XIV.

It might be months, or years, or days,

I kept no count—I took no note, I had no hope my eyes to raise,

And clear them of their dreary mote; At last men came to set me free,

I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where,

It was at length the same to me,

Fettered or fetterless to be,

I learn'd to love despair.

And thus when they appear'd at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,

These heavy walls to me had

grown

A hermitage-and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come

To tear me from a second home:

With spiders I had friendship made,

And watch'd them in their sullen trade,

370

380

Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,

And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill-yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell-
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends

To make us what we are:-even I

Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.

390

SONNET.

ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and de Staël

5 Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore, Thy shore of names like these, wert thou no more, Their memory thy remembrance would recall:

To them thy banks were lovely as to all,

But they have made them lovelier, for the lore

Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core

Of human hearts the ruin of a wall

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,

In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea,

The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal,
Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

STANZAS TO

I.

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me,

And the love which my spirit hath painted

It never hath found but in thee.