MUTABILITY.

WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!-yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever;

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest-A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

ON DEATH.

There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.-ECCLESIASTES.

THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile

Which the meteor beam of a starless night

Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,

Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,

Is the flame of life so fickle and wan

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul

Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way.
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,

This world is the mother of all we feel,

And the coming of death is a fearful blow,

To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel; When all that we know, or feel, or see,

Shall pass like an unreal mystery.

The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,

Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be

With the fears and the love for that which we see?

ΤΟ

ΔΑΚΡΥΕΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΠΟΤΜΟΝ ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ.

OH! there are spirits in the air,

And genii of the evening breeze,

And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

As star-beams among twilight trees :

Such lovely ministers to meet

Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And mountain seas, that are the voice

Of these inexplicable things,

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice

When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes

Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth;-tame sacrifice

To a fond faith! still dost thou pine?
Still dost thou hope that ungreeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth's inconstancy?

Did thine own mind afford no scope
Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?

That natural scenes or human smiles

Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted; The glory of the moon is dead;

Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed;

Thine own soul still is true to thee,

But changed to a foul fiend through misery.

This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase;-the mad endeavour
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.

Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.

TO WORDSWORTH.

POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return;

Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine,
Which thou too feel'st; yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar :
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,-
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

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,

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

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
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.

STANZAS.-APRIL, 1814.

AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,

Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even : Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!

Tempt not with one last glance thy friend's ungentle mood: Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;

Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head,

The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,

Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.

The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose,

For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep; Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;

Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves hath its appointed sleep. Thou in the grave shalt rest-yet till the phantoms flee

Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,

Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings, are not free

From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile.

FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.

I HATED thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan

To think that a most unambitious slave,

Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne
Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer
A frail and bloody pomp, which time has swept
In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre,
For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear and Lust,
And stifled thee, their minister. I know

Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than force or fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time.

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816.

THE SUNSET.

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
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.
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