Is gathering on the mountains, like a We watched the ocean and the sky cloak together, Folded athwart their shoulders broad Under the roof of blue Italian weather; How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,

and bare;

The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines And felt the transverse lightning linger

Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines

The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill

The empty pauses of the blast ;-the hill

Upon

warm

my cheek-and how we often made

Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed

The frugal luxury of our country cheer, Looks hoary through the white electric As well it might, were it less firm and

And from the glens beyond, in sullen Than ours must ever be;—and how we

strain,

The interrupted thunder howls; above One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of Love

spun

A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not, or is but quaint mockery

On the unquiet world; while such Of all we would believe, and sadly blame

things are,

How could one worth your friendship heed the war

Of worms? the shriek of the world's

carrion jays,

The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:-and then anato-
mise

The purposes and thoughts of men
whose eyes

Their censure, or their wonder, or their Were closed in distant years;—or widely praise?

guess

The issue of the earth's great business,

You are not here! the quaint witch When we shall be as we no longer are-Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war

Memory sees

In vacant chairs, your absent images,

And points where once you sat, and now Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;—

And winged with thoughts of truth and Flags wearily through darkness and

despair

majesty, Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls.— You will see Hunt-one of those happy souls

cloud,

And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,

"My name is Legion !"-that majestic tongue

Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom

This world would smell like what it is -a tomb;

Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the Who is, what others seem; his room
sound

no doubt

Startled oblivion;-thou wert then to Is still adorned by many a cast from

me

As is a nurse-when inarticulately

A child would talk as its grown parents do.

If living winds the rapid clouds pursue, If hawks chase doves through the ethereal way,

Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts

their prey,

Why should not we rouse with the
spirit's blast

Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?

You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow

At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore

Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.

Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see

That which was Godwin,-greater none than he

Though fallen-and fallen on evil times
-to stand

Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of to come
The foremost,-while Rebuke cowers
pale and dumb.

Shout,

With graceful flowers tastefully placed

about;

And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;

The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens

Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.

And there is he with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles,
like duns

Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!"
Or oft in graver mood, when he will
look

Things wiser than were ever read in
book,

Except in Shakespeare's wisest tender

ness.

You will see Hogg,-and I cannot express

His virtues, though I know that they are great,

Because he locks, then barricades the gate

Within which they inhabit;-of his wit And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit.

You will see Coleridge-he who sits He is a pearl within an oyster shell,

That gleams i' the Indian air-have you And the rare stars rush through them not heard dim and fast :When a man marries, dies, or turns All this is beautiful in every land.— But what see you beside?—a shabby

Of our unhappy politics;-or worseMatched with this cameleopard- - his A wretched woman reeling by, whose

Makes such a wound, the knife is lost Mixed with the watchman's, partner of

Whether the moon, into her chamber Rude, but made sweet by distance—

Leaves midnight to the golden stars, Which cannot be the Nightingale, and

Climbs with diminished beams the azure I know none else that sings so sweet

Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse At this late hour;-and then all is

revel

Next winter you must pass with me; We'll make our friendly philosophic I'll have My house by that time turned into a Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers

grave

care,

Of dead despondence and low-thoughted Warn the obscure inevitable hours, Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew ;"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

And all the dreams which our tormentors
are;

Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and
Smith were there,

With every thing belonging to them
fair!-

We will have books, Spanish, Italian,
Greek;

And ask one week to make another
week

As like his father, as I'm unlike mine,
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no
wine,

Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and
toast;

Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,—
Feasting on which we will philosophise!
And we'll have fires out of the Grand
Duke's wood,

To thaw the six weeks' winter in our
blood.

And then we'll talk ;-what shall we talk about?

nerves

THE WITCH OF ATLAS

TO MARY

(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTterest)

I

How, my dear Mary, are you criticbitten,

(For vipers kill, though dead,) by some review,

That you condemn these verses I have written,

Because they tell no story, false or

true!

What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,

May it not leap and play as grown cats do,

Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,

Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

II

With cones and parallelograms and What hand would crush the silken

winged fly,

The youngest of inconstant April's

III

VI

To thy fair feet a wingèd Vision came, Whose date should have been longer than a day,

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow, Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate

And o'er thy head did beat its wings for Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow :
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a

fame,

And in thy sight its fading plumes

display;

The watery bow burned in the evening

flame,

rhyme at ;

In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate

But the shower fell, the swift sun Can shrive you of that sin,-if sin there

went his way

be

And that is dead. Oh let me not In love, when it becomes idolatry.

Light the vest of flowing

She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,

Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden In the warm shadow of her loveliness ;He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden

The chamber of gray rock in which she lay

Like King Lear's "looped and windowed She, in that dream of joy, dissolved