I awake,
Alone and joyless in my prison-cell,

Again to ply the never ending toil,