I call the phantoms of a thousand hours. Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers 65 Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious night They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. VII. The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind. Summer, 1816. 70 75 80 ON FANNY GODWIN. HER voice did quiver as we parted, Heeding not the words then spoken. This world is all too wide for thee. 5 LINES. I. THAT time is dead for ever, child, And stare aghast At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, To death on life's dark river. II. The stream we gazed on then, rolled by; But we yet stand In a lone land, Like tombs to mark the memory Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee November 5, 1817. 5 00 SONNET. OZYMANDIAS. I MET a traveller from an antique land 5 And on the pedestal these words appear : 1817. PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine; It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, Or like the sea on a northern shore, Heard in its raging ebb and flow By the captives pent in the cave below. Is a mighty mountain dim and gray, Which between the earth and sky doth lay; On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. May 4, 1818. THE PAST. I. 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, II. Forget the dead, the past? O yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, That joy, once lost, is pain. LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. OCTOBER, 1818. MANY a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of misery, Never thus could voyage on Day and night, and night and day, 5 10 15 In friendship's smile, in love's caress? Whether such there be or no : That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, 30 35 40 45 As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, Where a few gray rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: 50 |