I dare not

guess; but in this life

Of error, ignorance and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant, if one considers it,

To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:

'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed! not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

A VISION OF THE SEA.

'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale: From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,

And when lightning is loosed like a deluge from

heaven,

She sees the black trunks of the water-spouts spin, And bend, as if heaven was ruining in,

Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible

mass

As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,

And the waves and the thunders, made silent around,

Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed

Through the low trailing rack of the tempest, is lost In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the

sweep

Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the
gale,

Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,
With splendour and terror the black ship environ;
Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of
pale fire,

In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire
The pyramid-billows, with white points of brine,
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea.

The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a

tree,

While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast

Of the whirlwind that stript it of branches has

past.

The intense thunder-balls which are raining from

heaven

Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and

riven.

The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk

On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,

Like a corpse on the clay which is hung'ring to

fold

Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the

hold,

One deck is burst up from the waters below,

And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes

blow

O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the

other?

Is that all the crew that lie burying each

other,

Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those

Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold (What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold)

Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like

a crank,

The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank?

Are these all?

Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain

On the windless expanse of the watery plain, Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at

noon,

And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the

moon,

Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the

deep,

Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep

Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,

O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn, With their hammocks for coffins the seamen

aghast

Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades

cast

Down the deep, which closed on them above and

around,

And the sharks and the dog-fish their graveclothes unbound,

And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down

From God on their wilderness.

One after one

The mariners died; on the eve of this day,

When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array, But seven remained. Six the thunder had

smitten,

And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written

His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from

the deck

An oak splinter pierced through his breast and his back,

And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck.

No more?

At the helm sits a woman more fair Than heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided

hair,

It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea. She clasps a bright child on her up-gathered knee, It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder

Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder

It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near, It would play with those eyes where the radiance

of fear

Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye;
Whilst its mother's is lustreless.
"Smile not, my

child,

But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled