MUSIC. I PANT for the music which is divine, gasp, Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound, It loosens the serpent which care has bound The dissolving strain, through every vein, As the scent of a violet withered up, Which grew by the brink of a silver lake, When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup, And mist there was none its thirst to slakeAnd the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue As one who drinks from a charmed cup Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine, Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, Invites to love with her kiss divine. ΤΟ WHEN passion's trance is overpast, It were enough to feel, to see And dream the rest-and burn and be The secret food of fires unseen, After the slumber of the year The woodland violets re-appear; And sky and sea; but two, which move, A BRIDAL SONG. THE golden gates of sleep unbar Where strength and beauty, met together, Kindle their image like a star In a sea of glassy weather! Night, with all thy stars look down,- Let eyes not see their own delight;- Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her! O joy! O fear! what will be done A FRAGMENT. THEY were two cousins, almost like two twins, Nature had razed their love-which could not be And so they grew together, like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Which the same hand will gather-the same clime Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The very idol of its portraiture; He faints, dissolved into a sense of love; But thou art as a planet sphered above, Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May Had not brought forth this morn-your wedding-day. GOOD-NIGHT. GOOD-NIGHT? ah! no; the hour is ill Ther it will be good night. How can I call the lone night good, To hearts which near each other move DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. ORPHAN hours, the year is dead, Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep : As an earthquake rocks a corse So White Winter, that rough nurse, As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, Rocks the year:-be calm and mild, January grey is here, Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps-but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. THE ZUCCA.* SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring, Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping. I loved-O no, I mean not one of ye, Or any earthly one, though ye are dear As human heart to human heart may be ; I loved, I know not what-but this low sphere, And all that it contains, contains not thee, Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere, Dim object of my soul's idolatry. By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest, Neither to be contained, delayed, or hidden, Making divine the loftiest and the lowest, When for a moment thou art not forbidden To live within the life which thou bestowest, And leaving noblest things, vacant and chidden, Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight, Blank as the sun after the birth of night. In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common, In music, and the sweet unconscious tone Of animals, and voices which are human, Meant to express some feelings of their own; In the soft motions and rare smile of woman, In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shown, Or dying in the autumn, I the most Adore thee present, or lament thee lost. And thus I went lamenting, when I saw A plant upon the river's margin lie, The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth I bore it to my chamber, and I planted The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted The mitigated influences of air And light revived the plant, and from it grew Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong, Tears pure as Heaven's rain, which fell upon it |