Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest While the meek blest sit smiling; if guess Despair Whence thou didst come, and whither And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror thou must go, And all that never yet was known Hunts through the world the homeless would know Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press, With such swift feet life's green and Seeking, alike from happiness and woe, Hope to inherit in the grave below? LINES TO A REVIEWER steps of Error, Are the true secrets of the commonweal Bloodier than is revenge Then send the priests to every hearth and home To preach the burning wrath which is to come, In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw The frozen tears . . . ALAS, good friend, what profit can you If Satire's scourge could wake the slum IF gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains, wave, bering hounds Of Conscience, or wounds, erase the deeper What Southey is and was, would not exclaim, The strokes of the inexorable scourge And from the mirror of Truth's sunlike From which his Parthian arrow past, Until his mind's eye paint thereon-Let scorn like yawn below, Seen through the caverns of the shadowy And rain on him like flakes of fiery Hurling the damned into the murky This cannot be, it ought not, evil still air Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow ill. Rough words beget sad thoughts, and, beside, Men take a sullen and a stupid pride In being all they hate in others' shame, By a perverse antipathy of fame. "Tis not worth while to prove, as I could, how From the sweet fountains of our Nature flow These bitter waters; I will only say, If any friend would take Southey some day, And tell him, in a country walk alone, Softening harsh words with friendship's gentle tone, How incorrect his public conduct is, And what men think of it, 'twere not amiss. Far better than to make innocent ink GOOD NIGHT I GOOD night? ah! no; the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite; Let us remain together still, Then it will be good night. II How can I call the lone night good, Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight? Be it not said, thought, understood- III To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light, The night is good; because, my love, They never say good night. Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace. On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill Methought he rashly cast away his harp There is a cave, from which there eddies When he had lost Eurydice. up A pale mist, like aërial gossamer, Whose breath destroys all life-awhile it veils Awhile he paused. As a poor hunted stag press on A moment shudders on the fearful brink The rock-then, scattered by the wind, Of a swift stream-the cruel hounds it flies Along the stream, or lingers on the With deafening yell, the arrows glance clefts, and wound,Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide | He plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and there. torn Upon the beetling edge of that dark By the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief, Mænad-like waved his lyre in the bright rock There stands a group of cypresses; not such As, with a graceful spire and stirring life, Pierce the pure heaven of your native vale, Whose branches the air plays among, but not Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn grace; But blasted and all wearily they stand, One to another clinging; their weak boughs Sigh as the wind buffets them, and they shake Beneath its blasts- -a weatherbeaten He gently sang of high and heavenly themes. As in a brook, fretted with little waves, A many-sided mirror for the sun, Chorus. What wondrous sound is Ceaseless and pauseless, ever clear and crew! that, mournful and faint, wind fresh, joy But more melodious than the murmuring So flowed his song, reflecting the deep Which through the columns of a temple And tender love that fed those sweetest glides? notes, A. It is the wandering voice of The heavenly offspring of ambrosial food. But that is past. Returning from drear Hell, Orpheus' lyre, Borne by the winds, who sigh that their rude king Hurries them fast from these air-feeding notes; But in their speed they bear along with them The waning sound, scattering it like dew He chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone, Blackened with lichens, on a herbless plain. Then from the deep and overflowing spring Of his eternal ever-moving grief There rose to Heaven a sound of angry Or I must borrow from her perfect Thus the tempestuous torrent of his grief And blackthorn bushes with their infant Is clothed in sweetest sounds and varying words race Of blushing rose blooms; beeches, to lovers dear, And weeping willow trees; all swift or slow, As their huge boughs or lighter dress permit, Have circled in his throne, and Earth herself Has sent from her maternal breast a growth Of starlike flowers and herbs of odour sweet, To pave the temple that his poesy Has framed, while near his feet grim lions couch, And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair. Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound. The birds are silent, hanging down their heads, Perched on the lowest branches of the trees; Not even the nightingale intrudes a note In rivalry, but all entranced she listens. FIORDISPINA THE season was the childhood of sweet June, Whose sunny hours from morning until noon Went creeping through the day with Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers Which she had from the breathing silent feet, Each with its load of pleasure, slow yet sweet; Like the long years of blest Eternity For thou the wonders of the depth canst know -A table near of polished porphyry. They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye That looked on them-a fragrance from the touch Whose warmth a light such checked their life; Of this unfathomable flood of hours, embowers they love, which did reprove They were two cousins, almost like to The childish pity that she felt for them, remorse that from their twins, Except that from the catalogue of sins Nature had rased their love-which could not be But by dissevering their nativity. And so they grew together like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime, And a Which the same hand will gather-the And that leaf tinted lightly which Shake with decay. This fair day smiles The livery of unremembered snow Within whose bosom and whose brain Under the withered arm of Media now glow The ardours of a vision which obscure The very idol of its portraiture. He faints, dissolved into a sea of love; But thou art as a planet sphered above; But thou art Love itself-ruling the motion Of his subjected spirit: such emotion She flings her glowing arm step by step and stair by stair, That withered woman, gray and white and brown More like a trunk by lichens overgrown Than anything which once could have been human. Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet And ever as she goes the palsied woman |
