XI.

CALM is the morn, without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only through the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers

That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain,

That sweeps, with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,

To mingle with the bounding main :

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,

If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,

And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

XII.

Lo! as a dove when up she springs,

To bear through Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below

The wild pulsation of her wings;

Like her I go: I cannot stay;

I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away

O'er ocean mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,

And linger weeping on the marge,

And saying, “ Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?"
And circle moaning in the air:
Is this the end? Is this the end?"

And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.

XIII.

TEARS of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these,

Which weep a loss forever new,

A void where heart on heart reposed; And, where warm hands have pressed and closed,

Silence, till I be silent too.

Which weep the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,

A spirit, not a breathing voice.

Come, Time, and teach me many years
I do not suffer in a dream;

For now so strange do these things seem Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

My fancies time to rise on wing,

And glance about the approaching sails, As though they brought but merchants' bales And not the burthen that they bring.

XIV.

Is one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touched the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;

And if along with these should come
The man I held as half divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,

And how my life had droped of late,
And he should sorrow o'er my state,
And marvel what possessed my brain;

And I perceive no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.

XV.

TO-NIGHT the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day;
The last red leaf is whirled away,
The toks are blown about the skies;

The forest cracked, the waters curled,
The cattle huddled on the lea;

And wildly dashed on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world;

And but for fancies, which aver

That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,

I scarce could brock the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,

The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher,

And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

XVI.

WHAT words are these have fallen from me ? Can calm despair and wild unrest

Be tenants of a single breast,

Or sorrow such a changeling be?

Or doth she only seem to take

The touch of change in calm or storm;

But knows no more of transient form

In her deep self, than some dead lake
That holds the shadow of a lark

Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
That strikes by night a craggy shelf,

And staggers blindly ere she sink? And stunned me from my power to think, And all my knowledge of myself;

VOL. II.

2

And made me that delirious man

Whose fancy fuses old and new, And flashes into false and true, And mingles all without a plan?

XVII.

THOU Comest, much wept for; such a breeze
Compelled thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.

For I in spirit saw thee move

Through circles of the bounding sky;
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

Henceforth, wherever thou mayst roam,
My blessing, like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home,

So may whatever tempest mars

Mid-ocean spare thee, sacred bark; And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars.

So kind an office hath been done,

Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see

Till all my widowed race be run.

XVIII.

"TIs well, 'tis something, we may stand Where he in English earth is laid And from his ashes may be made

The violet of his native land.