Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres;

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, 20 Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around;

And, mingling with the still night and mute sky,
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

25

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human
sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. 30 September, 1815.

LINES

THE cold earth slept below,

Above the cold sky shone;

And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow

The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black,

The green grass was not seen,

The birds did rest

On the bare thorn's breast,

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10

Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;

As a fen-fire's beam

On a sluggish stream

Gleams dimly

so the moon shone there,

15

And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, belovéd;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed

On thy dear head

Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie

Where the bitter breath of the naked sky

Might visit thee at will.

November, 1815.

THE SUNSET

21

25

THERE late was One, within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath 5
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field,
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,
But to the west was open to the sky.

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15

There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, And the old dandelion's hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown massy woods - and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead. 20 "Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, "I never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me."

That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep-but when the morning came 25
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on
- in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her agéd father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 't is to be unlike the world.

30

For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;

36

Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so pale;
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering

veins

And weak articulations might be seen.

Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vexed ghost inhabits night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

40

"Inheritor of more than earth can give,
Passionless calm, and silence unreproved,
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were - Peace!"
This was the only moan she ever made.

1816.

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50

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY

THE awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain

shower,

It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

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10

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? 15 Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? Ask why the sunlight not for ever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth

21

Such gloom; why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope.

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given;

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavour :

Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to

sever,

From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night wind sent

Through strings of some still instrument,

Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

30

35

40

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame;

Depart not as thy shadow came!

Depart not, lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality!

45

While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 51