ONE word is too often profaned For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it.
One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not, The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
WHEN the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead- When the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed. When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute :— No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell, Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell. When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest, The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possest. O, Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home and your bier?
Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high: Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
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 form all others, life and love.
WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE.
ARIEL to Miranda.-Take This slave of Music, for the sake Of him who is the slave of thee, And teach it all the harmony In which thou canst, and only thou, Make the delighted spirit glow, Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain; For by permission and command Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, Poor Ariel sends this silent token Of more than ever can be spoken; Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who, From life to life, must still pursue Your happiness ;-for thus alone Can Ariel ever find his own. From Prospero's inchanted cell, As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples, he Lit you o'er the trackless sea, Flitting on, your prow before, Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon, In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell Than deserted Ariel.
When you live again on earth, Like an unseen star of birth, Ariel guides you o'er the sea Of life from your nativity. Many changes have been run, Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps, and served your will;
Now, in humbler, happier lot,
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is Imprisoned, for some fault of his, In a body like a grave ;-
From you he only dares to crave, For his service and his sorrow, A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.
The artist who this idol wrought, To echo all harmonious thought, Felled a tree, while on the steep The woods were in their winter sleep, Rocked in that repose divine On the wind-swept Apennine; And dreaming, some of Autumn past, And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers, And some of songs in July bowers, And all of love; and so this tree,- O that such our death may be !- Died in sleep, and felt no pain, To live in happier form again :
From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, The artist wrought this loved Guitar, And taught it justly to reply, To all who question skilfully, In language gentle as thine own; Whispering in enamoured tone Sweet oracles of woods and dells, And summer winds in sylvan cells; For it had learnt all harmonies Of the plains and of the skies, Of the forests and the mountains, And the many-voiced fountains; The clearest echoes of the hills, The softest notes of falling rills, The melodies of birds and bees, The murmuring of summer seas, And pattering rain, and breathing dew, And airs of evening; and it knew That seldom-heard mysterious sound, Which, driven on its diurnal round, As it floats through boundless day, Our world enkindles on its way— All this it knows, but will not tell To those who cannot question well The spirit that inhabits it; It talks according to the wit Of its companions; and no more
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