IV.

In the court of the fortress
Beside the pale portress,

Like a blood-hound well beaten,
The bridegroom stands, eaten
By shame;

On the topmost watch-turret,
As a death-boding spirit,
Stands the grey tyrant father,
To his voice the mad weather
Seems tame;

And with curses as 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.

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 hath changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lighest 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

1

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 magic circle there,

Was one whose being filled with love

The breathless atmosphere.