Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp The stagnate night: - till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. It paused it fluttered. But when heaven remained An image, silent, cold, and motionless, As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings 655 660 665 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, For life and power, even when his feeble hand 675 680 685 Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast fled! The child of grace and genius. Heartless things Lifts still its slemn voice: - but thou art fled. 690 695 700 So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes That image sleep in death, upon that form Be shed — not even in thought. Nor, when those hues Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone In the frail pauses of this simple strain, 705 Of that which is no more, or painting's woe And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 710 W 715 Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 720 Autumn, 1815. · A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day: Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen: They breathe their spells towards the departing day, 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 And mingling with the still night and mute sky Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild 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, II. The wintry hedge was black, The green grass was not seen, The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast, 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, IV. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved The night did shed on thy dear head November, 1815. TO WORDSWORTH. POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return : Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. 1816. ΙΟ HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. I. THE awful shadow of some unseen Power world without Power Floats though unseen amongst us, visiting inferior |