Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot? Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? O, Liberty! if such could be thy name

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee: If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears?

harmony

The solemn

Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn ;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aërial golden light
On the heavy sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain;
As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;
As a far taper fades with fading night,

As a brief insect dies with dying day, My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous

play.

F

Poems on Time and its Changes.

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.

TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ; Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea?

1821.

THE SEASONS.

THE blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds Over the earth,-next come the snows, and rain, And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train; Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again, Shedding soft dews from her ætherial wings;

Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

Poems on Time and its Changes.

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.

TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ; Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea?

1821.

THE SEASONS.

THE blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain, And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train; Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again, Shedding soft dews from her ætherial wings;

Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.