MUTABILITY.

THE flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;

All that we wish to stay

Tempts and then flies.

What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright.

Virtue, how frail it is!

Friendship how rare!

Love, how it sells poor bliss

For proud despair!

But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all

Which ours we call.

Whilst skies are blue and bright, Whilst flowers are gay,

Whilst eyes that change ere night Make glad the day;

Whilst yet the calm hours creep, Dream thou-and from thy sleep

Then wake to weep.

TO-MORROW.

WHERE art thou, beloved To-morrow?
When young and old and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,

Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,

In thy place-ah! well-a-day!
We find the thing we fled-To-day.

1821.

LINES.

IF I walk in Autumn's even
While the dead leaves pass,
If I look on Spring's soft heaven,-
Something is not there which was.
Winter's wondrous frost and snow,
Summer's clouds, where are they now?

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?

O 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.

1818.

TIME LONG PAST.

LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is time long past.

A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,

Was time long past.

There were sweet dreams in the night
Of time long past;

And, was it sadness or delight,

Each day a shadow onward cast

Which made us wish it yet might last

That time long past.

There is regret, almost remorse,
For time long past.

'Tis like a child's beloved corse
A father watches, till at last

Beauty is like remembrance cast
From time long past.

1820.

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 flee
In the light of life's dim morning.

Songs of Love.

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle ;—
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?