Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind
And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,

Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral ;
332

And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that

gave

All the fragrance of summer, when summer was

gone.

Thus memory draws from delight, e'er it dies,

An essence that breathes of it many a year; Thus bright to my soul, as 'twas then to my eyes, Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer!-T. Moore.

CCCXXXVI.

THE PARTING.

WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted,
To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss ;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this!

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow;
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame :
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o'er me-
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee
Who knew thee too well:

Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met:
In silence I grieve

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?—

With silence and tears.-Lord Byron.

CCCXXXVII.

ONE WORD IS TOO OFTEN
PROFANED.

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

One feeling too falsely disdained

For thee to disdain it. One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother, And Pity from thee more dear Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not:
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

P. B. Shelley.

CCCXXXVIII.

THE HELLESPONT.

THE winds are high on Helle's wave,
As on that night of stormy water,
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, the brave,
The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter,
Oh! when alone along the sky
Her turret-torch was blazing high,
Though rising gale, and breaking foam,
And shrieking sea-birds warned him home;
And clouds aloft and tides below,
With signs and sounds, forbade to go,
He could not see, he would not hear,
Or sound or sign foreboding fear;
His eye but saw the star of love,
The only star it hailed above;
His ear but rang with Hero's song,
"Ye waves, divide not lovers long!"
That tale is old, but love anew

May nerve young hearts to prove as true.

The winds are high, and Helle's tide
Rolls darkly heaving to the main ;
And Night's descending shadows hide
That field with blood bedewed in vain,

The desert of old Priam's pride;

The tombs, sole relics of his reign,

All-save immortal dreams that could beguile
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle!
Oh! yet-for there my steps have been ;
These feet have pressed the sacred shore,
These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne-
Minstrel with thee to muse, to mourn,

To trace again those fields of yore,

Believing every hillock green

Contains no fabled hero's ashes, And that around the undoubted scene

Thine own "broad Hellespont" still dashes, Be long my lot, and cold were he

Who there could gaze, denying thee!

Lord Byron.

CCCXXXIX.

THE FUGITIVES.

THE waters are flashing,
The white hail is dashing,
The lightnings are glancing,
The hoar spray is dancing-
Away!

The whirlwind is rolling,

The thunder is tolling,

The forest is swinging,

The minster bells ringing

Come away!

The earth is like Ocean,

Wreck-strewn and in motion:

Bird, beast, man, and worm,
Have crept out of the storm-
Come away!

And She cried: "Ply the oar,

Put off gaily from shore!"