To lighten a strange load!"-No human ear
Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan
Of Athanase a ruffling atmosphere

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow, ran,

Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,
Glassy and dark.
And that divine old man

Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake,
Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest:
And with a calm and measured voice he spake,

And with a soft and equal pressure pressed

That cold lean hand. "Dost thou remember yet, When the curved moon, then lingering in the west,

Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea? 'Tis just one year—sure thou dost not forget!

Then Plato's words of light in thee and me
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east,
For we had just then read-thy memory

Is faithful now-the story of the feast;
And Agathon and Diotima seemed

From death and dark forgetfulness released.”

'TWAS at the season when the Earth upsprings
From slumber. As a spherèd angel's child,
Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,

Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems—
So stood before the Sun, which shone and smiled

To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,

The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove Waxed green, and flowers burst forth like starry beams:

The grass in the warm sun did start and move,
And sea-buds burst beneath the waves serene.
How many a one, though none be near to love,
Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
In any mirror-or the Spring's young minions,
The winged leaves amid the copses green!

How many a spirit then puts on the pinions
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,

And his own steps-and over wide dominions

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,

More fleet than storms !—the wide world shrinks below, When winter and despondency are past.

'TWAS at this season that Prince Athanase

Passed the white Alps. Those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow. Beside the ways

The waterfalls were voiceless; for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
Or, by the curdling winds-like brazen wings
Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow—
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung,
And filled with frozen light the chasm below.

THOU art the wine whose drunkenness is all

We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,

Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew.
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
Investeth it; and, when the heavens are blue,
Thou fillest them; and, when the earth is fair
The shadows of thy moving wings imbue
Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some bright robe. Thou ever soarest
Among the towers of men; and as soft air

In Spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men, and aye implorest

That which from thee they should implore. The weak Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts

The strong have broken:-yet where shall any seek

A garment, whom thou clothest not?

HER hair was brown; her sphered eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon;

Yet, when the spirit flashed beneath, there came
The light from them, as when tears of delight
Double the western planet's serene flame.
Marlow, 1817.

III.

OTHO.

THOU wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be,
"Last of the Romans,"-though thy memory claim
From Brutus his own glory, and on thee

Rests the full splendour of his sacred fame;
Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail
Amid his cowering senate with thy name;
Though thou and he were great, it will avail
To thine own fame that Otho's should not fail.

'Twill wrong thee not: thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel, Abjure such envious fame.

Great Otho died

Like thee: he sanctified his country's steel,

At once the tyrant and tyrannicide,

In his own blood. A deed it was to wring

1817.

Tears from all men- -though full of gentle pride,
Such pride as from impetuous love may spring
That will not be refused its offering.

Dark is the realm of grief: but human things
Those may not know who cannot weep for them.

IV.

TO MARY SHELLEY.

O MARY dear, that you were here!
With your brown eyes bright and clear-
And your sweet voice, like a bird

Singing love to its lone mate

In the ivy bower disconsolate,
Voice the sweetest ever heard-
And your brow more
Than the.
Of this azure Italy.

sky

Mary dear, come to me soon!

I am not well whilst thou art far.
As sunset to the sphered moon,
As twilight to the western star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.

Mary dear, that you were here!
The castle echo whispers "Here!"

Este, September 1818.

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
A WOODMAN, whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good),
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody. And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky

Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose

Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose

The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,

Was interfused upon the silentness.
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers; the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled Earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters. Every sphere,
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle (ever from below
Aspiring, like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproachèd star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,—
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,
Itself how low, how high beyond all height

The heaven where it would perish), and every form

That worshiped in the temple of the night,

Was awed into delight, and by the charm

Girt as with an interminable zone;

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion

Out of their dreams.

In every soul but one.

Harmony became love

And so this man returned with axe and saw
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom, by Nature's gentle law,

Was each a Wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene
With jagged leaves, and from the forest tops

Singing the winds to sleep, or weeping oft
Fast showers of aërial water-drops

1818.

Into her mother's bosom sweet and soft,-
Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness.
Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves; and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds; or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers
(Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries);
In which there is religion, and the mute
Persuasion of unkindied melodies,

Odours, and gleams, and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind Pilot-Spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed,
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone which never can recur has cast,

One accent never to return again.

The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.

VI.

1818.

O MIGHTY mind, in whose deep stream this age
Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm,
Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?

VII.

SILENCE! Oh well are Death and Sleep and Thou
Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged
Of one abyss, where life and truth and joy

Are swallowed up. Yet spare me, Spirit, pity me!
Until the sounds I hear become my soul,
And it has left these faint and weary limbs,
To track along the lapses of the air

This wandering melody until it rests
Among lone mountains in some

....

1818.

VIII.

THE fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses
Track not the steps of him who drinks of it;
For the light breezes, which for ever fleet
Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.