Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high; 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 CCXL THE MAID OF NEIDPATH O lovers' eyes are sharp to see, Can lend an hour of cheering. All sunk and dim her eyes so bright, Till through her wasted hand, at night, 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 He came-he pass'd-an heedless gaze Sir W. Scott CCXLI Earl March look'd on his dying child, She's at the window many an hour And he look'd up to Ellen's bower But ah! so pale, he knew her not, It broke the heart of Ellen. In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs, Nor love's own kiss shall wake those eyes To lift their silken lashes. T. Campbell CCXLII Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou artNot 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 snow upon the mountains and the moors : No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, J. Keats CCXLIII 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-piled books, in charact'ry Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, And when I feel, fair Creature of an hour! Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Keats CCXLIV DESIDERIA Surprized by joy-impatient as the wind- Love, faithful love recall'd thee to my mind- Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss !—That thought's return Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more; CCXLV At 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, oh my Love! 'tis thy voice, from the King, dom of Souls Faintly answering still the notes that once were su dear. T. Moore CCXLVI ELEGY ON THYRZA And thou art dead, as young and fair And forms so soft and charms so rare Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low There flowers or weeds at will may grow It is enough for me to prove That what I loved, and long must love, To me there needs no stone to tell Yet did I love thee to the last, 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. |