Since smiling Liberty, the sun thrice blest,
That had its rising in our happy west,
Extends its radiance, eastward, to that shore,
The place of gods whom yet our hearts adore;
And, hailed by loud acclaim of thousands, hath
Been worshipped with a more than Magian faith,
With slain Barbarian hosts for sacrifice,
And burning fleets for holocausts of price:
Shall we, who almost placed it in the sky,
Fail to assist the magnanimity,

With which, regardless of much pressing want,
They greet their fair and heavenly visitant?
Forbid it, Justice! we detest the state,
Which, knowing that mortality must rate
By mere comparison things dark or bright,—
Would make its fame as painters form a light,

With Wordsworth's, "She was a phantom of delight,” l

ACCEPT this portraiture of thee,
Revealed to Wordsworth in a dream-
One less immortal stays with me,
Whose airy hues thine own may seem:
Mental reflection of thy light,

A rainbow beautiful and bright;
A shining lamp of constant ray,
To which my fancy shall be slave;
A shaping that cannot decay,
Until it moulder in my grave.—
The image-breaker, Time, may mar
All meaner sculpture of my mind,
But in its darkness, like a star,
Thy semblance shall remain enshrined.
Nor would I that the sullen thing
Its place in being should resign,
While, like a casket rich with gems,
It treasures forms so fair as thine.

ΤΟ

'Twas eve; the broadly shining sun
Its long, celestial course, had run;
The twilight heaven, so soft and blue,
Met earth in tender interview,
Ev'n as the angel met of yore
His gifted mortal paramour,
Woman, a child of morning then,-
A spirit still,-compared with men.
Like happy islands of the sky,

The gleaming clouds reposed on high,

Each fixed sublime, deprived of motion,
A Delos to the airy ocean.

Upon the stirless shore no breeze

Shook the green drapery of the trees,
Or, rebel to tranquillity,

Awoke a ripple on the sea.

Nor, in a more tumultuous sound,

Were the world's audible breathings drowned;
The low strange hum of herbage growing,
The voice of hidden waters flowing,
Made songs of nature, which the ear
Could scarcely be pronounced to hear;
But noise had furled its subtle wings,
And moved not through material things,
All which lay calm as they had been
Parts of the painter's mimic scene.
'Twas eve; my thoughts belong to thee,
Thou shape of separate memory!
When, like a stream to lands of flame,
Unto my mind a vision came.
Methought, from human haunts and strife
Remote, we lived a loving life;
Our wedded spirits seemed to blend
In harmony too sweet to end,
Such concord as the echocs cherish
Fondly, but leave at length to perish.
Wet rain-stars are thy lucid eyes,
The Hyades of earthly skies,
But then upon my heart they shone,
As shines on snow the fervid sun.
And fast went by those moments bright,
Like meteors shooting through the night;
But faster fleeted the wild dream,

That clothed them with their transient beam.
Yet love can years to days condense,
And long appeared that life intense;
It was, to give a better measure
Than time,—a century of pleasure.

SONG.

THOSE starry eyes, those starry eyes,
Those eyes
that used to be

Unto my heart as beacon-lights

To pilgrims of the sea!

I see them yet, I seem them yet.
Though long since quenched and gone—

I could not live enlumined by

The common sun alone.

Could they seem thus, could they scem thus, If but a memory?—

Ah, yes! upon this wintry earth,

They burn no more for me.

SONG.

DAY departs this upper air,
My lively, lovely lady;
And the eve-star sparkles fair,

And our good steeds are ready.
Leave, leave these loveless halls,
So lordly though they be ;-
Come, come-affection calls-
Away at once with me!

Sweet thy words in sense as sound,

And gladly do I hear them; Though thy kinsmen are around, And tamer bosoms fear them. Mount, mount,-I'll keep thee, dear, In safety as we ride;— On, on-my heart is here, My sword is at side! my

THE OLD TREE.

FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A TRAVELLER

AND is it gone, that venerable tree,
The old spectator of my infancy!-
It used to stand upon this very spot,
And now almost its absence is forgot.

I knew its mighty strength had known decay
Its heart, like every old one, shrunk away,
But dreamt not that its frame would fall, ere mine
At all partook my weary soul's decline.

The great reformist, that each day removes
The old, yet never on the old improves—
The dotard, Time, that like a child destroys,
As sport or spleen may prompt, his ancient toys,
And shapes their ruins into something new-
Has planted other playthings where it grew.
The wind pursues an unobstructed course,
Which once among its leaves delayed perforce;
The harmless Hamadryad, that, of yore,
Inhabited its bole, subsists no more;

Its roots have long since felt the ruthless plough -
There is no vestige of its glories now!
But in my mind, which doth not soon forget,
That venerable tree is growing yet;
Nourished, like those wild plants that feed on air
By thoughts of years unconversant with care,
And visions such as pass ere man grows wholl
A fiendish thing, or mischief adds to folly
I still behold it with my fancy's eye,
A vernant record of the days gone by:

I see not the sweet form and face more plain,
Whose memory was a weight upon my brain.
-Dear to my song, and dearer to my soul,
Who knew but half my heart, yet had the whole
Sun of my life, whose presence and whose flight
Its brief day caused, and never-ending night!
Must this delightless verse, which is indeed
The mere wild product of a worthless weed,
(But which, like sun-flowers, turns a loving face
Towards the lost light, and scorns its birth and place,)
End with such cold allusion unto you,

To whom, in youth, my very dreams were true?

It must; I have no more of that soft kind, *My age is not the same, nor is my mind

• Horace.

The mournful moments crossed my brain,
I could not but remember hours,
Which wore bright coronals of flowers,
And came successively to me,
Like notes of heart-felt melody.

Learn further, that with these was shown

A phantom fairer far-thine own

An apparition none can know,
Or guess of, saving only thou.
As for this story of an age
That saw life fanciful as dreams,

Thy gem-like eye will scan its page;
And if, with sounds of sleepy streams,
Thy voice make music of my lays—
Could they obtain a dearer praise?

PART I.

IL

At such a season, his domain

The lord at last arrived again,

Changed to the sight, and scarce the same,

Grown old in heart, infirm of frame.

His earlier years had been too blest
For anguish not to curse the rest:
Men, like the Dioscuri, dwell
Alternately in heaven and hell.

Let those, whose lives are in their prime,
Use to the uttermost the time;
For as with the enchanted thrall

Of Eblis and his fatal hall,
When a short period departs,

The flame shall kindle in their hearts.
Thou only, mighty Love!-canst will
Much herald good, much after-ill;
Thou holdest human hearts in fee,
And art the Second Destiny.

He loved he won—and whom ?—he signed
First for, next with, another's brije:
To both extremes of feeling,-strong
Or feeble, the same signs belong,
And sighs may the expression be
Of ecstasy or agony.

Like rarest porcelain were they,
Moulded of accidental clay:
She, loving, lovely, kind, and fair-
He, wise, and fortunate, and brave-
You'll easily suppose they were
A passionate and radiant pair,
Lighting the scenes else dark and colà,
As the sepulchral lamps of old,
A subterranean cave.

'Tis pity that their loves were vices,
And purchased at such painful prices;
'Tis pity, and Delight deplores
That grief allays her golden stores.
Yet if all chance brought rapture here,
Life would become a ceaseless fear
To leave a world, then rightly dear.
Two kindred mysteries* are bright,
And cloud-like, in the southern sky;
A shadow and its sister-light,
Around the pole they float on high,
Linked in a strong though sightless chain,
The types of pleasure and of pain.