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,

But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk, but lines Her lips and cheeks were like things of gold dead-so pale;

Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the Her hands were thin, and through their points wandering veins

rose

Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,

While the faint stars were gathering

overhead.

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

On the brown massy woods-and in the

east

The broad and burning moon lingeringly

me.

"Is it not strange, Isabel," said the

youth,

"I never saw the sun? We will walk
here
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with

wan:

Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,

Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,

Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

That night the youth and lady mingled This was the only moan she ever made. lay

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL

In love and sleep-but when the morning came

BEAUTY
I

The lady found her lover dead and cold.
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died not, nor THE
grew wild,

But year by year lived on-in truth I
think

Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,

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

tend

awful shadow of some unseen Power

Floats tho' unseen amongst us,visiting

This various world with as inconstant

wing

Her aged father, were a kind of mad- Like moonbeams that behind some piny

ness,

mountain shower,

If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make
hard hearts
Dissolve away in wisdom - working
grief;-

It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and counten-

ance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,— Like clouds in starlight widely spread,

Like memory of music fled,-
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

II

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

Of human thought or form,-where art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ?

For love and hate, despondency and hope?

III

Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain
river,

V

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
birth

Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,-why man has such a
scope

No voice from some sublimer world hath

ever

Tosage or poet these responses given—
Therefore the names of Demon,
Ghost, and Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endea-
vour,

From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone-like mist o'er moun-
tains driven,

Or music by the night wind sent,
Thro' strings of some still instru-
ment,

And come, for some uncertain moments lent,

Man were immortal, and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies, That wax and wane in lovers' eyesthat to human thought art nourishment,

Like darkness to a dying flame! Depart not as thy shadow came, Depart not-lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.

Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Thou

IV

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart

I

Frail spells-whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,

Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which
our youth is fed;

I was not heard-I saw them not-
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at the sweet time when winds

are wooing

All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming,— Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

VI

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow?

With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they
have in visioned bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious

night

They know that never joy illumed my
brow
Unlinked with hope that thou
wouldst free

VII

This world from its dark slavery, That thou-O awful LOVELINESS, Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and Wouldst give whate'er these words can

raves.

not express.

mony

In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which thro' the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

Thus let thy power, which like the
truth

Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm to one who worships
thee,

And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did
bind

To fear himself, and love all human kind.

The day becomes more solemn and

serene

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

sail

Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,

Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down

From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne,

MONT BLANC

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF
CHAMOUNI

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river

own,

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume

II

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep
Ravine-

Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame

Of lightning thro' the tempest ;-thou dost lie,

Thy giant brood of pines around thee
clinging,

Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever

came

To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging

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

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

I

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 reflectmotion, ing gloom

Now lending splendour, where from
secret springs

A loud, lone sound no other sound can
tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless
motion,

The source of human thought its tribute
brings
Of waters, with a sound but half its

Thou art the path of that unresting
sound-

Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange

To muse on my own separate phantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively

Now renders and receives fast influencings,

And the wolf tracks her there-how
hideously

Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around; Its shapes are heaped around! rude,
One legion of wild thoughts, whose
wandering wings

bare, and high,

Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. Is this the scene

Now float above thy darkness, and now

Where the old Earthquake - dæmon taught her young

Ruin? Were these their toys? or did

rest

Where that or thou art no unbidden
guest,

In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade
of thee,

Some phantom, some faint image; till
the breast

From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's
bone,

III

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber,

So solemn, so serene, that man may be
But for such faith with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to
repeal

Large codes of fraud and woe; not
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 unfurled

The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world
of sleep

Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep
to steep

a sea

Of fire, envelope once this silent snow?
None can reply-all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so
mild,

Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that

spread

IV

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and
the streams,

Ocean, and all the living things that
dwell
Within the dædal earth; lightning, and
rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurri

cane,

That vanishes among the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, The torpor of the year when feeble
Mont Blanc appears,-still, snowy, and
dreams

serene

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;

The works and ways of man, their death and birth,

And that of him and all that his may be;

All things that move and breathe with Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling

toil and sound

Are born and die; revolve, subside, and Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
swell.
The breath and blood of distant lands,
for ever

Power dwells apart in its tranquillity
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of
earth,

On which I gaze, even these primeval
mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers
creep

Like snakes that watch their prey, from
their far fountains,

Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal

power

Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,

A city of death, distinct with many a

tower

And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the
sky

Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines
are strewing

Its destined path, or in the mangled soil

Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down

From yon remotest waste, have over-
thrown

The limits of the dead and living world,
The dwelling-

Never to be reclaimed.

place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes
its spoil;

Their food and their retreat for ever
gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The

Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling

air.

V

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high :—the power is there,

The still and solemn power of many sights,

And many sounds, and much of life and death.

In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,

In the lone glare of day, the snows

descend

Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and
If to the human mind's imaginings
stars, and sea,
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
July 23, 1816.

race

Of man, flies far in dread; his work and

dwelling

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

BLANC

stream, And their place is not known.

vast caves

Below, Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,

THERE is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the

roar