WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA.
SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom, Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.
O MARY dear, that you were here With your brown eyes bright and clear, And your sweet voice, like a bird
Singing love to its lone mate
In the ivy bower disconsolate; Voice the sweetest ever heard!
And your brow more
Mary dear, come to me soon, I am not well whilst thou art far; As sunset to the spherèd moon, As twilight to the western star, Thou, beloved, art to me.
O Mary dear, that you were here; The Castle echo whispers "Here!"
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
(With what truth I may say- Roma! Roma! Roma!
Non è più come era prima !)
My lost William, thou in whom Some bright spirit lived, and did That decaying robe consume Which its lustre faintly hid, Here its ashes find a tomb, But beneath this pyramid
Thou art not-if a thing divine Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine Is thy mother's grief and mine.
Where art thou, my gentle child ? Let me think thy spirit feeds, With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds, Among these tombs and ruins wild ;-
Let me think that through low seeds Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, Into their hues and scents may pass A portion-
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
THY little footsteps on the sands Of a remote and lonely shore;
The twinkling of thine infant hands, Where now the worm will feed no more:
Thy mingled look of love and glee
When we returned to gaze on thee.
LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.
THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, Sit spinning still round this decaying form, From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought— No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day
But a soft cell, where when that fades away, Memory may clothe in wings my living name And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me Grow, making love an immortality.
Whoever should behold me now, I wist, Would think I were a mighty mechanist, Bent with sublime Archimedean art To breathe a soul into the iron heart
Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, Which by the force of figured spells might win Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
For round the walls are hung dread engines, such As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch Ixion or the Titan ;- -or the quick
Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,
Or those in philanthropic council met,
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation, By giving a faint foretaste of damnation To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and the rest Who made our land an island of the blest,
When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire :- With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,
Which fishers found under the utmost crag
Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles, Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn When the exulting elements in scorn Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, As panthers sleep ;—and other strange and dread Magical forms the brick floor overspread- Proteus transformed to metal did not make More figures, or more strange; nor did he take Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass Of tin and iron not to be understood; And forms of unimaginable wood,
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovèd blocks,
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of wave and wind and time.-Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able
To catalogize in this verse of mine :— A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,
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