They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

Thou too, aerial Pile! whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,

And mingling with the still night and mute sky

Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild

And terrorless as this serenest night :

Here could I hope, like some enquiring child

Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

TO WORDSWORTH.

POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel.

One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar :
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, -
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

THE DÆMON OF THE WORLD.

How wonderful is Death,

Death and his brother Sleep!

One pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon,
With lips of lurid blue,

The other glowing like the vital morn,
When throned on ocean's wave

It breathes over the world:

Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!

Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,
To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne
Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,
Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart, whose azure veins
Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,
Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed
In light of some sublimest mind, decay?

Nor putrefaction's breath Leave aught of this pure spectacle

But loathsomeness and ruin ?—

Spare aught but a dark theme,

On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers
Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near he
To watch their own repose?

Will they, when morning's beam

Flows through those wells of light,

Seek far from noise and day some western cav Where woods and streams with soft and paus

A lulling murmur weave?

Ianthe doth not sleep

The dreamless sleep of death:
Nor in her moonlight chamber silently
Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,
Or mark her delicate cheek

With interchange of hues mock the broad mo
Outwatching weary night,

Without assured reward.

Her dewy eyes are closed;

On their translucent lids, whose texture fine Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn belo With unapparent fire,

The baby Sleep is pillowed:

Her golden tresses shade

The bosom's stainless pride,

Twining like tendrils of the parasite
Around a marble column.

Hark! whence that rushing sound?

'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps

Around a lonely ruin

When west winds sigh and evening waves respond In whispers from the shore :

'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes

Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves
The genii of the breezes sweep.

Floating on waves of music and of light
The chariot of the Dæmon of the World
Descends in silent power:

Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud
That catches but the palest tinge of day

When evening yields to night,

Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue
Its transitory robe.

Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful
Draw that strange car of glory, reins of light
Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold
Their wings of braided air: