CCI

A

T the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping,
I fly

To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;

And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air

To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there

And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky!

Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear When our voices, commingling, breathed like one on the ear;

And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,

I think, O my Love! 't is thy voice, from the Kingdom of Souls

Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. T. Moore

CCII

ELEGY ON THYRZA

ND thou art dead, as young and fair
aught of birth;

And forms so soft and charms so rare
Too soon return'd to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low
Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow
So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I loved and long must love
Like common earth can rot;

To me there needs no stone to tell
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last,
As fervently as thou

Who didst not change through all the past

And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours;
The worst can be but mine :

The sun that cheers, the storm that lours
Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine

That all those charms have pass'd away
I might have watch'd through long decay.

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd
Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,
The leaves must drop away.

And yet it were a greater grief

To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;

Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

I know not if I could have borne

To see thy beauties fade;
The night that follow'd such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath past,
And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;

As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept if I could weep,
My tears might well be shed
To think I was not near, to keep
One vigil o'er thy bed:

To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,

Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.

Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain
Than thus remember thee !
The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity

Returns again to me,

And more thy buried love endears
Than aught except its living years.
Lord Byron

'I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

'I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy's song.

'She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said "I love thee true."

""

'She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

'And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dream'd- Ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill's side.

'I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried "La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

"I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gapéd wide, And I awoke and found me here

On the cold hill's side.

'And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake And no birds sing.'

J. Keats

CXCIV

THE ROVER

'A WEARY lot is thine, fair maid,

A weary is

To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And press the rue for wine.

A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,

A doublet of the Lincoln green ·
No more of me you knew
My Love!
No more of me you knew.

'The morn is merry June, I trow,
The rose is budding fain;

But she shall bloom in winter snow
Ere we two meet again.'

He turn'd his charger as he spake
Upon the river shore,
He gave the bridle-reins a shake,
Said Adieu for evermore
My Love!
And adieu for evermore.'

Sir W. Scott