"And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake And no birds sing.'

7. Keats

CXCIV

THE ROVER

'A

WEARY lot is thine, fair maid,

A weary lot is thine!
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,

And press the rue for wine.
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,

A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green
No more of me you

knew

My Love! No more of me you knew.

*The morn is merry June, I trow,

The rose is budding fain ;
But she shall bloom in winter snow

Ere we two meet again.'
He turn’d his charger as he spake

Upon the river shore,
He gave the bridle-reins a shake,
Said ' Adieu for evermore

My Love!
And adieu for evermore.'

Sir W. Scott

CXCV

THE FLIGHT OF LOVE

WHEN

CHEN the lamp is shatter'd

The light in the dust lies dead
When the cloud is scatter'd,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remember'd not ;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
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 -
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

E

ARL 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

B.

RIGHT 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 a sweet unrest ;

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

7. Keats

CXCIX

THE TERROR OF DEATH

THEN I have fears that I may cease to be

,

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;