And frowns and fears from Thee, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be This City of thy worship, ever free! AUTUMN: A DIRGE. THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, In your saddest array; Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Of the. dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. DEATH. DEATH is here, and death is there, All around, within, beneath, Death has set his mark and seal First our pleasures die-and then Our hopes, and then our fears-and when All things that we love and cherish, LIBERTY. THE fiery mountains answer each other; When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. From a single cloud the lightning flashes, An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound Is bellowing underground. But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp. From billow and mountain and exhalation THE WORLD'S WANDERERS. TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light In what cavern of the night Will thy pinions close now? Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray Weary wind, who wanderest THE TOWER OF FAMINE.* AMID the desolation of a city, Which was the cradle, and is now the grave, Agitates the light flame of their hours, Until its vital oil is spent or spilt: There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof, Are by its presence dimmed-they stand aloof, Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror SUMMER AND WINTER. Ir was a bright and cheerful afternoon, * At Pisa there still exists the prison of Ugolino, which got by the name of La Torre della Fame:" in the adjoining building the galley-slaves are confined. It is situated near the Ponte al Mare on the Arno. When the north wind congregates in crowds All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds, It was a winter such as when birds die Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes AN ALLEGORY. A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant Stands yawning on the highway of the life Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt; Around it rages an unceasing strife Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt And many passed it by with careless tread, Tracks every traveller even to where the dead Wait peacefully for their companion new; But others, by more curious humour led, Pause to examine,-these are very few, And they learn little there, except to know That shadows follow them where'er they go. |