And, like loveliness panting with wild desire
While it trembles with fear and delight,
Hesperus flies from awakening night,
And pants in its beauty and speed with light
Fast flashing, soft, and bright.

Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!
Guide us far, far away,

To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day
Thou art hidden

From waves on which weary noon,

Faints in her summer swoon,

Between Kingless continents sinless as Eden,

Around mountains and islands inviolably

Prankt on the sapphire sea.

FINAL CHORUS FROM HELLAS.

THE world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn:

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Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,

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Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains

From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls his fountains

Against the morning-star.

Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,

Fraught with a later prize;

IO

Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more.
Calypso for his native shore.

O, write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's scroll must be !
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler Sphinx renew

Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,

The splendour of its prime;

And leave, if naught so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose

Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.

O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn

Of bitter prophecy.

The world is weary of the past,

O might it die or rest at last!

TO EDWARD WILLIAMS.

I.

THE serpent is shut out from paradise.

The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:

The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
Like that from which its mate with feignèd sighs
Fled in the April hour.

I too must seldom seek again Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

II.

Of hatred I am proud, with scorn content;
Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown
Itself indifferent.

But, not to speak of love, pity alone

Can break a spirit already more than bent.
The miserable one

Turns the mind's poison into food,

Its medicine is tears, its evil good.

III.

Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,

Dear friends, dear friend! know that I only fly
Your looks, because they stir

Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die :

The very comfort that they minister

I scarce can bear, yet I,

So deeply is the arrow gone,

Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.

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IV.

When I return to my cold home, you ask

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Why I am not as I have ever been.

You spoil me for the task

Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene, Of wearing on my brow the idle mask

Of author, great or mean,

In the world's carnival. I sought Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.

V.

Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot

With various flowers, and every one still said,

"She loves me

loves me not."

And if this meant a vision long since fled

If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought-
If it meant, but I dread

To speak what you may know too well :

Still there was truth in the sad oracle.

VI.

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home;
No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,
When it no more would roam;

The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast
Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam,

And thus at length find rest.

Doubtless there is a place of peace

Where my weak heart and all its throbs will cease.

VII.

I asked her, yesterday, if she believed

That I had resolution. One who had

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Would ne'er have thus relieved

His heart with words, — but what his judgment bade

Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.

These verses are too sad

To send to you, but that I know, Happy yourself, you feel another's woe.

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