The forest cracked, the waters curled, And wildly dashed on tower and tree And but for fancies, which aver That al thy motions gently pass I scarce could brock the strain and stir That makes the barren branches loud; The wild unrest that lives in woe That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire. XVI. WHAT words are these have fallen from me? Or sorrow such a changeling be? Or doth she only seem to take The touch of change in calm or storm; In her deep self, than some dead lake Hung in the shadow of a heaven? And staggers blindly ere she sink? And stunned me from my power to thin, And all my knowledge of myself; VOL. II. 2 And made me that delirious man XVII. THOU Comest, much wept for; such a breeze For I in spirit saw thee move Through circles of the bounding sky; Henceforth, wherever thou mayst roam, So may whatever tempest mars Mid-ocean spare thee, sacred bark; And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars. So kind an office hath been done, Such precious relics brought by thee; XVIII. TIs well, 'tis something, we may stand The violet of his native land. "Tis little; but it looks in truth Come, then, pure hands, and bear the head And hear the ritual of the dead. Ah! yet, even yet, if this might be, Would, breathing through his lips, impart The life that almost dies in me: That dies not, but endures with pain, XIX. THE Danube to the Severn gave The darkened heart that beat no more; And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills, The Wye is hushed nor moved along; I brim with sorrow drowning song. The tide flows down, the wave again And I can speak a little then. XX. THE lesser griefs, that may be said, That breathe a thousand tender vows, Who speak their feeling as it is, And weep the fulness from the mind "It will be hard," they say, "to find Another service such as this." My lighter moods are like to these, That out of words a comfort win; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freeze; For by the hearth the children sit Cold in that atmosphere of Death, And scarce endure to draw the breath, Or like to noiseless phantoms flit; But open converse is there none, To see the vacant chair, and think, XXI. I SING to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave, And make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then, And sometimes harshly will he speak : And melt the waxen hearts of men." Another answers, "Let him be; He loves to make parade of pain, That with his piping he may gain The praise that comes to constancy." A third is wroth: "Is this an hour For private sorrow's barren song, When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power? "A time to sicken and to swoon, When science reaches forth her arms To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon?" Behold, ye speak an idle thing: Ye never knew the sacred dust; I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing. And one is glad; her note is gay, For now her little ones have ranged: And one is sad; her note is changed, Because her brood is stolen away. XXII THE path by which we twain did go, And we with singing cheered the way, |