Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they

rose,

The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

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 bird lulled on its mossy bough, And every silver moth fresh from the grave,

every

Which is its cradle- -ever from below Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far, To be consumed within the purest glow

20

Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,' 1
Unconscious, as some human lovers are, 30

1 Compare Epipsychidion, line 224, vol. iii, page 362:

As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.-ED.

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
In every soul but one.

And so this man returned with axe and saw 40 At evening close from killing the tall 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 Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping oft Fast showers of aërial water-drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness ;Around the cradles of the birds aloft

51

They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds :-or, where high
branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion-and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

60

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute

Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed

To such brief unison as on the brain

One tone, which never can recur, has cast,

One accent never to return again.

*

*

*

The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.

70

FRAGMENT OF AN ADDRESS TO
BYRON.

O MIGHTY mind, in whose deep stream this age Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm, Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?

FRAGMENT TO SILENCE.

SILENCE! O well are Death and Sleep and Thou

Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy

Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy Are swallowed up-yet spare me, Spirit, pity

me,

Until the sounds I hear become my soul,
And it has left these faint and weary limbs,
To track along the lapses of the air
This wandering melody until it rests
Among long mountains in some

FRAGMENT.

THE fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses Track not the steps of him who drinks of it; For the light breezes, which for ever fleet Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.

FRAGMENT.

My head is wild with weeping for a grief
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air, (but no relief

To seek, or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought;-) to wonder that a chief
Among men's spirits should be cold and
blind.

FRAGMENT.

FLOURISHING vine, whose kindling clusters glow

Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;

For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below

The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

SCENE FROM "TASSO."

MADDALO, a Courtier.

MALPIGLIO, a Poet.

PIGNA, a Minister.
ALBANO, an Usher.

MADDALO.

No access to the Duke! You have not said That the Count Maddalo would speak with

him?

PIGNA.

Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna
Waits with state papers for his signature?

MALPIGLIO.

The Lady Leonora cannot know

That I have written a sonnet to her fame,

In which I

Venus and Adonis.

You should not take my gold and serve me

not.

ALBANO.

In truth I told her, and she smiled and said, If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy

66

Art the Adonis whom I love, and he

The Erymanthian boar that wounded him."
O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,

10

Those nods and smiles were favours worth the

zechin.

MALPIGLIO.

The words are twisted in some double sense
That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.

PIGNA.

How are the Duke and Duchess occupied ?