Of smiles and simple heaven grown tired,
He wickedly provokes her tears,
And when she weeps, as he desired,
Falls slain with ecstacies of fears;
He blames her though she has no fault,
Except the folly to be his :
He worships her, the more to exalt
The profanation of a kiss;
Health's his disease, he's never well
But when his paleness shames her rose;
His faith's a rock-built citadel,
It's sign a flag that each way blows;
His o'er-fed fancy frets and fumes;
And Love, in him, is fierce like Hate,
And ruffles his ambrosial plumes
Against the bars of time and fate.
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appear'd to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot-where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levell'd battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths.
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;
But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!
While Cæsar's chambers and the Augustan halls
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.-
And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up,
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries,
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old !—
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.-
I WISH that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of spring's delightful things; Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.
A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps ! There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births and the long evening-ends.
So, for their sakes be May still May,
Let their new time, as mine of old,
Do all it did for me: I bid
Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.
Only one little sight, one plant
Woods have in May, that starts up green
Save a sole streak, which, so to speak,
Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,
That, they might spare; a certain wood.
Might miss the plant; their loss were small:
But I,-whene'er the leaf grows there,
Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.
O WELL for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:
For him nor moves the loud world's random
Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock,
That, compass'd round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.
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