His face, and so his opening lashes shone

Wilt thou be, when the sea-mever With tears unlike his own, as he did leap

Flies, as once before it flew, In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.

O'er thine isles depopulate,

And all is in its antient state, So Rosalind and Helen lived together

Save where many a palace gate Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again,

With green sea-flowers overgrown Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather

Like a rock of ocean's own, They wandered in their youth, through sun and rain.

Topples o'er the abandoned sea And after many years, for human things

As the tides change sullenly. Change even like the ocean and the wind,

The fisher on his watery way, Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,

Wandering at the close of day, And in their circle thence some visitings

Will spread his sail and seize his oar Of joy ’mid their new calm would intervene:

Till he pass the gloomy shore, A lovely child she was, of looks serene,

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep And motions which o'er things indifferent shed

Bursting o'er the starlight deep, The grace and gentleness from whence they came.

Lead a rapid masque of death
And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed

O'er the waters of his path.
From the same flowers of thought, until each mind
Like springs which mingle in one flood became,

Those who alone thy towers behold
And in their union soon their parents saw

Quivering through aerial gold, The shadow of the peace denied to them.

As I now behold them here, And Rosalind, for when the living stem

Would imagine not they were Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,

Sepulchres, where human forms, Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe

Like pollution-nourished worms,
The pale survivors followed her remains

To the corpse of greatness cling,
Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
Up the cold mountain she was wont to call

Murdered, and now mouldering:

But if Freedom should awake Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice

In her omnipotence, and shake They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,

From the Celtic Anarch's hold Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,

All the keys of dungeons cold,
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,

Where a hundred cities lie
The last, when it had sunk; and through the night Chained like thee, ingloriously,
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round

Thou and all thy sister band
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,
Whose sad inhabitants each year would come,

Might adorn this sunny land,

Twining memories of old time
With willing steps climbing that rugged height, With new virtues more sublime;
And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound

If not, perish thou and they,
With amaranth flowers,which, in the clime's despite, Clouds which stain truth's rising day
Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light:

By her sun consumed away,
Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom

Earth can spare ye: while like flowers, Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb.

In the waste of years and hours,
Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,

From your dust new nations spring
Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led With more kindly blossoming.
Into the peace of his dominion cold:

Perish ! let there only be
She died among her kindred, being old.

Floating o'er thy hearthless sea, And know, that if love die not in the dead

As the garment of thy sky As in the living, none of mortal kind

Clothes the world immortally,
Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind.

One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of time,

Which scarce hides thy visage wan;
LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGA.

That a tempest-cleaving swan
NEAN HILLS.

Of the songs of Albion,
Sun-girt City, thou hast been

Driven from his ancestral streams Ocean's child, and then his queen;

By the might of evil dreams, Now is come a darker day,

Found a nest in thee; and ocean And thou soon must be his prey,

Welcomed him with such emotion If the power that raised thee here

That its joy grew his, and sprung Hallow so thy watery bier.

From his lips like music flung A less drear ruin then than now,

O'er a mighty thunder-fit, With thy conquest-branded brow

Chastening terror: what though yet Stooping to the slave of slaves

Poesy's unfailing river, From thy throne, among the waves

Which through Albion winds for ever,

;

Lashing with melodious wave

Over all between the Po Many a sacred poet's grave,

And the eastern Alpine snow, Mourn its latest nursling fled !

Under the mighty Austrian. What though thou with all thy dead

Sin smiled so as Sin only can, Scarce can for this fame repay

And since that time, aye long before, ught thine own,-oh, rather say,

Both have ruled from shore to shore, Though thy sins and slaveries foul

That incestuous pair, who follow Overcloud a sunlike soul!

Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As the ghost of Homer clings

As Repentance follows Crime,
Round Scamander's wasting springs;

And as changes follow Time.
As divinest Shakespeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light

In thine halls the lamp of learning, Like omniscient power, which he

Padua, now no more is burning ; Imaged ’mid mortality;

Like a meteor, whose wild way As the love from Petrarch's urn

Is lost over the grave of day, Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

It gleams betrayed and to betray: A quenchless lamp, by which the heart

Once remotest nations came Sees things unearthly; so thou art,

To adore that sacred flame, Mighty spirit: so shall be

When it lit not many a hearth The city that did refuge thee.

On this cold and gloomy earth:

Now new fires from antique light Lo, the sun floats up the sky

Spring beneath the wide world's might; Like thought-winged liberty,

But their spark lies dead in thee, Till the universal light

Trampled out by tyranny. Seems to level plain and height;

As the Norway woodman quells, From the sea a mist has spread,

In the depth of piny dells, And the beams of morn lie dead

One light flame among the brakes, On the towers of Venice W,

While the boundless forest shakes, Like its glory long ago.

And its mighty trunks are torn
By the skirts of that

grey
cloud

By the fire thus lowly born:
Many-domed Padua proud

The spark beneath his feet is dead, Stands, a peopled solitude,

He starts to see the flames it fed, 'Mid the harvest shining plain,

Howling through the darkened sky Where the peasant heaps his grain

With myriad tongues victoriously, In the garner of his foe,

And sinks down in fear: so thou, And the milk-white oxen slow

O tyranny, beholdest now With the purple vintage strain,

Light around thee, and thou hearest Heaped upon the creaking wain,

The loud flames ascend, and fearest: That the brutal Celt may swill

Grovel on the earth : aye, hide
Drunken sleep with savage will;

In the dust thy purple pride!
And the sicle to the sword
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,

Noon descends around me now:
Like a weed whose shade is poison,

'Tis the noon of autumo's glow, Overgrows this region's foizon,

When a soft and purple mist Sheaves of whom are ripe to come

Like a vaporous amethyst, To destruction's harvest home:

Or an air-dissolved star Men must reap the things they sow,

Mingling light and fragrance, far Force from force must ever flow,

From the curved horizon's bound Or worse! but 'tis a bitter woe

To the point of heaven's profound, That love or reason cannot change

Fills the overflowing sky; The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.

And the plains that silent lie

Underneath, the leaves unsodden Padua, thou within whose walls

Where the infant frost has trodden Those mute guests at festivals,

With his morning-winged feet, Son and Mother, Death and Sin,

Whose bright print is gleaming yet; Played at dice for Ezzelin,

And the red and golden vines, Till Death cried, “ I win, I win!"

Piercing with their trellised lines And Sin cursed to lose the wager,

The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; But Death promised, to assuage her,

The dun and bladed grass no less, That he would petition for

Pointing from this hoary tower Her to be made Vice-Emperor,

In the windless air ; the flower When the destined years were o'er,

Glimmering at my feet; the line.

a

1

Of the olive-sandaled Apennine

And the love which heals all strife In the south dimly islanded;

Circling, like the breath of life, And the Alps, whose snows are spread

All things in that sweet abode High between the clouds and sun ;

With its own mild brotherhood: And of living things each one;

They, not it would change; and soon And my spirit which so long

Every sprite beneath the moon Darkened this swift stream of song,

Would repent its envy vain,
Interpenetrated lie

And the earth grow young again.
By the glory of the sky:
Be it love, light, harmony,
Odour, or the soul of all

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. Which from heaven like dew doth fall

The awful shadow of some unseen power Or the mind which feeds this verse,

Floats though unseen among us; visiting Peopling the lone universe.

This various world with as inconstant wing Noon descends, and after noon

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Autumn's evening meets me soon,

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain Leading the infantine moon,

It visits with inconstant glance (shower,

Each human heart and countenance;
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister

Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Half the crimson light she brings

Like clouds in starlight widely spread, From the sunset's radiant springs:

Like memory of music fled, And the soft dreams of the morn,

Like aught that for its grace may be (Which like winged winds had borne

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. To that silent isle, which lies 'Mid remembered agonies,

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon The frail bark of this lone being,)

Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, And its antient pilot, Pain,

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Sits beside the helm again.

Ask why the sunlight not forever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Other flowering isles must be

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shewn; In the sea of life and agony:

Why fear and dream and death and birth Other spirits float and flee

Cast on the daylight of this earth O'er that gulph: even now, perhaps,

Such gloom, why man has such a scope
On some rock the wild wave wraps,

For love and hate, despondency and hope ?
With folded wings they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To some calm and blooming cove,

To sage or poet these responses given: Where for me, and those I love,

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and HeaMay a windless bower be built,

Remain the records of their vain endeavour: (ren, Far from passion, pain, and guilt,

Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to In a dell’mid lawny hills,

From all we hear and all we see, (sever, Which the wild sea-murmur fills,

Doubt, chance, and mutability. And soft sunshine, and the sound

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, Of old forests echoing round,

Or music by the night wind sent And the light and smell divine

Through strings of some still instrument, Of all flowers that breathe and shine:

Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
We may live so happy there,

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
That the spirits of the air,
Envying us, may even entice

Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds, depart
To our healing paradise

And come, for some uncertain moments lent. The polluting multitude ;

Man were immortal, and omnipotent, But their rage would be subdued

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, (heart By that clime divine and calm,

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his And the winds whose wings rain balm

Thou messenger of sympathies On the uplifted soul, and leaves

That wax and wane in lover's eyes ; Under which the bright sea heaves;

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, While each breathless interval

Like darkness to a dying flame! In their whisperings musical

Depart not as thy shadow came: The inspired soul supplies

Depart not, less the grave should be, With its own deep melodies,

Like life and fear, a dark reality.

a

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

Poets could but find the same Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, With as little toil as they,

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Would they ever change their hue
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

As the light camelions do,
I called on poisonous names with which our youth Suiting it to every ray
I was not heard: I saw them not:

[is fed : Twenty times a day?
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing

Poets are on this cold earth, All vital things that wake to bring

As camelions might be News of birds and blossoming,

Hidden from their early birth Sudden, thy shadow fell on me:

In a cave beneath the sea; I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstacy!

Where light is camelions change,

Where love is not poets do: I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

Fame is love disguised: if few
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? Find either, never think it strange
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

That poets range.
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours (bowers
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
Of studious zeal or loves delight

A poet's free and heavenly mind : Outwatched with me the envious night:

If bright camelions should devour They know that never joy illumed my brow,

Any food but beams and wind, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free

They would grow as earthly soon This world from its dark slavery,

As their brother lizards are. That thou, O awful Loveliness,

Children of a sunnier star, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

Spirits from beyond the inoon,

O, refuse the boon!
The day becomes more solemn and serene

When noon is past: there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been !

I.
Thus let thy power, which like the truth O, wild West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being,
Of nature on my passive youth

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Descended, to my onward life supply

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Its calm, to one who worships thee,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, And every form containing thee,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed To fear himself, and love all human kind.

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until
SONNET.

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill I met a traveller from an antique land,

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone

With living hues and odours, plain and hill:
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, Wild spirit which art moving every where;
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

II.
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive,stamped on these lifeless things, Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's com-
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: motion,
And on the pedestal these words appear:

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair !"

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some Serce mænad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
AN EXHORTATION.

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Camelions feed on light and air:

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Poets' food is love and fame:

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, If in this wide world of care

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

OZYMANDIAS.

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Higher still and higher Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: 0, hear!

From the earth thou springest,

Like a cloud of fire;
III.

The blue deep thou wingest,
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun, Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,

O'er which clouds are brightning, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Thou dost float and run;
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

Like an unbodied joy, whose race is just begun.
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! thou

The pale purple even
For whose path, the Atlantic's level powers

Melts round thy flight;

Like a star of heaven Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

In the broad daylight The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight: The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,

Keen as are the arrows And tremble, and despoil themselves: 0, hear!

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows
IV.

In the white dawn clear,
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

All the earth and air A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

With thy voice is loud, The impulse of thy strength, only less free

As, when night is bare, Than thou, O, uncontroulable! if even

From one lonely cloud

(lowed. I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The morn rains out her beams, and heaven is overThe comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

What thou art we know not; As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

What is most like thee? Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

From rainbow clouds there flow not As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Drops so bright to see,
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud !

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

Like a poet hidden
One too like thee: tameless, and swist, and proud.

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,
V.

Till the world is wrought
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

To sympathy, with hopes and fears it heeded not: What if my leaves are falling like its own!

Like a high-born maiden The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

In a palace tower, Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,

Soothing her love-laden Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,

Soul in secret hour

(bower: My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!

With music sweet as love, which overflows her Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like a glow-worm golden Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

In a dell of dew, And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scattering unbeholden Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth,

Its ærial hue

[the view: Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Among the tlowers and grass, which screen it from Be through my lips to unawakened earth

Like a rose embowered The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind,

In its own green leaves, If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives [ed thieves:

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wing-
TO A SKYLARK.
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Sound of vernal showers
Bird thou never wert,

On the twinkling grass,
That from heaven, or near it,

Rain-awakened flowers,
Pourest thy full heart

All that ever was
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass: