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(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision,-I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee :-tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is :
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES.

'HE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

THE

The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent light:
The breath of the moist air is light
Around its unexpanded buds ;
Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean-floods,

The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple sea-weeds strown;

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:

I sit upon the sands alone;

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content, surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure; Others I see whom these surround

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ;To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament-for I am one

Whom men love not,-and yet regret ;
Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

To

MUSIC, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken;

Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

X

FELICIA HEMANS.

Born 1793. Died 1835.

A BALLAD OF RONCESVALLES.

HOU hast not been with the festal throng

"THOU

At the pouring of the wine,

Men bear not from the hall of song

So dark a mien as thine!

There's blood upon thy shield,

There's dust upon thy plume,

Thou hast brought from some disastrous field That brow of wrath and gloom.'

'And is there blood upon my shield?

Maiden, it well may be!

We have sent the streams from our battle field

All darkened to the sea!

We have given the founts a stain
Midst our woods of ancient pine;
And the ground is wet-but not with rain,
Deep dyed-but not with wine.

'The ground is wet-but not with rain;
We have been in war array,

And the noblest blood of Christian Spain
Hath bathed her soil to-day.

I have seen the strong man die,
And the stripling meet his fate,
Where the mountain winds go sounding by
In the Roncesvalles' Strait.

"In the gloomy Roncesvalles' Strait
There are helms and lances cleft;
And they that moved at morn elate
On a bed of heath are left!

There's many a fair young face
Which the war-steed hath gone o'er;
At many a board there is kept a place
For those that come no more!'

'Alas for love, for woman's breast,

If woe like this must be!

Hast thou seen a youth with an eagle crest
And a white plume waving free?

With his proud quick-flashing eye,

And his mien of kingly state,

Doth he come from where the swords flashed high

In the Roncesvalles' Strait?'

'In the gloomy Roncesvalles' Strait
I saw, and marked him well;
For nobly on his steed he sate
When the pride of manhood fell.
But it is not youth that turns
From the field of spears again;
For the boy's high heart too wildly burns
Till it rests among the slain.'

'Thou canst not say that he lies low,
The lovely and the brave?

Oh none could look on his joyous brow
And think upon his grave!

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