Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.

II.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers,
thrown:

I sit upon the sands alone,
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.

III.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned-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.

IV.

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.

V.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament-for I am one
Whom men love not,-and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

TO MARY

O MARY dear, that you were here
With your brown eyes bright and clear,
And your sweet voice, like a bird
Singing love to its lone mate
In the ivy bower disconsolate;
Voice the sweetest ever heard!
And
your brow more
Than the

Of this azure Italy.

sky

Mary dear, come to me soon,

I am not well whilst thou art far;
As sunset to the spherèd moon,
As twilight to the western star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.

O Mary dear, that you were here;
The Castle echo whispers "Here!”

SONG, ON A FADED VIOLET.

I.

THE odour from the flower is gone
Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
The colour from the flower is flown
Which glowed of thee and only thee!

II.

A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,
It lies on my abandoned breast,
And mocks the heart which yet is warm,
With cold and silent rest.

I

III.

weep, my tears revive it not!

I sigh,-it breathes no more on me;

Its mute and uncomplaining lot

Is such as mine should be.

THE WOODMAN AND THE

NIGHTINGALE.

A WOODMAN whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good) Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;—
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they

rose,

The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness

IO

Of the circumfluous waters,-every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and

wave,

And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave, And every bird lulled on its mossy bough, And every silver moth fresh from the grave,

Which is its cradle-ever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,'
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,

20

30

1 Compare Epipsychidion, line 224, vol. iii, page 362:

:

As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.-ED.

Itself how low, how high beyond all height The heaven where it would perish!-and every

form

That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.

*

*

*

*

And so this man returned with axe and saw 40 At evening close from killing the tall treen, The soul of whom by nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green The pavement and the roof of the wild copse, Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves,-and from the forest tops Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping oft Fast showers of aërial water-drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness ;Around the cradles of the birds aloft

51

They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds :-or, where high
branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers