POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816.

THE SUNSET.

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 death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
Fail like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field,
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed 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

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That stroke. The lady died not nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on :-in truth I think
Her 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 'tis 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 eyelashes were torn 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 vexed 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,
And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;

Oh! that, like thine, mine epitaph were-Peace!"
This was the only moan she ever made.
Bishopgate, Spring 1816.

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.

1. THE awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats, though unseen, among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,

Like clouds in starlight widely spread,

Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

2. Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away, and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ?--
Ask why the sunlight not for ever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river;

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,

Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom; why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope!

3. No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given :

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour;

Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

4. Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes!
Thou that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame !

Depart not as thy shadow came :

Depart not, lest the grave should be,

Like life and fear, a dark reality!

5. While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed.
I was not heard, I saw them not;

When, musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden thy shadow fell on me :—

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

6. I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

Each from his voiceless grave. They have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight

Outwatched with me the envious night :
They know that never joy illumed my brow,

Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free

But for such faith, with Nature reconciled.
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise and great and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

4. The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the dædal earth, lightning and rain,
Earthquake and fiery flood and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep

Holds every future leaf and flower, the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap,

The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him, and all that his may be,

All things that move and breathe, with toil and sound
Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible :

And this the naked countenance of earth
On which I gaze, even these primæval mountains,
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep,

Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,

Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice

Frost and the sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled-dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,

A city of death, distinct with many a tower

And wall impregnable of beaming ice.

Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin,

Is there, that from the boundary of the skies

Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing

Its destined path, or in the mangled soil

Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown

The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,

So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish like smoke before the tempest's stream,

And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which, from those secret chasms in tumult welling,
Meet in the Vale; and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

5. Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: the power is there,
The still and solemn power, of many sights

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And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,

Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath

Rapid and strong, but silently. Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of Things,
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee.

And what were thou and earth and stars and sea.
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?