Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more-O never more!
I DREAM'D that as I wander'd by the way
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kiss'd it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colour'd May, 'And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold, Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold.
And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank't with white,
And starry river-buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprison'd children of the Hours Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay, I hasten'd to the spot whence I had come That I might there present it-O! to Whom?
BEST and Brightest, come away, Fairer far than this fair day, Which, like thee, to those in sorrow Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough year just awake In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon morn To hoar February born;
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kiss'd the forehead of the earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen mountains, 'And like a prophetess of May Strew'd flowers upon the barren way, Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear.
Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress Its music, lest it should not find An echo in another's mind, While the touch of Nature's art Harmonizes heart to heart.
Radiant Sister of the Day Awake! arise! and come away! To the wild woods and the plains, To the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun, Round stems that never kiss the sun, Where the lawns and pastures be And the sandhills of the sea, Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers and violets Which yet join not scent to hue Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dim and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal Sun.
THE RECOLLECTION
Now the last day of many days All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest and the last, is dead: Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up, do thy wonted work! come, trace The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the earth has changed its face, A frown is on the Heaven's brow.
We wander'd to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of Heaven lay;
It seem'd as if the hour were one Sent from beyond the skies Which scatter'd from above the sun A light of Paradise!
We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shape as rude As serpents interlaced,-
And soothed by every azure breath That under heaven is blown To harmonies and hues beneath, As tender as its own:
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea, 'As still as in the silent deep The ocean-woods may be.
How calm it was!-the silence there But such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew.
There seem'd, from the remotest seat Of the wide mountain waste To the soft flower beneath our feet A magic circle traced, A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life; To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature's strife;— And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there
Was one fair Form that fill'd with love The lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lie Under the forest bough; Each seem'd as 'twere a little sky Gulf'd in a world below; A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night
And purer than the day
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark-green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen
Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green:
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.
Like one beloved, the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast
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