But ah! what ills must that poor heart endure, Illumines, whilst it weeps, the rested tower (shower.
Who hopes from thee, and thee alone a cure. That lifts its forehead grey, and smiles amidst the

BARRY CORNWALL.

a

may lie

I would not chill, with this decaying touch, Threaten’d, and vow'd, cajold, and then-I mar-
That bosom where the blue veins wander 'round, Jeron. Oh!
As if enamoured and loth to leave their homes

Sylv. What's the matter?
Of beauty: nor should this thy white cheek fade

Jeron. Soft! The night wind sounds From fear at me, a poor heart-broken wretch: A funeral dirge, for me, sweet. Let me lie Look at me. Why, the winds sing through my bones, Upon thy breast; I will not chill’t, my love. And children jeer me, and the boughs that wave It is a shrine where Innocence might die: And whisper loosely in the summer air

Nay, let me lie there once ; for once, Sylvestra.

i Shake their green leaves in mockery, as to say

Sylv. Pity me! “ These are the longer livers."

Jeron. So I do.
Sylv. How is this?

Sylv. Then talk not thus ;
Jeron. I've numbered eighteen summers. Much Though but a jest it makes me tremble.

Jeron. Jest ?
In that short compass; but my days have been

Look in my eye, and mark how true the tale Not happy. Death was busy with our house I've told you: On its glassy surface lies Early, and nipped the comforts of my home,

Death, my Sylvestra. It is Nature's last And sickness paled my cheek, and fancies (like And beautiful effort to bequeath a fire Bright but delusive stars) came wandering by me. To that bright ball on which the spirit sate There's one you know of: that—no matter—that Through life; and look'd out, in its various moods, Drew me from out my way, (a perilous guide) Of gentleness and joy, and love and hope, And left me sinking. I had gay hopes too,

And gain'd this frail flesh credit in the world. What needs the mention,they are vanish’d. It is the channel of the soul: its glance Sylv. I

Draws and reveals that subtle power, that doth I thought,- (speak softly, for my husband sleeps) Redeem us from our gross mortality. I thought, when you did stay abroad so long,

Sylv. Why, now you're cheerful. And never sent nor ask'd of me or mine,

Jeron. Yes; 'tis thus I'd die. You'd quite forgotten Italy.

Sylv. Now I must smile. Jeron. Speak again,

Jeron. Do so, and I'll smile too. Was't so indeed ?

I do; albeit-Ah! now my parting words Sylv. Indeed, indeed.

Lie heavy on my tongue; my lips obey not, (can, Jeron. Then be it.

And-speech-comes difficult from me. While! Yet, what had I done Fortune, that she could

Farewell. Sylvestra! where's your hand? Abandon me so entirely? Never mind't:

Sylv. Ah! cold. Have a good heart, Sylvestra: they who hate

Jeron. 'Tis so: but scorn it not, my own poor girl. Can kill us, but no more, that's comfort. Oh!

They've used us hardly: bless’em though. Thou wilt The journey is but short, and we can reckon

Forgive them. One's a mother, and may feel, On slumbering sweetly with the freshest earth

When that she knows me dead. Some air-more air: Sprinkled about us. There no storms can shake

Where are you?-I am blind—my hands are numb'd: Our secure tenement; nor need we fear,

This is a wintry night.-S0,-cover me. (Dies. Though cruelty be busy with our fortunes, Or scandal with our names. Sylv. Alas! alas!

[flowers. Jeron. Sweet! in the land to come we'll feed on

A VISION. Droop not, my beautiful child. Oh! we will love The night was gloomy. Through the skies of June Then without fear; no mothers there; no gold,

Rolled the eternal moon, Nor hate, nor paltry perfidy, none, none;

'Midst dark and heavy clouds, that bore We have been doubly cheated. Who'll believe A shadowy likeness to those fabled thiogs A mother could do this but let it pass :

That sprung of old from man's imaginings. Anger suits not the grave. Oh! my own love, Each seem'd a fierce reality: some wore Too late I see thy gentle constancy:

The forms of sphinx and hippogriff, or seemed I wrote, and wrote, but never heard; at last, Nourished among the wonders of the deep, Quitting that place of pleasure, home I came And wilder than the poet ever dream'd:

(bent, And found you married: Then

And there were cars-steeds with their proud necks Sylv. Alas !

Tower, and temple, and broken continent: Jeron. Then I

And all, as upon a sea,
Grew moody, and at times I fear my brain

In the blue ether floated silently.
Was fever'd; but I could not die, Sylvestra, I lay upon my bed, and sank to sleep:
And bid you no farewell.

And then I fancied that I rode upon
Sylv. Jeronymo!

The waters, and had power to call
Break not my heartthus: they-they did deceive me. Up people who had lived in ages gone,
They told me that the girls of France were fair, And scenes and stories half forgot, and all
And you had scorn'd your poor and childish love; That on my young imagination

Had come like fairy visions, and departed.

Mournfully to the fields of Thessaly. And ever by me a broad current passed

And there I saw, piercing the deep blue sky, Slowly, from which at times up started

And radiant with his diadem of snow, Dim scenes and ill-defined shapes. At last

Crowned Olympus: and the hills below I bade the billows render up their dead,

Looked like inferior spirits tending round And all their wild inhabitants; and I

His pure supremacy; and a sound Summoned the spirits who perished,

Went rolling onwards through the sunny calm, Or took their stations in the starry sky,

As if immortal voices then had spoken,
When Jove himself bowed his Saturnian head And, with rich noises, broken
Before the One Divinity.

The silence which that holy place had bred.

I knelt-and as I knelt, haply in token First, I saw a landscape fair

Of thanks, there fell a honeyed shower of balm; Towering in the clear blue air,

And the imperial mountain bowed his hoary head. Like Ida's woody summits and sweet fields, Where all that Nature yields

And then came one who on the Nubian sands Flourishes. Three proud shapes were seen, Perish'd for love; and with him the wanton queen Standing upon the green

Egyptian, in her state was seen; Like Olympian queens descended.

And how she smil'd, and kissed his willing hands, One was unadorned, and one

And said she would not love, and swore to die, Wore her golden tresses bound

And laughed upon the Roman Antony. With simple flowers; the third was crowned, Oh, matchless Cleopatra ! never since And from amidst her raven hair,

Has one, and never more Like stars, imperial jewels shone.

Shall one like thee tread on the Egypt shore, Not one of those figures divine

Or lavish such royal magnificence: But might have sate in Juno's chair,

Never shall one laugh, love, or die like thee, And smild in great equality

Or own so sweet a witchery : On Jove, though the blue skies were shaken ; And, brave Mark Antony, that thou could'st give Or, with superior aspect, taken

Half the wide world to live From Hebe's hand Nectarean wine.

With that enchantress, did become thee well; And that Dardanian boy was there

For Love is wiser than Ambition.-
Whom pale Ænone loved: his hair

Queen and thou, lofty triumvir, fare ye well.
Was black, and curled his temples 'round;
His limbs were free and forehead fair,

And then I heard the sullen waters roar,
And as he stood on rising ground,

And saw them cast their surf upon the strand, And back his dark locks proudly tossed,

And then rebounding toward some far-seen land, A shepherd youth he looked, but trod

They washed and washed its melancholy shore: On the green-sward like a god ;

And the terrific spirits, bred Most like Apollo when he played

In the sea-caverns, moved by those fierce jars, ('Fore Midas,) in the Phrygian shade,

Rose up like giants from their watery bed, With Pan, and to the Sylvan lost.

And shook their silver hair against the stars.

Then, bursts like thunder-joyous outcries wildAnd now from out the watery floor

Sounds as from trumpets, and from drums, A city rose, and well she wore

And music, like the lulling noise that comes Her beauty, and stupendous walls,

From nurses when they bush their charge to sleep, And towers that touched the stars, and halls

Came in confusion from the deep. Pillar'd with whitest marble, whence

Methought one told me that a child Palace on lofty palace sprung;

Was that night unto the great Neptune born; And over all rich gardens hung,

And then old Triton blew his curled horn, Where, amongst silver waterfalls,

And the Leviathan lashed the foaming seas, Cedars and spice-trees and green bowers,

And the wanton Nereides And sweet winds playing with all the flowers

Came up like phantoms from their coral halls, Of Persia and of Araby,

And laughed and sung like tipsy Bacchanals, Walked princely shapes : some with an air

Till all the fury of the Ocean broke Like warriors, some like ladies fair

Upou my ear.-- -I trembled and awoke. Listening, and, amidst all, the king Nebuchadnezzar rioting In supreme magnificence.

WISHES. - This was famous Babylon.

Now, give me but a cot that's good, That glorious vision passed on,

In some great town's neighbourhood: And then I heard the laurel-branches sigh,

A garden, where the winds may play That still grow where the bright-ey'd muses walk’d: Fresh from the blue hills far away, And Pelion shook his piny locks, and talked

And wanton with such trees as bear

:

Their loads of green through all the year,

She whom I loved has fed; Laurel, and dusky juniper:

And now with the lost dead So may some friends, whose social talk

I rank her; and the heart that loved her so, I love, there take their evening walk,

(But could not bear her pride,) And spend a frequent holiday.

In its own cell hath died,

And turn'd to dust, but this she shall not know. And may I own a quiet room, Where the morning sun may come,

'Twould please her did she think Stored with books of poesy,

That my poor frame did shrink, Tale, science, old morality,

And waste and wither; and that love's own light Fable, and divine history,

Did blast its temple, where Ranged in separate cases round,

'Twas worshipped many a year; Each with living marble crown'd;

Veild (like some holy thing) from human sight. Here should Apollo stand, and there

Oh ! had you seen her when
Isis, with her sweeping hair,

She languished, and the men
Here Phidian Jove, or the face of thought From the dark glancing of her fringed eye
Of Pallas, or Laocoon,

Turned, but returned again
Or Adrian's boy Antinous,

To mark the winding vein Or the wing'd Mercurius,

Steal tow'rd her marbled bosom silently. Or some that conquest lately brought

What matters this ?-thou Lyre, From the land Italian.

Nothing shall e'er inspire And one I'd have, whose heaving breast

Thy master to rehearse those songs again: Should rock me nightly to my rest,

She whom he loved is gone, By holy chains bound fast to me,

And he, now left alone, Faster by Love's sweet sorcery.

Sings, when he sings of love, in vain, in vain. I would not have my beauty as Juno or Paphian Venus was, Or Dian with her crested moon,

TO A CHILD. (Else, haply, she might change as soon,)

Fairest of earth's creatures! Or Portia, that high Roman dame,

All thy innocent features Or she who set the world on flame,

Moulded in beauty do become thee well. Spartan Helen, who did leave

Oh! may thy future years Her husband-king to grieve,

Be free from pains, and fears, And Aled with Priam's shepherd-boy,

False love, and others envy, and the guile And caus’d the mighty tale of Troy.

That lurks beneath a friendlike smile, She should be a woman who

And all the various ills that dwell (Graceful without much endeavour)

In this so strange compounded world; and may

Thy look be like the skies of May,
Could praise or excuse all I do,
And love me ever.

Supremely soft and clear,

With, vow and then,
I'd have her thoughts fair, and her skin
White as the white soul within;

For joy, or others sorrows, not thy own;
And her fringed eyes of darkest blue,

And may thy sweet voice

Like a stream afar
Which the great soul looketh through,
Like heaven's own gates cerulean :

Flow in perpetual music, and its tone
And these I'd gaze and gaze upon,

Be joyful, and bid all who hear rejoice,
As did of old Pygmalion.

And may thy bright eye, like a star,
Shine sweet, and cheer the hearts that love thee,

And take in all the beauty of the flowers,
A SONG.

Deep woods and running brooks, and the rich sights Lic silent now, my lyre,

Which thou may'st note above thee

At noontide, or on interlunar nights, For all thy master's fire

Or when blue Iris, after showers, Is gone.--It vanish'd like the summer sun.

Bends her cerulean bow, and seems to rest Brightly the passion rose,

On some distant mountain's breast, Aud, till it's turbulent close,

Surpassing all the shapes that lie
It shone as bright; though all he wished was won.

Haunting the sunset of an autumn sky.
Deem me not false, ye fair,
Who, with your golden hair

SONNET.
And soft eyes chain man's heart to yours: the deer

Thus bound by beauty's chain
Wanders not again:

Oh, for that winged steed, Bellerophon!
Prisoner to love, like me-never to fear.

That Pallas gave thee in her infinite grace

tear

IMAGINATION.