And noble arch in proud decay,

Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers; But one thing want these banks of Rhine,Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!

I send the lilies given to me :

Though long before thy hand they touch I know that they must withered be, But yet reject them not as such; For I have cherished them as dear,

Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
And know'st them gathered by the Rhine,
And offered from my heart to thine!

The river nobly foams and flows,
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose

Some fresher beauty varying round:
The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;
Nor could on earth a spot be found
To nature and to me so dear,
Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine?

BYRON.

ON THE RHINE.

T WAS morn, and beautiful the mountain's

THE GREAT ST. BERNARD.

NIGHT was again descending, when my mule, That all day long had climbed among the clouds, Higher and higher still, as by a stair

Let down from heaven itself, transporting me,
Stopped, to the joy of both, at that low door
So near the summit of the Great St. Bernard;

That door which ever on its hinges moved
To them that knocked, and nightly sends abroad
Ministering spirits. Lying on the watch,
Two dogs of grave demeanor welcomed me,
All meekness, gentleness, though large of limb;
And a lay-brother of the Hospital,

Who, as we toiled below, had heard by fits
The distant echoes gaining on his ear,
Came and held fast my stirrup in his hand,
While I alighted.

On the same rock beside it stood the church,
Reft of its cross, not of its sanctity;
The vesper-bell, for 't was the vesper-hour,
Duly proclaiming through the wilderness,
"All ye who hear, whatever be your work,
Stop for an instant, move your lips in prayer!"
And just beneath it, in that dreary dale,

If dale it might be called so near to heaven,
A little lake, where never fish leaped up,
Lay like a spot of ink amid the snow;
A star, the only one in that small sky,

On its dead surface glimmering. 'Twas a scene
Resembling nothing I had left behind,

As though all worldly ties were now dissolved;
And to incline the mind still more to thought,
To thought and sadness, on the eastern shore
Under a beetling cliff stood half in shadow
A lonely chapel destined for the dead,
For such as, having wandered from their way,
Had perished miserably. Side by side,
Within they lie, a mournful company

All in their shrouds, no earth to cover them;
Their features full of life, yet motionless
In the broad day, nor soon to suffer change,
Though the barred windows, barred against the
wolf,

We wandered to the pine forest

That skirts the ocean's foam;
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep

The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,

And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own:

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be.

How calm it was! the silence there

By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness ;

The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,
A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife ;-
And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there

Was one fair Form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seemed as 't were a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night And purer than the day,

In which the lovely forests grew

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighboring lawn,

And through the dark green wood The white sun twinkling like the dawn Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above

Can never well be seen

Were imaged by the water's love

Of that fair forest green :
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.

Like one beloved, the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With more than truth exprest; Until an envious wind crept by, Like an unwelcome thought

Which from the mind's too faithful eye

Blots one dear image out.

Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,

Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind
Than calm in waters seen!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

TO THE WEST-WIND.

ing,

Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion c'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill :
Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and

ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay
Luiled by the coil of his crystalline streams
Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble, and despoil themselves: O hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless and swift and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is :
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

II.

Motionless waifs of ruined towers,

Soundless breakers of desolate land! The sullen surf of the mist devours That mountain-range upon either hand, Eaten away from its outline grand.

III.

And over the dumb campagna-sea

On, and say nothing, - for a word, a breath, Stirring the air, may loosen and bring down A winter's snow, - enough to overwhelm

The Christ walks!- Ay, but Peter's neck Is stiff to turn on the foundering deck.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

VIEW FROM THE EUGANEAN HILLS,
NORTH ITALY.

MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on

Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track;
Whilst above, the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail and cord and plank
Till the ship has almost drank

Death from the o'er-brimming deep;
And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;
And the dim low line before
Of a dark and distant shore
Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will,
But no power to seek or shun,
He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave,
To the haven of the grave.

Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide agony :
To such a one this morn was led
My bark, by soft winds piloted.
- Mid the mountains Euganean

I stood listening to the pean
With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun's uprise majestical:

Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Through the dewy mist they soar

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
Flecked with fire and azure, lie

In the unfathomable sky,

So their plumes of purple grain