The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone,
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found,
And walk'd with inward glory crown'd
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings.
I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal Earth, And of Heaven-and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,And then I changed my pipings,— Singing how down the vale of Menalus
I pursued a maiden and clasp'd a reed: Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed.
All wept, as I think both ye now would, If envy or age had not frozen your blood, At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
OUR boat is asleep in Serchio's stream, Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream, The helm sways idly, hither and thither; Dominic, the boat-man, has brought the mast, And the oars and the sails; but 't is sleeping fast, Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.
The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering there; To tower, and cavern, and rift and tree, The owl and the bat fled drowsily.
Day had kindled the dewy woods,
And the rocks above and the stream below, And the vapours in their multitudes,
And the Apennine's shroud of summer snow, And clothed with light of aery gold The mists in their eastern caves uproll'd.
Day had awaken'd all things that be,
The lark and the thrush and the swallow free, And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe, And the matin-bell and the mountain bee : Fire-flies were quench'd on the dewy corn, Glow-worms went out on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim: The beetle forgot to wind his horn,
The crickets were still in the meadow and hill : Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun, Night's dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are their prey, From the lamp's death to the morning ray.
All rose to do the task He set to each,
Who shaped us to his ends and not our own; The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew or can be known;
And many rose Whose woe was such that fear became desire;Melchior and Lionel were not among those;
---- Never mind, said Lionel, Give care to the winds, they can bear it well About yon poplar tops; and see, The white clouds are driving merrily, And the stars we miss this morn will light More willingly our return to-night.— List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair; How it scatters Dominic's long black hair, Singing of us, and our lazy motions, If I can guess a boat emotions.-.
The chain is loosed, the sails are spread, The living breath is fresh behind, As with dews and sunrise fed, Comes the laughing morning wind;- The sails are full, the boat makes head Against the Serchio's torrent fierce, Then flags with intermitting course, And hangs upon the wave, [
Which fervid from its mountain source Shallow, smooth and strong doth come,- Swift as fire, tempestuously
It sweeps into the affrighted sea; In morning's smile its eddies coil, Its billows sparkle, toss and boil, Torturing all its quiet light Into columns fierce and bright.
The Serchio, twisting forth Between the marble barriers which it clove At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm The wave that died the death that lovers love, Living in what it sought; as if this spasm Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling, But the clear stream in full enthusiasm Pours itself on the plain, until wandering, Down one clear path of effluence crystalline Sends its clear waves, that they may fling At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine, Then, through the pestilential deserts wild Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted fir, It rushes to the Ocean. July, 1821.
SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring, Aud infant Winter laugh'd upon the land ↑ Pumpkin.
The red swift clouds of the hurricane Yon declining sun have overtaken, The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain- Night is coming!
I see the light, and I hear the sound;
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark With the calm within and the light around Which makes night day:
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound, My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark On high, far away.
Some say, there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice Mid Alpine mountains; And that the languid storm, pursuing That winged shape, for ever flies Round those hoar branches, aye renewing Its aery fountains.
Some say, when nights are dry and clear, And the death dews sleep on the morass, Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller
Which makes night day:
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, And when he awakes on the fragrant grass, He finds night day.
THEY were two cousins, almost like to twins, Except that from the catalogue of sins Nature had razed their love-which could not be But by dissevering their nativity.
And so they grew together, like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime, Which the same hand will gather-the same clime Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see All those who love,—and who ever loved like thee, Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The ardours of a vision which obscure The very idol of its portraiture; lle faints, dissolved into a sense of love; But thou art as a planet sphered above, But thou art Love itself-ruling the motion Of his subjected spirit.-Such emotion Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May Ilad not brought forth this morn-
THE golden gates of sleep unbar
Where strength and beauty met together, Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather. Night, with all thy stars look down,—
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,- Never smiled the inconstant moon
Let eyes not see their own delight;— Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight Oft renew.
Fairies, sprites, and angels keep her! Holy stars, permit no wrong! And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn,-ere it be long.
Oh joy! oh fear! what will be done In the absence of the sun! Come along!
THERE late was One within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and youth contended. None know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath Fail, like the trances of a summer air, When, with the Lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walk'd along the pathway of the field Which to the east a hoar wood shadow'd o'er, But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, And the old dandelion's hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown massy woods-and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead.— «Is it not strange, Isabel, said the youth, I never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.>>
That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep-but when the morning came The lady found her lover dead and cold. Let none believe that God in mercy gave That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild, But year by year lived on-in truth I think Iler gentleness and patience and sad smiles, And that she did not die, but lived to tend Her aged father, were a kind of madness, If madness 't is to be unlike the world. For but to see her were to read the tale Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;-
Her eye-lashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so pale; Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins And weak articulations might be seen Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self Which one vex'd ghost inhabits, night and day, Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!
Inheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm, and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
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