Come, months, come away, year, For the year; To his dwelling; of the dead cold year, THE CLOUD. From the seas and the streams ; In their noonday dreams. The sweet birds every one, As she dances about the sun. And whiten the green plains under, And laugh as I pass in thunder. And their great pines groan aghast ; While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Lightning my pilot sits, It struggles and howls at fits ; This pilot is guiding me, In the depths of the purple sea ; Over the lakes and the plains, The Spirit he loves remains ; Whilst he is dissolving in rains. And his burning plumes outspread, When the morning star shines dead. As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, As still as a brooding dove. Whom mortals call the moon, By the midnight breezes strewn; Which only the angels hear, The stars peep behind her and peer ; Like a swarm of golden bees, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Are each paved with the moon and these. And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. Over a torrent sea, The mountains its columns be. With hurricane, fire, and snow, Is the million-coloured bow: While the moist earth was laughing below. And the nursling of the sky; I change, but I cannot die. The pavilion of heaven is bare, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, and out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. AN EXHORTATION. Poets' food is love and same. Poets could but find the same Would they ever change their hue As the light chameleons do, Twenty times a day? As chameleons might be In a cave beneath the sea. Where love is not, poets do. Fame is love disguised: if few That poets range. A poet's free and heavenly mind. Any food but beams and wind, As their brother lizards are. Children of a sunnier star, Oh ! resuse the boon ! LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS, OCTOBER, 1818. He is ever drifted on O'er the unreposing wave Never thus could voyage on To the haven of the grave. Day and night, and night and day, What, if there no friends will greet; Drifting on his dreary way, What, if there no heart will meet With the solid darkness black His with love's impatient beat; Closing round his vessel's track; Wander wheresoe'er he may, Whilst above the sunless sky. Can he dream before that day Big with clouds, hangs heavily, To find refuge from distress And behind the tempest fleet In friendship's smile, in love's caress? Hurries on with lighining seet, Then 'twill wreak him little woe Riving sail, and cord, and plank, Whether such there be or no: Till the ship has almost drank Senseless is the breast, and cold, Death from the o'er-brimming deep; Which relenting love would fold; And sinks down, down, like that sleep Bloodless are the veins and chill When the dreamer seems to be Which the pulse of pain did fill; Weltering through eternity; Every little living nerve And the dim low line before That from bitter words did swerve Of a dark and a distant shore Round the tortured lips and brow, Still recedes, as ever still Are like sapless leaflets now Longing with divided will, Frozen upon December's bough. On the level quivering line On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, Where a few grey rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: Nor is heard one voice of wail But the seamews, as they sail O'er the billows of the gale; Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town, When a king in glory rides Through the pomp of fratricides: Those unburied bones around There is many a mournful sound; There is no lameni for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim, Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves por murmurs not. Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony: To such a one this morn was led, My bark by soft winds piloted: 'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the pæan, With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Torough the dewy mist they soar Like grcy shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain, Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes On the morning's fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail, And the vapours cloven and gleaming Foilow down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill. Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath day's azure eyes Ocean's nursling. Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half reclined Sun-girt City, thou hast been Those who alone thy towers behold Twining memories of old time By the skirts of that grey cloud Many-domed Padua proud Stands, a peopled solitude, 'Mid the harvest shining plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe, And the milk-white oxen slow With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage wild; And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction's harvest home: Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. Padua, thou within whose walls Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, “I win, I win !" And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, When the destined years were o'er, Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian. Sin smiled so as Sin only can, And since that time, ay, long before, Both have ruled from shore to shore, · That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time. In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning ; Like a meteor, whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray: Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth : Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might; But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by tyranny. As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells, Lo, the sun floats up the sky |