IX. Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love which overflows her bower: X. Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view: XI. Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. XII. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, All that ever was, Joyous and clear and fresh,-thy music doth surpass. XIII. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divire. XIV. Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want Warden Barchonte Tower THE ENGLISH POETS XV. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains! What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? XVI. With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. XVII. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? XVIII. We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought XIX. Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. XX. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! XXI. Teach me half the gladness The world should listen then as I am listening now. (1820.) FROM 'EPIPSYCHIDION: Verses ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY EMILIA VIVIANI, NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ST. ANNE, PISA.' Spouse! sister! angel! pilot of the fate Whose course has been so starless! O too late For in the fields of immortality My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, A divine presence in a place divine; Or should have moved beside it on this earth, Such difference without discord as can make Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion; though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread By the broad highway of the world, and so True love in this differs from gold and clay, The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, Mind from its object differs most in this: If you divide pleasure and love and thought, The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me! Is mine remain a vestal sister still; To the intense, the deep, the imperishable- The hour is come :-the destined star has isen Piercing its continents; like heaven's free breath, The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, The soul in dust and chaos. Emily, A ship is floating in the harbour now; Is a far Eden of the purple east ; And we between her wings will sit, while Night It is an isle under Ionian skies, And, for the harbours are not safe and good, |