Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom,-why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?

III.

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever

To sage or poet these responses given

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavour,

Frail spells-whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance and mutability.

Thy light alone-like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent,

Thro' strings of some still instrument,

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

IV.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
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' eyes-
Thou that 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.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
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 that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,-
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

I 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
This world from its dark slavery,

That thou-O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

VII.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past-there is a harmony
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.

1816.]

STANZAS.

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.

I.

The sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple moon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.

II.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown;

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

III.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned-
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround-

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;— To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

IV.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament-for I am one
Whom men love not, and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

ENGLAND IN 1819.

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,-mud from a muddy spring,—
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,-
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,-
An army, which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless-a book sealed;
A Senate, Time's worst statute unrepealed,-
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.1

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.2

I.

O, wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O, thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

1 That this fierce scourging does not represent a passing mood or merely personal feeling, is evidenced by such poems as "The Mask of Anarchy," "Swellfoot the Tyrant," Byron's "Irish Avatar," and many passages in Byron's longer poems.

2 Composed in the wood near Florence, after a tempestuous day in the autumn.