LINES.

THE cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow,

The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black,

The

green grass was not seen, The birds did rest

On the bare thorn's breast,

Whose roots, beside the pathway track,

Had bound their folds o'er many a crack

Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glowed in the glare

Of the moon's dying light;

As a fen-fire's beam,

On a sluggish stream,

Gleams dimly-so the moon shone there,

And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;

The wind made thy bosom chill;

The night did shed

On thy dear head

Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie

Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

November, 1815.

DEATH.

DEATH is here and death is there,
Death is busy every where,

All around, within, beneath,

Above is death-and we are death.

Death has set his mark and seal

On all we are and all we feel,

On all we know and all we fear,

茶

First our pleasures die-and then

Our hopes, and then our fears—and when

These are dead, the debt is due,

Dust claims dust-and we die too.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish,

Such is our rude mortal lot,
Love itself would, did they not.

ΤΟ

WHEN passion's trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep!

It were enough to feel, to see
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,

And dream the rest-and burn and be

The secret food of fires unseen,

Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.

After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets re-appear,
All things revive in field or grove,

And sky and sea, but two, which move,
And for all others, life and love.

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.

LISTEN, listen, Mary mine,

To the whisper of the Apennine,

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,

Or like the sea on a northern shore,

Heard in its raging ebb and flow

By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day

Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread

On the dim starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.

May 4th, 1818.