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And with curses wild
As ere clung to child,
He devotes to the blast

The best, loveliest, and last,

Of his name!

A LAMENT.

SWIFTER far than summer's flight,
Swifter far than youth's delight,
Swifter far than happy night,

Art thou come and gone:

As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is filed,
I am left lone, alone.

The swallow Summer comes again,
The owlet Night resumes her reign,
But the wild swan Youth is fain

To fly with thee, false as thou.

My heart each day desires the morrow,
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow,

Vainly would my winter borrow

Sunny leaves from any bough.

Lilies for a bridal bed,

Roses for a matron's head,

Violets for a maiden dead,

Pansies let my flowers be:

On the living grave I bear,

Scatter them without a tear,
Let no friend, however dear,

Waste one hope, one fear for me.

But for such faith which nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood,
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good,
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower;-the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him and all that his may be;

All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity

Remote, serene, and inaccessible:

And this, the naked countenance of earth,

On which I gaze, even these primæval mountains,
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep

Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slowly rolling on; there, many a precipice
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled--dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin

Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil

Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down

From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race

Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult dwelling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,

The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls it sloud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:-the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights

And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,

In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,

Or the star-beams dart through them:-Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea.
If to the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Switzerland, June 23, 1816.

K

ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI,

IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY.

Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine ;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.

Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone;
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven,
till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;

"Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanize and harmonize the strain.

And from its head as from one body grow,
As [
grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock,
And with unending involutions show

Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock

The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.

And from a stone beside a poisonous eft
Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft

Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.

'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror; For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare Kindled by that inextricable error

Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air Become a [ and ever-shifting mirror

Of all the beauty and the terror there-

A woman's countenance, with serpent locks, Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. Florence, 1819.

SONG.

RARELY, rarely, comes thou,

Spirit of Delight!

Wherefore hast thou left me now

Many a day and night?

Many a weary night and day
"Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?

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