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Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe

Through some dim, latticed chamber. He did place
His pale, lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone

Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm; and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses

The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair,
The torturers, slept: no mortal pain or fear
Marr'd his repose; the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloy'd by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed

The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling his last sight
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seem'd
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests, and still, as the divided frame
Of the vast meteor sunk, the poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
And when two lessening points of light alone
Gleam'd through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

The stagnate night: till the minutest ray
Was quench'd, the pulse yet linger'd in his heart.
It paused, it flutter'd. But when heaven remain'd
Utterly black, the murky shades involved

An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That minister'd on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame-
No sense, no motion, no divinity—

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wander-a bright stream

Once fed with many-voiced waves-a dream
Of youth, which night and time have quench'd for

ever,

Still, dark, and dry, and unremember'd now.

Oh for Medea's wondrous alchymy,
Which, wheresoe'er it fell, made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh that God,
Profuse of poisons, would conceal the chalice
Which but one living man has drain'd, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death! Oh that the dream
Of dark magician in his vision'd cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible

For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams: ah! thou hast fled;
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,

The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms,
And beasts, and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice but thou art fled:
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers; who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips,
So sweet even in their silence; on those eyes,
That image sleep in death; upon that form,
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed, not even in thought. Nor, when those
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, [hues
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone

In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's wo,
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery

Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade.
It is a wo too "deep for tears" when all
Is reft at once; when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorn'd the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, nor sobs nor groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

STANZAS.

AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,

Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of

even:

Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness

soon,

And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of Heaven.

Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries Away!

Tempt not with one last glance thy friend's ungentle mood:

Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;

Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and

come,

And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

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The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thy head;

The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:

But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,

Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.

The cloud-shadows of midnight possess their own

repose,

For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep:

Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;

Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep.

Thou in the grave shalt rest: yet till the phantoms flee

Which that house, and heath, and garden made dear to thee erewhile,

Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free

From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile.

MUTABILITY.

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever;

Or, like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest: a dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise: one wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond wo, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Naught may endure but Mutability.

LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR.

I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet

Has led me-who knows how?-
To thy chamber window, sweet!

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
On 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.

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