the fin le tead

When the sout a scat

The rainbow's glory is thed
When the late a broke

Sweet toes we remehed not;

When the Iga tare viken,
Loves, accents are soon forgot

As music and gjentera

Survive not the lamp and the late,
The heart's echoes render

No song, when the spirit is mute-
No song, but sad dirges,

Like the wind through a ruin'd cell,
Or the mournful surges

That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possesst.

O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

For your cradle, your home, and your bier ?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high;

Bright reason will mock thee

Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,

When leaves fall and cold winds come.

P. B. Shelley

CXCVI

THE MAID OF NEIDPATH

O lovers' eyes are sharp to see,
And lovers' ears in hearing;
And love, in life's extremity

Can lend an hour of cheering.
Disease had been in Mary's bower
And slow decay from mourning,
Though now she sits on Neidpath's tower
To watch her Love's returning.

All sunk and dim her eyes so bright,
Her form decay'd by pining,
Till through her wasted hand, at night,
You saw the taper shining.
By fits a sultry hectic hue

Across her cheek was flying;

By fits so ashy pale she grew

Her maidens thought her dying.

Yet keenest powers to see and hear
Seem'd in her frame residing;
Before the watch-dog prick'd his ear
She heard her lover's riding;
Ere scarce a distant form was kenn'd
She knew and waved to greet him,
And o'er the battlement did bend
As on the wing to meet him.

He came-he pass'd-an heedless gaze
As o'er some stranger glancing ;
Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase,
Lost in his courser's prancing-

193

The castle-arch, whose hollow tone
Returns each whisper spoken,
Could scarcely catch the feeble moan
Which told her heart was broken.

Sir W. Scott

CXCVII

THE MAID OF NEIDPATH

Earl March look'd on his dying child,
And smit with grief to view her—
The youth, he cried, whom I exiled
Shall be restored to woo her.

She's at the window many an hour
His coming to discover :
And he look'd up to Ellen's bower
And she look'd on her lover-

But ah! so pale, he knew her not,
Though her smile on him was dwelling—
And am I then forgot-forgot?

It broke the heart of Ellen.

In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs,

Her cheek is cold as ashes;

Nor love's own kiss shall wake those eyes

To lift their silken lashes.

T. Campbell

CXCVIII

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors :-

No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,-or else swoon to death.

J. Keats

CXCIX

THE TERROR OF DEATH

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piléd books, in charact'ry

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain ;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ;
And when I feel, fair Creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love-then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
J. Keats

CC

DESIDERIA

Surprized by joy-impatient as the wind-
I turn'd to share the transport-O with whom
But Thee-deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love recall'd thee to my mind-
But how could I forget thee? through what power
Even for the least division of an hour

Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

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

CCIII

One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdain'd

For thee to disdain it.