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To sit and curb the soul's mute rage
Which preys upon itself alone;

To curse the life which is the cage

Of fettered grief that dares not groan, Hiding from many a careless eye The scorned load of agony.

Whilst thou alone, then not regarded,
The [
] thou alone should be,
To spend years thus, and be rewarded,

As thou, sweet love, requited me When none were near-Oh! I did wake From torture for that moment's sake.

Upon my heart thy accents sweet
Of peace and pity fell like dew

On flowers half dead ;-thy lips did meet

Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw Their soft persuasion on my brain, Charming away its dream of pain.

We are not happy, sweet; our state

Is strange and full of doubt and fear; More need of words that ills abate ;

-

Reserve or censure come not near Our sacred friendship, lest there be No solace left for thou and me.

Gentle and good and mild thou art,
Nor can I live if you appear
Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart
Away from me, or stoop to wear
The mask of scorn, although it be
To hide the love you feel for me.

THE ISLE.

THERE was a little lawny islet
By anemone and violet,

Like mosaic, paven:

And its roof was flowers and leaves

Which the summer's breath enweaves,

Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze

Pierce the pines and tallest trees,

Each a gem engraven.

Girt by many an azure wave

With which the clouds and mountains pave

A lake's blue chasm.

ΤΟ

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore.
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?

LINES.

THAT time is dead for ever, child,
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past,
And stare aghast

At the spectres wailing, pale, and ghast,
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

The stream we gazed on then rolled by;
Its waves are unreturning;

But we yet stand

In a lone land,

Like tombs to mark the memory

Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
In the light of life's dim morning.

November 5th, 1817.

A SONG.

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, No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air

Except the mill-wheel's sound.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?

A DIRGE.

ROUGH wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;

Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;

Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches stain,
Deep caves and dreary main,

Wail, for the world's wrong!

LINES.

FAR, far away, O ye
Halcyons of memory,

Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast;-

No news of your false spring
To my heart's winter bring;
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.

Vultures, who build your bowels
High in the Future's towers,

Withered hopes on hopes are spread,

Dying joys, choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.

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