FRAGMENT: UNSATISFIED DESIRES. To thirst and find no fill-to wail and wander With short uneasy steps-to ponder pause and To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle; To nurse the image of unfelt caresses STANZA: WEALTH AND LOVE. WEALTH and dominion fade into the mass But love, though misdirected, is among FRAGMENT: THOUGHTS. My thoughts arise and fade in solitude; away Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day: How beautiful they were, how firm they stood, Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl! A HATE-SONG: IMPROVISED. A HATER he came and sat by a ditch, And he sang a song which was more of a screech 'Gainst a woman that was a brute. LINES TO A CRITIC. I. HONEY from silkworms who can gather, The grass may grow in winter weather II. Hate men who cant, and men who pray, And men who rail like thee; An equal passion to repay They are not coy like me. III. Or seek some slave of power and gold, I hate thy want of truth and love How should I, then, hate thee? POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. SONNET, TO THE NILE. MONTH after month the gathered rains descend On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells By Nile's aërial urn, with rapid spells That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil Beware, O Man-for knowledge must to thee Like the great flood to Egypt ever be. PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine; It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, Or like the sea on a northern shore, Heard in its raging ebb and flow By the captives pent in the cave below. Is a mighty mountain dim and grey, On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. THE PAST. I. WILT thou forget the happy hours Blossoms and leaves instead of mould? II. Forget the dead, the past? O yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, And with ghastly whispers tell That joy, once lost, is pain. SONNET. LIFT not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it—he sought, INVOCATION TO MISERY. I. COME, be happy!-sit by me, Coy, unwilling, silent bride, II. Come, be happy!-sit near me: III. Misery! we have known each other, Living in the same lone home, Many years-we must live some Hours or ages yet to come. IV. 'Tis an evil lot, and yet Let us make the best of it; |