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 fled,
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.

THE PINE FOREST

OF THE CASCINE, NEAR PISA.

DEAREST, best, and brightest,

Come away,

To the woods and to the fields !
Dearer than this fairest day,

Which like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle in the brake.

1

The eldest of the hours of spring, Into the winter wandering, Looks upon the leafless wood; And the banks all bare and rude Found it seems this halcyon morn, In February's bosom born, Bending from heaven, in azure mirth, Kissed the cold forehead of the earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free; And waked to music all the fountains, And breathed upon the rigid mountains, And made the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Radiant Sister of the Day,

Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all the roof of leaves,
Where the Pine its garland weaves,

Sapless, grey, and ivy dun,

Round stones that never kiss the sun,

To the sandhills of the sea,

Where the earliest violets be.

Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise Memory, and write its praise,
And do thy wonted work and trace
The epitaph of glory fled:

For the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the woods, and on the deep,

The smile of Heaven lay.

It seemed as if the day were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which shed to earth above the sun
A light of Paradise.

We paused amid the Pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude,
With stems like serpents interlaced.

How calm it was-the silence there

By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound

The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew, With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew.

It seemed that from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain's waste,
To the bright flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced;-

A spirit interfused around,
A thinking silent life,

To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal Nature's strife.

For still it seemed the centre of
The magie circle there,

Was one whose being filled with love
The breathless atmosphere.

Were not the crocusses that grew

Under that ilex tree,

As beautiful in scent and hue

As ever fed the bee?

We stood beside the pools that lie

Under the forest bough,

And each seemed like a sky

Gulphed in a world below;

A purple firmament of light,

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,
And clearer than the day-

In which the massy forests grew,

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any waving there.

Like one beloved, the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With that clear truth expressed.

There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green crowd

The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Under a speckled cloud.

Sweet views, which in our world above

Can never well be seen,
Were imaged by the water's love

Of that fair forest green.

And all was interfused beneath

Within an Elysium air,
An atmosphere without a breath,

A silence sleeping there.

Until a wandering wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought,

Which from my mind's too faithful eye
Blots thy bright image out.

L