And lustres, never dimmed by tears,

Were not misnamed from lustrous years.

Alas! that such a tale must seem
The fiction of a dreaming dream!—
Is it but fable?-Eas that age
Shone only on the poet's page,

Where earth, a luminous sphere portrayed,
Revolves not both in sun and shade
No!-happy love, too seldom known,
May make it for a while our own.

V.

Yes, although fleeting rapidly,
It sometimes may be ours,

And he was gladsome as the bee*
Which always sleeps in flowers.

Might this endure ?-her husband came
At an untimely tide,

But ere his tongue pronounced her shame
Slain suddenly, he died.

'Twas whispered by whose hand he fell,
And Rodolph's prosperous loves were gone.
The lady sought a convent-cell,
And lived in penitence alone;
Thrice blest, that she the waves among
Of ebbing pleasure staid not long,
To watch the sullen tide, and find
The hideous shapings left behind.
Such, sinking to its slimy bed,
Old Nile upon the antique land,
Where Time's inviolate temples stand,t
Hath ne'er deposited.

Happy, the monster of that Nile,

The vast and vigorous crocodile ;
Happy, because his dying day
Is unpreceded by decay:
We perish slowly-loss of breath
Only completes our piece-meal death.

VI.

She ceased to smile back on the sun,
Their task the Destinies had done;

And earth, which gave, resumed the charms,

Whose freshness withered in its arms:

But never walked upon its face,

Nor mouldered in its dull embrace,

A creature fitter to prepare

Sorrow, or social joy to share:

When her the latter life required,
A vital harmony expired;
And in that melancholy hour,
Nature displayed its saddest power,
Subtracting from man's darkened eye
Beauties that seemed unmeant to die,
And claiming deeper sympathy
Than even when the wise or brave
Descend into an early grave.
We grieve when morning puts to flight
The pleasant visions of the night;
And surely we shall have good leave,
When a fair woman dies, to grieve.
Whither have fled that shape, and gleam
Of thought-the woman, and the dream ?—

Whither have fled that inner light,
And benefactress of our sight ?—
Nothing in answer aught can show,
Only thus much of each we know-
The dream may visit us again,
She left for aye the sons of men!-
Death may in part discharge its debt.
Half render back its trust-

Life may redeem her likeness yet,
Reanimate her dust;

But both will bear another name,
Nor, like the dream, appear the same.

VII.

While Hope attends her sacred fire,

All joy rejoices in its pyre :

Once quenched, what ray the flame renews!
What but calamity ensues?

When ill-report disgraced his name,
And turned to infamy his fame,
Bearing from home his blighted prime,
He journeyed to some distant clime,
Where babbling rumour could not trace
His footsteps to a resting-place.
Meanwhile, the quest of happiness
He made, despairing of success;
Unhoped, but not pursued the less,
It urged around the world its flight
Away from him, like day from night.
There are, who deem of misery

As if it ever craved to die:

They err; the full of soul regard,

More than the calm, their graves with hate;

The loss of such a life is hard,

And, ending their eventful fate,

From so much into nothing must

The change be pain-from this to dust!

To fill the chasms of the breast,
'Tis happiness they seek, not rest,
Wishing for something to amend
Existence, they must shun its end;
And this the princely will betrays
To many sufferings and days.

VIII.

As sunk, avoiding mortal touch,
The Cabalist's discovered treasure,
So met his sight, escaped his clutch,
Many appearances of pleasure,
Deceitful as that airy lie,

The child of vapour and the sky,*

Which cheats the thirsty Arab's eye,

Only the palm, heat-loving tree,
Or bird of happy Araby,
May burn, and not to die:
Philosophy has lost the powert
From ashes to reform a flower;
Magic and alchymy no more

Men's primal strength and youth restore,
Nor could those great and dream-like arts,
While flourishing, revoke their hearts:
The feelings rise regenerate never,
But, once consumed, are gone forever.

RODOLPH,

PART II.

1.

How feels the guiltless dreamer, who
With idly curious gaze

Has let his mind's glance wander through

The relics of past days?—

As feels the pilgrim that has scanned,

Within their skirting wall,

The moonlit marbles of some grand

Disburied capital;

Masses of whiteness and of g.wm,

The darkly bright remains

Of desolate palace, empty tomb,
And desecrated fanes :-

For in the ruins of old hours,
Remembrance haply sees
Temples, and tombs, and palaces,
Not different from these.

What though are of another age
Omens, and Sybil's boding page?—
Augurs and oracles resign

Their voices-fear can still divine:
Dreams and hand-writings on the wall
Need not foretell our fortune's fall;
Domitian in his galleries,*

The soul all hostile advents sees,

As in the mirror-stone;

Like shadows by a brilliant day
Cast down from falcons on their prey;
Or watery demons, in strong light,
By haunted waves of fountains old,
Shown indistinctly to the sight

Of the inquisitive and bold.
The mind is capable to show
Thoughts of so dim a feature,
That consciousness can only know
Their presence, not their nature;

Things which, like fleeting insect-mothers,
Supply recording life to others,
And forthwith lose their own.

In the calm scene he viewed was aught
That might disturb a froward thought?
He saw, new-married to the air,
The tranquil, waveless deep,
Reposing in a might as fair

As woman's softest sleep:
Peaceful and silent, were met all
The elements in festival,
And the wide universe seemed to be
One clear obscure transparency.
Could such a quiet Fancy wake?
And doth she from her slumbers break,
As drowsy mortals often will,
When lamps go out, or clocks fall still?
No less than when the Wind-god's breath
Blackens the wilderness beneath,
Until contrasted stars blaze bright
With their own proper heavenly light,
And almost make the gazer sigh,
For our unseen mythology.
Motion or rest, a sound, a glance,
Alike rouse memory from its trance.

IV.

Perhaps, presentiment of ill

Might shake him-hearts are prophets stil What though the fount of Castaly

Not now stains leaves with prophecy?

He backed his steed, and took his way
Where a large cemetery lay,
Beaming beneath the star-light gay,
A white spot in the greenery,
Semblant of what it well might be-
A blossom unto which the earth
As a spring-favour yielded birth.
They looked for his return in vain,
Homeward he never rode again.
What boots it to protract the verse,
In which his story I rehearse?
He had won safely through the past,
The growing sickness smote at last :
His vassals found him on the morn,
Senseless beside his lady's urn;
And they beheld with wonderment
His visage-like a bow unbent,
From the distorting mind unstrung,
By painful thought no longer wrung,
It offered once more to their gaze
The cheerful mien of former days,
And on it the fix'd smile had place,
Which lights the Memnon's marble face.

VI.

Hot fever raged in Rodolph's brain,
Till tortured reason fled,
And madness a delirious reign
Asserted in its stead;

And then he raved of many trimes,
Achieved in shadows of all climes;
Of Indian islands, tropic seas,
Ships winged before the flying breeze
Of peace, of war, of wine, of blood,
Of love, and hate, of changing mood,

Or changing scenery;

And often on his language hung
The accents of an alien tongue,
But still they circled one dark deed,
As charmed men that magic weed,

* Vide Suetonius.

66

Thy face revives the face of one,

"That loved in other days

"Of whom or thought or speech was none "Less passionate than praise:

"So much she beautified the place

Replete with her in time and space. "Thy face revives the face of one, "That died in other days

"Who bought, not borrowed, from the sun "Its scarcely needed rays;

"And thousand charms could not concur "To make thee fair,-yet unlike her. "It is herself!--the gods in pity "Restore her from the silent city!— "Now, where are they, that falsely said, "Her form in stirless dust was laid? "Who reared the lying pyramid, "Whose epitaph, and lamp, and flame,

"L'Herbe Maudite."

"Told that her heavenward hone lay hid

"In its sky-pointing frame?
"She is not dead-behold her eye,
"That portion of a summer sky:
"She is not dead-her checks are rife
"With rosy clouds of blooming life:
"She is not dead-the shining hair
"Is wreathed about her forehead fair,
"As when I saw in better hours
"Her gentle shape of living mirth,
"And trod with her upon all flowers
"Worn by the festive earth.
"Time interposed-it was not Death,
"He could not stop her spicy breath-

66 But hearts and hands have met once more "We will be happy as before;

"And my crime-sullied memory

"Like a rewritten code* shall be,

“If, memory, on thy silent shore "The stream of time hath left "Some broken hopes, plans quick no more,

"And thoughts of breath bereft ;

"The strong belief in happiness,

"It could but half destroy;

"The now dead generous carelessness,

"That hung around the boy;

"And feelings which the subtile wave

"Bore not through later years

"Such wrecks the smiles of wisdom crave

"Not less than passion's tears.—

"But thou, the sweetest of Eve's daughters, "Geniust of that shore, and those waters!"A music visible, a light

"Like lamps unto an infant's sight!—

"A temple of celestial soul,

"Too lovely for aught ill to mar,

"Nor will my limbs avail to ear "My feeble, sickly body, where "Thou standest moveless by. "I feel a weary wish to close "Mine eyelids in a long repose; "But fear that thou wilt fly, "And let me wake alone to sigh "That one so beautiful could die !

XII.

"Author of my unhappiness!

"Let me thy lip and small hand press.
"Since love increases when the day
"Its object's presence makes is done,
"And takes from night a warmer ray,
"As did the Fountain of the Sun,*
"Thine, so long absent, should forgive
"The death of one I slew for thee-
"Resentment cannot bid him live,
"Pardon perchance may me.
"Obdurate Lady, even thine eye
"To my fond prayer makes no reply;
"And hast thou come then from afar,
"A coldly reappearing star?-
"Thou never lov'dst:-thy constancy
"Would answer else aright to mine:
"In one so lovely, love must be

"Preserved still fresh, like grapes in wine.

"Can dream one hope to meet again.

66

'She lies amid the sluggish mould, "Her ardent heart has long been cold: "Above it wave the idle weeds, "On it the sordid earth-worm feeds. "Mine too is buried there-her knell "Served also for its passing bell;

"It died—and would have known 'twas time "Without that melancholy chime. "That knell !—I feel its strokes again, "Like stunning blows upon my brain "I listen yet the dissonant laughter "Of the same bell, some moments after; "And now the frequent ding-dong hear, "With which it mimics hope and fear.