Imatges de pàgina
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Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

The stagnate night: - till the minutest ray

Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.

It paused it fluttered. But when heaven remained
Utterly black, the murky shades involved

An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame
No sense, no motion, no divinity—

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings

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The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream

Once fed with many-voiced waves a dream

Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, 670

Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible

For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn

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Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,

The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its slemn voice: - but thou art fled.
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips

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So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes

That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear

Be shed — not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone

In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory

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Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,

And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain

To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe too 'deep for tears,' when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;

But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,

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W

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Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

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Autumn, 1815. ·

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD,

LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
And pallid evening twines its beaming hair

In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day:
Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men,

Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen:

They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;

Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,

Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

Thou too, aërial Pile! whose pinnacles

Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,

Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,

Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height

Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,

And mingling with the still night and mute sky
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night :
Here could I hope, like some enquiring child

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Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

September, 1815.

LINĖS.

I.

THE cold earth slept below,

Above the cold sky shone;

And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

II.

The wintry hedge was black,

The green grass was not seen,

The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack,
Which the frost had made between.

III.

Thine eyes glowed in the glare

Of the moon's dying light;

As a fenfire's beam on a sluggish stream

Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,

And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

IV.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved
The wind made thy bosom chill

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The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

November, 1815.

TO WORDSWORTH.

POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know

That things depart which never may return :
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar :
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

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1816.

ΙΟ

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.

I.

THE awful shadow of some unseen Power

world without Power

Floats though unseen amongst us, visiting
This various world with as inconstant_wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,-

inferior

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