Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance
Pale in the open moonshine; but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the Milky-way.
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,

Rude, but made sweet by distance;—and a bird
Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour;-and then all is still :-
Now Italy or London, which you will!

Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
And all the dreams which our tormentors are.
O that Hunt and
were there,
With every thing belonging to them fair!-
We will have books; Spanish, Italian, Greek,
And ask one week to make another week
As like his father as I'm unlike mine.

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,―
Feasting on which we will philosophize,

And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk ;-what shall we talk about?
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant; as to nerves-
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me,-when you are with me there.
And they shall never more sip laudanum
From Helicon or Himeros ;*-well, come,

Iuepos, from which the River Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonyme of Love.

And in spite of * * * and of the devil,
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time;-till buds and flowers
Warn the obscure inevitable hours

Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew :-
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

TO MARY,

ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST.

I.

How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten,

(For vipers kill, though dead,) by some review, That you condemn these verses I have written, Because they tell no story, false or true!

What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,

May it not leap and play as grown cats do, Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time, Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

II.

What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,

Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When day shall hide within her twilight pinions,
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

III.

To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,

Whose date should have been longer than a day,

And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame,
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way→→
And that is dead.-O, let me not believe
That any thing of mine is fit to live!

IV.

Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears

Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres

Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well

May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.

V.

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons-but she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three
days

In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre

She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays, Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

Like King Lear's "looped and windowed ragged

ness."

VI.

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow,
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow :

A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;

In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello,

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate Can shrive you of that sin,—if sin there be In love, when it becomes idolatry.

THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

I.

BEFORE those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth

The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain
Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

II.

Her mother was one of the Atlantides;

The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden

In the warm shadow of her loveliness;—

He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden

The chamber of gray rock in which she lay-
She, in that dream of joy,

III.

dissolved away.

'Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour,
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it;

And then into a meteor, such as caper

On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit;

Then, into one of those mysterious stars

Which hide themselves between the Earth and

Mars.

IV.

Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent

Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden

With that bright sign the billows to indent

The sea-deserted sand: like children chidden, At her command they ever came and went:Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden, Took shape and motion: with the living form Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.

V.

A lovely lady garmented in light

From her own beauty-deep her eyes, as are Two openings of unfathomable night

Seen through a tempest's cloven roof;-her hair Dark-the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,

Picturing her form;-her soft smiles shone afar, And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new.

VI.

And first the spotted camelopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame

Of his own volumes intervolved;-all gaunt And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame. They drank before her at her sacred fount: And every beast of beating heart grew bold, Such gentleness and power even to behold.

VII.

The brinded lioness led forth her young,

That she might teach them how they should forego Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung His sinews at her feet, and sought to know, With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue, How he might be as gentle as the doe. The magic circle of her voice and eyes All savage natures did imparadise.

VIII.

And old Silenus, shaking a green stick

Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew