SONG FOR "TASSO." I. I LOVED alas! our life is love; But when we cease to breathe and move I do suppose love ceases too. I thought, but not as now I do, Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, II. And still I love and still I think, And if I think, my thoughts come fast, III. Sometimes I see before me flee A silver spirit's form, like thee, O Leonora, and I sit Still watching it, Till by the grated casement's ledge PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights ! Paradise of golden lights! Deep, immeasurable, vast, Which art now, and which wert then! Of acts and ages yet to come! Glorious shapes have life in thee, Even thy name is as a god, Of that power which is the glass Worship thee with bended knees. Thou remainest such alway. SECOND SPIRIT. Thou art but the mind's first chamber, Round which its young fancies clamber, Like weak insects in a cave, Lighted up by stalactites; But the portal of the grave, Where a world of new delights Will make thy best glories seem But a dim and noonday gleam From the shadow of a dream! THIRD SPIRIT. Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn At your presumption, atom-born! What is heaven? and what are ye Who its brief expanse inherit ? CLE TO THE WEST WIND. L 0), xm: Test Tod, thon breath of Autumn's being, Thoy, from whose seen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter feeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, The winged seeds, where they le cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill Wild Spirit, which art moving every where ; II. Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere III. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers All overgrown with azure moss and flowers |