"

XXXVIII.

My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride! "Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?

"Thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dy'd? "Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest "After so many hours of toil and quest,

"A famish'd pilgrim,—sav'd by miracle.

"Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest

Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well "To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

XXXIX.

"Hark! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land,
"Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
"Arise-arise! the morning is at hand;-
"The bloated wassaillers will never heed:-
"Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
"There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,—
"Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
"Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,

"For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee."

XL.

She hurried at his words, beset with fears,

For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears-
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.—
In all the house was heard no human sound.

A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar ;

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

XLI.

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;
Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;

Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,

With a huge empty flaggon by his side:
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns :

By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:-
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones ;-
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

XLII.

And they are gone: aye, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

POEMS.

[published with Lamia &c., 1820.]

POEMS.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk :
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: