wan:

of gold

but rest,

He walked along the pathway of a field Her eyes were black and lustreless and Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,

Her eyelashes were worn away with But to the west was open to the sky.

tears, There now the sun had sunk, but lines Her lips and cheeks were like things

dead-s0 pale; Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the Her hands were thin, and through their points

wandering veins Of the far level grass and nodding flowers And weak articulations might be seen And the old dandelion's hoary beard, Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy And, mingled with the shades of twi.

dead self light, lay

Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night On the brown massy woods-and in the

and day, east

Is all, lost child, that now remains of The broad and burning moon lingeringly

thee! rose Between the black trunks of the crowded

“ Inheritor of more than earth can trees,

give, While the faint stars were gathering Passionless calm and silence unreproved, overhead.

Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! “ Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth,

And are the uncomplaining things they "I never saw the sun? We will walk

seem, here

Or live, or drop in the deep sea of To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with

Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were

-Peace!"
That night the youth and lady mingled This was the only moan she ever made.

lay In love and sleep—but when the morn- HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL ing came

BEAUTY
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
Let none believe that God in mercy gave

I
That stroke. The lady died not, nor The awful shadow of some

Power But year by year lived on-in truth I Floats tho' unseen amongst us, think

visiting Her gentleness and patience and sad This various world with as inconstant smiles,

wing And that she did not die, but lived to As summer winds that creep from flower tend

to flower,Her agèd father, were a kind of mad. Like moonbeams that behind some piny ness,

mountain shower, If madness 'tis to be unlike the world. It visits with inconstant glance For but to see her were to read the tale Each human heart and countenWoven by some subtlest bard, to make

ance; hard hearts

Like hues and harmonies of evening, Dissolve away in wisdom - working Like clouds in starlight widely grief;

spread, -

me.

unseen

grew wild,

some

shine upon

V

Like memory of music fled,

And
come,
for

uncertain Like aught that for its grace may be moments lent, Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. Man were immortal, and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou II

art, Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

Keep with thy glorious train firm state With thine own hues all thou dost

within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies, or human thought or form, -where That wax and wane in lovers' eyesart thou gone ?

Thou — that to human thought art Why dost thou pass away and leave our nourishment, state,

Like darkness to a dying fame! This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and

Depart not as thy shadow came, desolate?

Depart not-lest thegraveshould be, Ask why the sunlight not for ever Like life and fear, a dark reality. Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain

river, Why aught should fail and fade that while yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and once is shown,

sped Why fear and dream and death and Thro' many a listening chamber, birth

cave and ruin, Cast on the daylight of this earth And starlight wood, with fearsul steps Such gloom,--why man has such a pursuing scope

Hopes of high talk with the departed For love and hate, despondency and

dead. hope?

I called on poisonous names with which 111

our youth is fed ; No voice from some sublimer world hath

I was not heard—I saw them not

When musing deeply on the lot Tosage or poet these responsesgiven—

Of life, at the sweet time when winds Therefore the names of Demon,

are wooing Ghost, and Heaven,

All vital things that wake to bring Remain the records of their vain endea

News of birds and blossoming,

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; vour, Frail spells-- whose uttered charm might

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in not avail to sever,

ecstasy! From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability. I vowed that I would dedicate my Thy light alone-like mist o'er moun

powers tains driven,

To thee and thine—have I not kept Or music by the night wind sent,

the vow ? Thro' strings of some still instru- With beating heart and streaming ment,

eyes, even now Or moonlight on a midnight stream, I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet Each from his voiceless grave : they dream.

have in visioned bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds Outwatched with me the envious depart

night

ever

IV

raves.

II

VII

serene

They know that never joy illumed my In the wild woods, among the mountains brow

lone, Unlinked with hope that thou Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, wouldst free

Where woods and winds contend, and a This world from its dark slavery,

vast river That thou—0 awful LOVELINESS, Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep The day becomes more solemn and

Ravine

Thou many-coloured, many-voicèd vale, When noon is past—there is a har. Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns

sail mony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams : Which thro’ the summer is not heard or

awful scene, seen,

Where Power in likeness of the Arve As if it could not be, as if it had not

comes down been !

From the ice gulphs that gird his secret Thus let thy power, which like the

throne, truth

Bursting through these dark mountains Of nature on my passive youth

like the flame Descended, to my onward life supply

Of lightning thro' the tempest ;—thou Its calm - to one who worships

dost lie, thee,

Thy giant brood of pines around thee And every form containing thee,

clinging, Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did Children of elder time, in whose devotion bind

The chainless winds still come and ever To fear himself, and love all human kind.

To drink their odours, and their mighty

swinging
MONT BLANC

To hear—an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across

came

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF

the sweep

1

CHAMOUNI

Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image ; the

strange sleep The everlasting universe of things Which when the voices of the desert fail Flows through the mind, and rolls its Wraps all in its own deep eternity ;rapid waves,

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's comNow dark-now glittering—now reflect- motion, ing gloom

A loud, lone sound no other sound can Now lending splendour, where from

tame; secret springs

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless The source of human thought its tribute motion, brings

Thou art the path of that unresting Of waters, - with a sound but half its soundown,

Dizzy Ravine ! and when I gaze on thee Such as a feeble brook will oft assume I seem as in a trance sublime and strange

a sea

III

To muse on my own separate phantasy, And wind among the accumulated steeps; My own, my human mind, which pas. A desert peopled by the storms alone, sively

Save when the eagle brings some hunter's Now renders and receives fast influenc- bone, ings,

And the wolf tracks her there - how Holding an unremitting interchange

hideously With the clear universe of things around; | Its shapes are heaped around ! rude, One legion of wild thoughts, whose bare, and high, wandering wings

Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.- Is this Now float above thy darkness, and now

the scene rest

Where the old Earthquake - dæmon Where that or thou art no unbidden taught her young guest,

Ruin ? Were these their toys? or did In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pass by Of fire, envelope once this silent snow? Ghosts of all things that are, some shade None can reply-all seems eternal now. of thee,

The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Some phantom, some saint image; till Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so the breast

mild, From which they ned recalls them, thou So solemn, so serene, that man may be art there!

But for such faith with nature reconciled;

Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to Some say that gleams of a remoter world repeal Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is Large codes of fraud and woe; not slumber,

understood And that its shapes the busy thoughts By all, but which the wise, and great, outnumber

and good Of those who wake and live.-I look Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

on high; Has some unknown omnipotence un

furled The veil of life and death ? or do I lie The fields, the lakes, the forests, arfd In dream, and does the mightier world

the streams, of sleep

Ocean, and all the living things that Spread far around and inaccessibly

dwell Its circles ? For the very spirit fails, Within the dædal earth; lightning, and Driven like a homeless cloud from steep rain,

Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurri. That vanishes among the viewless gales !

cane, Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, The torpor of the year when feeble Mont Blanc appears,-still, snowy, and

dreams

Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep Its subject mountains their unearthly Holds every future leaf and flower ;forms

the bound Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales With which from that detested trance between

they leap; Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, The works and ways of man, their death Blue as the overhanging heaven, that and birth, spread

And that of him and all that his may be;

IV

to steep

serene

All things that move and breathe with Which from those secret chasms in toil and sound

tumult welling Are born and die; revolve, subside, and Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, swell.

The breath and blood of distant lands, Power dwells apart in its tranquillity

for ever Remote, serene, and inaccessible: Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, And this, the naked countenance of Breathes its swift vapours to the circling earth,

air. On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high :the Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers

power is there, creep

The still and solemn power of many Like snakes that watch their prey, from

sights, their far fountains,

And many sounds, and much of life and Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,

death. Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal In the calm darkness of the moonless power

nights, Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pin- In the lone glare of day, the snows nacle,

descend A city of death, distinct with many a

Upon that Mountain ; none beholds tower

them there, And wall impregnable of beaming ice.

Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin

sun, Is there, that from the boundaries of the Or the star-beams dart through them :sky

Winds contend Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines Silently there, and heap the snow with are strewing

breath Its destined path, or in the mangled soil Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home Branchless and shattered stand ; the The voiceless lightning in these solitudes

rocks, drawn down From yon remotest waste, have over. Over the snow.

Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods

The secret strength of thrown The limits of the dead and living world, which governs thought, and to the in

things Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling

finite dome place

Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes And what were thou, and earth, and

its spoil; Their food and their retreat for ever if to the human mind's imaginings

stars, and sea, gone,

Silence and solitude were vacancy? So much of life and joy is lost. The

July 23, 1816. Of man, flies far in dread; his work and

dwelling Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's CANCELLED PASSAGE OF MONT stream,

BLANC And their place is not known. Below,

There is a voice, not understood by all, Shine in the rushing torrents' restless Sent from these desert-caves. It is the

gleam,

race

vast caves