4. The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven

In the broad daylight,

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight

5. Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there.

6. All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

7. What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From the rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody

8. Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

9. Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love which overflows her bower:

10. Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the

view:

11. Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy winged thieves.

12. Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers

All that ever was,

Joyous, and clear, and fresh-thy music doth surpass.

13. Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine :

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

14. Chorus hymeneal

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

15. What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

16. With thy clear keen joyance
Langour cannot be :
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

17. Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

18. We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

19. Yet, if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear,

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

20. Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

21. Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then as I am listening now.

I

ΤΟ

FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden;
Thou needest not fear mine-

My spirit is too deeply laden

Ever to burthen thine.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion;
Thou needest not fear mine-

Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

O

THE TWO SPIRITS.

AN ALLEGORY.

FIRST SPIRIT.

THOU who plumed with strong desire
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!

A shadow tracks thy flight of fire

Night is coming!

Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there-
Night is coming!

SECOND SPIRIT.

The deathless stars are bright above : If I would cross the shade of night, Within my heart is the lamp of love, And that is day;

And the moon will shine with gentle light On my golden plumes where'er they move; The meteors will linger round my flight, And make night day.

FIRST SPIRIT.

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain?
See, the bounds of the air are shaken-
The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,

The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain-
Night is coming!

SECOND SPIRIT.

I see the light, and I hear the sound.
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark,
With the calm within and the light around
Which makes night day:

And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound;
My moonlike flight thou then mayst mark
On high, far away.