Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all the roof of leaves,

Where the Pine its garland weaves,

Sapless, grey, and ivy dun

Round stones that never kiss the sun,

To the sandhills of the sea,

Where the earliest violets be.

Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise Memory, and write its praise,
And do thy wonted work and trace
The epitaph of glory fled:
For the Earth hath changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lighest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,

The clouds were gone to play,

And on the woods, and on the deep,

The smile of Heaven lay.

It seemed as if the day were one
Sent from beyond the skies,

Which shed to earth above the sun
A light of Paradise.

We paused amid the Pines that stood The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude, With stems like serpents interlaced.

How calm it was-the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound

The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew, With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew.

It seemed that from the remotest seat Of the white mountain's waste,

To the bright flower beneath our feet, A magic circle traced;—

A spirit interfused around,
A thinking silent life,
To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal Nature's strife.

For still it seemed the centre of

The magic circle there,

Was one whose being filled with love

The breathless atmosphere.

Were not the crocusses that grew
Under that ilex tree,

As beautiful in scent and hue
As ever fed the bee?

We stood beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,
And each seemed like a sky
Gulphed in a world below;-

A purple firmament of light,
Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,
And clearer than the day-

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any waving there.

Like one beloved, the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With that clear truth expressed.

There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn, And through the dark green crowd

The white sun twinkling like the dawn

Under a speckled cloud.

Sweet views, which in our world above

Can never well be seen,

Were imaged by the water's love

Of that fair forest green.

And all was interfused beneath

Within an Elysium air,

An atmosphere without a breath,
A silence sleeping there.

Until a wandering wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from my mind's too faithful eye
Blots thy bright image out.

For thou art good and dear and kind,

The forest ever green,

But less of peace in S's mind,

Than calm in waters seen.

February 2, 1822.

TO NIGHT.

Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,—
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,

Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes

of day,

Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,

Touching all with thine opiate wand—

Come, long sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

And the weary Day turned to his rest,

Lingering like an unloved guest,

I sighed for thee.