THE WORLD'S WANDERER.

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day

Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest

On the tree or billow?

1820.

TO THE MOON.

ART thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,— And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

K

STANZAS.

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned—
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround—

Smiling they live and call life pleasure ;— To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament-for I am one
Whom men love not,-and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

1818.

A FRAGMENT.

YE gentle visitations of calm thought—
Moods like the memories of happier earth,
Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth,
Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought,
But that the clouds depart and stars remain,
While they remain, and ye, alas, depart!

THE FOREST AT EVENING.

IN silence then they took the way,
Beneath the forest's solitude.
It was a vast and antique wood,
Thro' which they took their way;
And the grey shades of evening
O'er that green wilderness did fling
Still deeper solitude.

Pursuing still the path that wound
The vast and knotted trees around
Thro' which slow shades were wandering,
To a deep lawny dell they came,
To a stone seat beside a spring,

O'er which the columned wood did frame
A roofless temple, like the fane

Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
Man's early race once knelt beneath

The overhanging deity.

The snake,

O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,
Now spangled with rare stars.
The pale snake, that with eager breath
Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,
Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
In the light of his own loveliness;
And the birds that in the fountain dip
Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
Above and round him wheel and hover.
The fitful wind is heard to stir

One solitary leaf on high;
The chirping of the grasshopper
Fills every pause. There is emotion
In all that dwells at noontide here:
Then, thro' the intricate wild wood,
A maze of life and light and motion
Is woven. But there is stillness now:
Gloom, and the trance of Nature now :
The snake is in his cave asleep;

The birds are on the branches dreaming:
Only the shadows creep:

Only the glow-worm is gleaming :
Only the owls and the nightingales
Wake in this dell when daylight fails,
And grey shades gather in the woods:
And the owls have all fled far away
In a merrier glen to hoot and play,
For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.
The accustomed nightingale still broods
On her accustomed bough,

But she is mute; for her false mate

Has fled and left her desolate.

Rosalind and Helen.

ITALY AND SORROW.

Alas! Italian winds are mild,

But my bosom is cold-wintry cold—

When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,

Soft music, my poor brain is wild,

And I am weak like a nursling child

Though my soul with grief is grey and old.