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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!

A DREAM OF THE UNKNOWN

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,

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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?

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THE INVITATION

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-

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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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