SONNET.-OZYMANDIAS.

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of

stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose

frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away."

LINES.

THAT time is dead for ever, child,
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past;

And stare aghast

At the spectres, wailing, pale, and ghast,

Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

The stream we gazed on then rolled by; Its waves are unreturning;

But we yet stand

In a lone land,

Like tombs to mark the memory

Of hopes and fears which fade and fly
In the light of life's dim morning.

5th November 1817.

ON FANNY GODWIN.

HER voice did quiver as we parted;
Yet knew I not that heart was broke
From which it came, and I departed

Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery O Misery,

This world is all too wide for thee!

LINES TO A CRITIC.

1. HONEY from silkworms who can gather, Or silk from the yellow bee?

The grass may grow in winter weather
As soon as hate in me,

2. Hate men who cant, and men who pray,

And men who rail, like thee;

An equal passion to repay

They are not coy like me.

3. Or seek some slave of power and gold
To be thy dear heart's mate;
Thy love will move that bigot cold
Sooner than me thy hate.

4. A passion like the one I prove
Cannot divided be;

I hate thy want of truth and love-
How should I then hate thee?

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818.

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. 4th May 1818.

ON A DEAD VIOLET.

TO MISS

THE odour from the flower is gone

Which like thy kisses breathed on me;

The colour from the flower is flown

Which glowed of thee and only thee!

A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,

It lies on my abandoned breast; And mocks the heart, which yet is warm With cold and silent rest.

I weep-my tears revive it not;

I sigh-it breathes no more on me : Its mute and uncomplaining lot

Is such as mine should be.

THE PAST.

WILT thou forget the happy hours
Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,
Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves instead of mould?

Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

Forget the dead, the past? Oh yet

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it!
Memories that make the heart a tomb,
Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,
And with ghastly whispers tell

That joy, once lost, is pain.