As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march,

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky:

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air.

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

P. B. Shelley.

A RAILWAY JOURNEY.

HE young oak casts its delicate shadow

Over the still and emerald meadow;

The sheep are cropping the fresh spring grass,
And never raise their heads as we pass;
The cattle are taking their noon-day rest,
And chewing the cud with a lazy zest,
Or, bathing their feet in the reedy pool,
Switch their tails in the shadows cool;

But away, away, we may not stay,

Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,
And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,

On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won
the set of the sun.

Two white clouds are poised on high,
Sunning their wings in the azure sky;
Two white swans float to and fro
Languidly in the stream below,
As it sleeps beneath a beechwood tall,
Clouds, and swans, and trees, and all,

ere

Image themselves in the quiet stream,
Passing their lives in a sunny dream;

But away, away, we may not stay,

Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,
And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,

On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won
the set of the sun.

ere

Under the tall cliffs, green and deep,
The ocean rests in its mid-day sleep;
The waves are heaving lazily

Where the purple sea-weeds float;
Sunbeams cross on the distant sea,

Speck'd by the sail of the fisher's boat;

But away, away, we may not stay,

Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,

And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,

On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won the set of the sun.

Into the deep dell's still retreat,

Where the river rushes beneath our feet,

Skirting the base of moorland hills,

By the side of rocky rills.

ere

Where the wild-bird bathes and plumes its wing,
Where the fields are fresh with the breath of spring,
Where the earth is hush'd in her noon-day prayer,
No place so secret but we come there.
On nature's mid-day sleep we break,
And are miles away ere her echoes wake;
We startle the wood-nymphs in their play,
And ere they can hide are away, away!

Away, away, we may not stay,

Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,
And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,

On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won ere the set of the sun.

The Author of "The Three Wakings."

MOONLIGHT ON THE SEA.

IT is the midnight hour:-the beauteous sea,
Calm as the cloudless heaven, the heaven discloses,
While many a sparkling star, in quiet glee,
Far down within the watery sky reposes.

As if the Ocean's heart were stirr'd

With inward life, a sound is heard,

Like that of dreamer murmuring in his sleep;
'Tis partly the billow, and partly the air

That lies like a garment floating fair

Above the happy deep.

The sea, I ween, cannot be fann'd

By evening freshness from the land,

For the land it is far away;

But God hath will'd that the sky-born breeze

In the centre of the loneliest seas

Should ever sport and play.

The mighty Moon she sits above,
Encircled with a zone of love,

A zone of dim and tender light,

That makes her wakeful eye more bright;