Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

2. O man! hold thee on in courage of soul

Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way;
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.

3. This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel;
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel,
When all that we know or feel or see
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

4. The secret things of the grave are there
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

5. Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be

With the fears and the love for that which we see?

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHYARD, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

1.

THE

HE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day: Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,

Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

2. They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

3. Thou too, aërial pile, whose pinnacles

Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obey'st in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

4. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around;

And, mingling with the still night and mute sky,
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

5. Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorless as the serenest night.

Here could I hope, like some inquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

TO WORDSWORTH.

OET of Nature, thou hast wept to know

POET

That things depart which never may return; Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine, Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar: Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude: In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty. Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus, having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.

I

HATED thee, fallen Tyrant! I did groan

To think that a most unambitious slave,

Like thou, should dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer

A frail and bloody pomp, which Time has swept In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre,

For this, I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,

And stifled thee their minister. I know
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe

Then Force or Fraud; old Custom, Legal Crime,
And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time.

1.

TH

LINES.

HE cold earth slept below;
Above, the cold sky shone;

And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

2. The wintry hedge was black;
The green grass was not seen;

The birds did rest

On the bare thorn's breast,

Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.

3. Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light.
As a fen-fire's beam

On a sluggish stream

Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there;
And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

4. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed

On thy dear head

Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

November 1815.