ON SITTING DOWN TO READ “KING LEAR"

ONCE AGAIN

GOLDEN-TONGUED Romance with serene lute! Fair plumed Siren! Queen! if far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden volume, and be mute. Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute, Betwixt Hell torment and impassion'd clay, Must I burn through; once more assay The bitter sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. Chief Poet and ye clouds of Albion,

Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When I am through the old oak forest gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,

But when I am consumed with the Fire,
Give me new Phoenix-wings to fly at my desire.

THEN I have fears that I may cease to be

WHE

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain Before high-piled books, in charact❜ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain ; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love !-then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

ANSWER TO A SONNET BY J. H. REYNOLDS,

ENDING

"Dark eyes are dearer far

Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell"

LUE! 'Tis the life of heaven, -the domain

BLUE!

Of Cynthia,-the wide palace of the sun,The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,—

The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters-ocean

And all its vassal streams: pools numberless
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness.
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,

Married to green in all the sweetest flowers-
Forget-me-not, the blue-bell,-and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate !

SON

TO THE NILE

ON of the old moon-mountains African!
Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile !
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

Those men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan? O may dark fancies err! They surely do; 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste

Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew

Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

STAND

TO HOMER

TANDING aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

So thou wast blind !-but then the veil was rent,

For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spermy tent,
And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Ay, on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green;
There is a budding morrow in midnight;

There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell

WRITTEN IN BURNS' COTTAGE

"HIS mortal body of a thousand days

THIS

Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room, Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,

Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom! My pulse is warm with thine own Barley-bree,

My head is light with pledging a great soul, My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,

Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,

Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er,-
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind,—
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name,-
O smile among the shades, for this is fame!

SONNET ON AILSA ROCK

EARKEN, thou craggy ocean-pyramid,

HE

Give answer by thy voice-the sea-fowls' screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When from the sun was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is't since the mighty Power bid

Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams—
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams-
Or when gray clouds are thy cold coverlid?
Thou answer'st not; for thou art dead asleep.
Thy life is but two dead eternities,

The last in air, the former in the deep!

First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies! Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant-size!

RE

BEN NEVIS

O EAD me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!

I look into the chasms, and a shroud

Vaporous doth hide them,-just so much I wist Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,

And there is sullen mist,-even so much Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread Before the earth, beneath me,-even such, Even so vague is man's sight of himself!

Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,—
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,

I tread on them,—that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag, not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and mental might!

TO J. H. REYNOLDS

THAT a week could be an age, and we Felt parting and warm meeting every week, Then one poor year a thousand years would be, The flush of welcome ever on the cheek: So could we live long life in little space, So time itself would be annihilate, So a day's journey in oblivious haze

To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate. O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!

To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!
In little time a host of joys to bind,

And keep our souls in one eternal pant !
This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught
Me how to harbour such a happy thought.

ΤΟ

~IME'S sea hath been five years at its slow ebb;

TIME

Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand;

Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web,

And snared by the ungloving of thine hand, And yet I never look on midnight sky,

But I behold thine eyes' well memoried light;

I cannot look upon the rose's dye,

But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight; I cannot look on any budding flower,

But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips,

And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour

Its sweets in the wrong sense :-Thou dost eclipse

Every delight with sweet remembering,

And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.