1827.

Over flowrets thou dost roam; While thy mother, laughing there, Braids them in thy dark brown hair.

VI.

Yes-thy fragrant lips are parted;

Thou hast gained thy little will:

Like the butterfly, light-hearted,
Thou in sport from her hast darted:-
Dream on, and be happy still:

Oh! that thy life pure may be

As the joy thou giv'st to me!

ON THE SHORE OF THE ADRIATIC: BETWEEN RIMINI AND RAVENNA.

"Fractisque rauci fluctibus Adriæ."-Horace.

I.

A wild and stormy twilight: yea, a scene
For memory to recal that such hath been,
When thou, dark Adriatic shore! shalt seem
In the far past the vision of a dream.
Like a black canopy outspread, the sky,
Fell type of a remorseless destiny,
Frowns lowering along the horizon's line,

Where the foam, breaking o'er the leaden brine,
Gleams like the sea-mew's wing! the coming waves,
Silently opening like yawning graves,

Break heavily, and with a hollow roar

Recoil, wild sweeping down the pebbled shore.*

* Βη δ ̓ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλασσης. — Homer.

The clouds scud hurriedly along: one break
Dyes the red west-a sullen, fiery streak,
Such as o'erlooked the Deluge-it is past,
And heaven and earth alike are overcast.

A lowering darkness buries all, save where
The wind sweeps snow-flakes from old Ocean's hair,
Or when the breakers' foam beneath the night
Spreads o'er the sands broad sheets of flashing light,
Then vanishing in the deep as in a shroud,
Or Lightning buried in its thunder-cloud !

II.

My spirit rises to the element:

I stand where this huge rock frowns imminent,
Like a stern tower by man and life forsook,
And draw from it the strength that it doth look,
On its concentered base immoveable;

So would I gather emulating will

To rise above the petty ills of life,

The slights with which we wage unworthy strife:
Conscious, and strengthening in hope, that I
May leave the records that shall time defy:
Like thee, impassive rock! that art the same,
Unchanged by tempests or the lightning's flame;
That dost still rise abrupt against the sky,
In thy grey, unadorned sublimity:

Fixing the passing eye that doth behold,
Lone, ponderous, solemn, silent, dark, and cold.

FINIS.

PRINTED BY GEORGE WOOD AND SONS, PARSONAGE LANE, BATH.