II. If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers SUMMER AND WINTER. It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, Towards the end of the sunny month of June, When the north wind congregates in crowds. The floating mountains of the silver clouds From the horizon-and the stainless sky Opens beyond them like eternity. All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds, The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds; The willow-leaves that glanced in the light breeze, And the firm foliage of the larger trees. It was a winter such as when birds die LINES TO A REVIEWER. ALAS, good friend, what profit can you see In hating such a hateless thing as me? There is no sport in hate when all the rage FRAGMENT OF A SATIRE ON SATIRE. IF gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains, While the meek bless'd sit smiling; if Despair Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error, Are the true secrets of the commonweal To make men wise and just; ... And not the sophisms of revenge and fear, ... 10 Then send the priests to every hearth and home To preach the burning wrath which is to come, In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw The frozen tears... If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds, flame; 20 Follow his flight with wingèd words, and urge The strokes of the inexorable scourge Until the heart be naked, till his soul See the contagion's spots foul; And from the mirror of Truth's sunlike shield, From which his Parthian arrow Flash on his sight the spectres of the past, Let scorn like yawn below, And rain on him like flakes of fiery snow. This cannot be, it ought not, evil still 30 Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow ill. Rough words beget sad thoughts, beside, Men take a sullen and a stupid pride In being all they hate in others' shame, and, 40 "Tis not worth while to prove, as I could, how From the sweet fountains of our Nature flow These bitter waters; I will only say, If any friend would take Southey some day, And tell him, in a country walk alone, Softening harsh words with friendship's gentle tone, How incorrect his public conduct is, And what men think of it, 'twere not amiss. Far better than to make innocent ink ODE TO NAPLES.1 EPODE I. a. I STOOD within the city disinterred,2 And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets, and heard The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetrating shook The listening soul in my suspended blood; I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spokeI felt, but heard not :-through white columns glowed The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, A plane of light between two Heavens of azure: Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; But every living lineament was clear As in the sculptor's thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air 20 1 The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiæ with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event. 2 Pompeii. Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine Which then lulled all things brooded upon mine. EPODE II. a. Then gentle winds arose With many a mingled close Of wild Eolian sound and mountain-odour keen ; And where the Baian ocean Welters with air-like motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves I sailed, where ever flows Of the dead kings of Melody.' Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm 40 There streamed a sunlight vapour, like the standard Of some ætherial host; Whilst from all the coast, Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered 1 Homer and Virgil. |