I held what I inherited in thee

As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile:
How can I call thee England, or my country?—
Does the wind hold?

Vane.
The vanes sit steady
Upon the Abbey-towers. The silver lightnings
Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.
Mark too that fleet of fleecy-winged cloud
Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.

Hampden.

Hail, fleet herald

Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny,

Beyond the webs of that swoln spider.
Beyond the curses, calumnies, and lies (?)

Of atheist priests!

Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,
Bright as the path to a beloved home,

Oh light us to the isles of the evening land!
Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years

Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions,
Where power's poor dupes and victims yet have never
Propitiated the savage fear of kings

With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo

Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites

Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves,
To the poc worm who envies us his love!
Receive, ti u young of paradise,

These exiles from the old and sinful world!

This glorious clime; this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through their veil

Of pale-blue atmosphere, whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers;
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.
The boundless universe

Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul
That owns a master; while the loathliest ward
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest

Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,—

FRAGMENTS.

To which the eagle spirits of the free,

603

Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,

Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die

And cannot be repelled.

Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
Through palaces and temples thunderproof.

SCENE V.

Archy. I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and court the tears shed on its old roots (?), as the [wind?] plays the song of

'A widow bird sate mourning
Upon a wintry bough."

[Sings] Heigho! the lark and the owl !

One flies the morning, and one lulls the night :--
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,

Sings like the fool through darkness and light.

"A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;

The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,

1822.

No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air

Except the mill-wheel's sound.”

XL.
LINES.

1. WE meet not as we parted;
We feel more than all may see;
My bosom is heavy-hearted,
And thine full of doubt for me.
One moment has bound the free.

2. That moment is gone for ever;

Like lightning that flashed and died,
Like a snowflake upon the river,
Like a sunbeam upon the tide,
Which the dark shadows hide.

3. That moment from time was singled
As the first of a life of pain;
The cup of its joy was mingled
-Delusion too sweet though vain!
Too sweet to be mine again.

Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden
That its life was crushed by you,

Ye would not have then forbidden

18 22.

1822.

The death which a heart so true
Sought in your briny dew.

5. Methinks too little cost

For a moment so found, so lost!

XLI.

Bright wanderer, fair coquette of heaven,
To whom alone it has been given
To change and be adored for ever,
Envy not this dim world, for never
But once within its shadow grew
One fair as

XLII.

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light the ocean's orison arose,

To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,

With orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent,

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own, and then imposed on them.
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine. Before me fled
'The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

Was at my feet, and heaven above my head ;—
When a strange trance over my fancy grew,
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread

Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew

That I had felt the freshness of that dawn
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the selfsame bough, and heard as there

The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. And then a vision on my brain was rolled.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream.--
Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust; and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro,

Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,—
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier.
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear:

Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another's fear.

And others, as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath;
And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked, and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.

But more, with motions which each other crossed,
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw,
Or birds within the noonday ether lost,

,

Upon that path where flowers never grew,-
And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst,
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths, and wood lawns interspersed

With overarching elms, and caverns cold,

And violet-banks where sweet dreams brood;-but they Pursued their serious folly as of old.

And, as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day;
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon

But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon-

When on the sunlit limits of the night

Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,

And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might-

Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear

The ghost of her dead mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair:

So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour; and a Shape
So sate within, as one whom years deform,
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb.
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint etherial gloom
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume

The guidance of that wonder-winged team.

The shapes which drew it in thick lightenings Were lost-I heard alone on the air's soft stream The music of their ever-moving wings.

All the four faces of that Charioteer

Had their eyes banded. Little profit brings

Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,

Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun: Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere

Of all that is, has been, or will be, done. So ill was the car guided-but it passed With solemn speed majestically on.

The crowd gave way; and I arose aghast,

Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance, And saw, like clouds upon the thunder-blast,

The million with fierce song and maniac dance Raging around. Such seemed the jubilee

As when, to greet some conqueror's advance, Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea From senate-house and forum and theatre, When .

upon the free

7

Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped bear. Nor wanted here the just similitude

Of a triumphal pageant, for, where'er