The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must on thine,
Beloved as thou art !

Oh lift me from the grass !
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
Ou my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast,
Oh ! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last.

STANZAS

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.

The sun is warın, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear

The purple noon's transparent light, 'The breath of the moist air is light,

Around its unexpanded buds; Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's.

139

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strowd;
I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
Is Aashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas ! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth

The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround

Smiling they live and call life pleasure;-
To me that cup has been dealt in another ineasure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,

Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,

As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament--for I am one

Whom inen love not,-and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

December, 1818.

AUTUMN:

A DIRGE.

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,

And the year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,

Is lying.
Come, months, come away,
From Noveinber to May,
Iu your saddest array;
Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,
Aud like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill raio is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is kpelling

For the year ;
The blitlie swallows are nown, and the lizards each gone

To bis dwelling;
Come, months, come away;
Put on white, black, and grey,
Let your light sisters play-
Ye, follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear,

HYMN OF APOLLO,

The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,

Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries, From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

Then ( arisė, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,

I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill

Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day; All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Unul diminished by the reign of night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,

With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,

Then with unwilling steps I wander down Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown;

What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe

Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harınony of instrument or verse,

All prophesy, all medicine, are mine,
All light of art or nature ;-to my song,
Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN.

From the forests and highlands

We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale above in the line,
And the lizard below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus* was,

Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,

And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

• This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tmolus for the prize in music.

M