On him the world hath never smiled
Or look'd but with accusing eye ;-
All-silent goddess of the wild,
To thee that misanthrope shall fly !
I hear his deep soliloquy,

I mark his proud but ravaged form,
As stern he wraps his mantle round,
And bids, on winter's bleakest ground,
Defiance to the storm.

Peace to his banish'd heart, at last,
In thy dominions shall descend,
And, strong as beechwood in the blast,
His spirit shall refuse to bend ;
Enduring life without a friend,

The world and falsehood left behind,
Thy votary shall bear elate,
(Triumphant o'er opposing Fate,)
His dark inspired mind.

But dost thou, Folly, mock the Muse
A wanderer's mountain walk to sing,
Who shuns a warring world, nor woos
The vulture cover of its wing?

Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing, Back to the fostering world beguiled,

To waste in self-consuming strife The loveless brotherhood of life, Reviling and reviled !

Away, thou lover of the race

That hither chased yon weeping deer! If Nature's all majestic face

More pitiless than man's appear;

Or if the wild winds seem more drear Than man's cold charities below,

Behold around his peopled plains, Where'er the social savage reigns, Exuberance of woe!

His art and honours wouldst thou seek
Emboss'd on grandeur's giant walls?
Or hear his moral thunders speak
Where senates light their airy halls,
Where man his brother man enthralls;
Or sends his whirlwind warrants forth
To rouse the slumbering fiends of war,
To dye the blood-warm waves afar,
And desolate the earth?

From clime to clime pursue the scene,
And mark in all thy spacious way,
Where'er the tyrant man has been,
There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay;
In wilds and woodlands far away
She builds her solitary bower,

Where only anchorites have trod,
Or friendless men, to worship God,
Have wander'd for an hour.

In such a far forsaken vale,

And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,

Afflicted nature shall inhale

Heaven-borrow'd thoughts and joys divine;
No longer wish, no more repine

For man's neglect or woman's scorn ;—
Then wed thee to an exile's lot,

For if the world hath loved thee not,

Its absence may be borne.

THE DEATH-BOAT OF HELIGOLAND.

CAN restlessness reach the cold sephulcred head?

Ay, the quick have their sleep-walkers, so have the dead.
There are brains, though they moulder, that dream in the tomb,
And that maddening forehear the last trumpet of doom,

Till their corses start sheeted to revel on earth,
Making horror more deep by the semblance of mirth :
By the glare of new-lighted volcanoes they dance,
Or at mid-sea appal the chill'd mariner's glance.
Such, I wot, was the band of cadaverous smile
Seen ploughing the night-surge of Heligo's isle.

The foam of the Baltic had sparkled like fire,
And the red moon look'd down with an aspect of ire;
But her beams on a sudden sick-like and grey,
grew

And the mews that had slept clang'd and shriek'd far away –

And the buoys and the beacons extinguish'd their light,

As the boat of the stony-eyed dead came in sight,

High bounding from billow to billow; each form
Had its shroud like a plaid flying loose to the storm ;
With an oar in each pulseless and icy-cold hand,
Fast they plough'd by the lee-shore of Heligoland,
Such breakers as boat of the living ne'er cross'd;
Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptoss'd;
And with livid lips shouted reply o'er the flood
To the challenging watchman that curdled his blood-
'We are dead-we are bound from our graves in the west,
First to Hecla, and then to -'Unmeet was the rest

For man's ear. The old abbey bell thunder'd its clang,
And their eyes gleam'd with phosphorous light as it rang:
Ere they vanished, they stopp'd, and gazed silently grim,
Till the eye could define them, garb, feature, and limb.

Now who were those roamers?-of gallows or wheel
Bore they marks, or the mangling anatomist's steel?
No, by magistrates' chains 'mid their grave-clothes you saw
They were felons too proud to have perish'd by law :
But a ribbon that hung where a rope should have been,
'Twas the badge of their faction, its hue was not green,
Showed them men who had trampled and tortured and driven
To rebellion the fairest Isle breathed on by Heaven,—
Men whose heirs would yet finish the tyrannous task,
If the Truth and the Time had not dragg'd off their mask.
They parted-but not till the sight might discern

A scutcheon distinct at their pinnace's stern,

Where letters emblazon'd in blood-colour'd flame,
Named their faction-I blot not my page with its name.

WHEN LOVE came first to earth, the SPRING
Spread rose-beds to receive him,

And back he vow'd his flight he'd wing
To Heaven, if she should leave him.

But SPRING departing, saw his faith
Pledged to the next new comer-

He revell'd in the warmer breath

And richer bowers of SUMMER.