My heart each day desires the morrow,
Sleep itself is turn'd to sorrow,

Vainly would my winter borrow

Sunny leaves from any bough.

Lilies for a bridal bed,

Roses for a matron's head,

Violets for a maiden dead,

Pansies let my flowers be:

On the living grave I bear,

Scatter them without a tear,

Let no friend, however dear,

Waste one hope, one fear for me.

THE PINE FOREST

OF THE CASCINE, NEAR PISA.

EAREST, best and brightest,

Come away,

To the woods and to the fields !

Dearer than this fairest day,

Which like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle in the brake.

The eldest of the hours of spring,

Into the winter wandering,
Looks upon the leafless wood;
And the banks all bare and rude
Found it seems this halcyon morn,
In February's bosom born,
Bending from heaven, in azure mirth,
Kiss'd the cold forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free;

And waked to music all the fountains,
And breathed upon the rigid mountains,
And made the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains.
Image all the roof of leaves,

Where the Pine its garland weaves,

Sapless, grey, and ivy dun

Round stones that never kiss the sun,
To the sandhills of the sea,
Where the earliest violets be.

Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise Memory, and write its praise,
And do thy wonted work and trace
The epitaph of glory fled:
For the Earth hath changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

We wander'd to the Pine Forest

That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the woods, and on the deep,
The smile of Heaven lay.

It seem'd as if the day were one
Sent from beyond the skies,

Which shed to earth above the sun
A light of Paradise.

We paused amid the Pines that stood The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude,
With stems like serpents interlaced.

How calm it was-the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound

The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew,
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.

It seem'd that from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain's waste,
To the bright flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced; -

A spirit interfused around,
A thinking silent life,
To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal Nature's strife.

For still it seem'd the centre of
The magic circle there,

Was one whose being fill'd with love
The breathless atmosphere.

Were not the crocuses that grew

Under that ilex tree,

As beautiful in scent and hue

As ever fed the bee?

We stood beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,

And each seemed like a sky

Gulf'd in a world below;

A purple firmament of light,
Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,
And clearer than the day-

In which the massy forests grew,
As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any waving there.

Like one beloved, the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With that clear truth express'd.

There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green crowd
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Under a speckled cloud.

Sweet views, which in our world above
Can never well be seen,
Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.

And all was interfused beneath

Within an Elysium air,

An atmosphere without a breath,
A silence sleeping there.

Until a wandering wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from my mind's too faithful eye

Blots thy bright image out.

For thou art good and dear and kind,
The forest ever green,

But less of peace in S's mind,

Than calm in waters secn.

February 2, 1822.

TO NIGHT.

WIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,—
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sigh'd for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

And the weary Day turn'd to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sigh'd for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmur'd like a noon-tide bee,

Shall I nestle near thy side?

Wouldst thou me ?—And I replied,
No, not thee !