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, Of evening till the star of dawn may fail, Was interfused upon the silentness; Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness 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, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in To be consumed within the purest glow memory yet. THE WOODMAN AND THE 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 Of one serene and unapproached star, As if it were a lamp of earthly light, Unconscious, as some human lovers are, 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 Like clouds above the flower from which In every soul but one. In this sweet forest, from the golden And so this man returned with axe and At evening close from killing the tall The world is full of Woodmen who expel 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 Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell. MARENGHI1 LET those who pine in pride or in revenge, Or think that ill for ill should be repaid, Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping Or barter wrong for wrong, until the oft Fast showers of aërial water drops Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, exchange Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade, Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn Nature's pure tears which have no bitter- Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn. And thou in painting didst transcribe For when by sound of trumpet was all taught By loftiest meditations; marble knew The sculptor's fearless soul-and as he wrought, The grace of his own power and freedom grew. declared A price upon his life, and there was set A penalty of blood on all who shared wet And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, His lips, which speech divided not-he Thou wert among the false-was this thy crime? IX went Alone, as you may guess, to banishment. XIII Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the Amid the mountains, like a hunted |