A LAMENT. O World! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before,- Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh Spring, and Summer, and Winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief,-but with delight No more-oh never more! ΤΟ One word is too often profaned One feeling too falsely disdained One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother; I can give not what men call love: The worship the heart lifts above, And the Heavens reject not: The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow? (1821.) (1821.) LAST CHORUS OF 'HELLAS.' The world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star; Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, And loves, and weeps, and dies; Oh write no more the tale of Troy, Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, Oh cease! must hate and death return? The world is weary of the past, Oh might it die or rest at last! LINES. L. When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead; When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow's glory is shed; When the lute is broken, Sweet notes are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot. II. As music and splendour No song when the spirit is mute :— Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman's knell. (1822.) III. When hearts have once mingled, To endure what it once possessed. Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? IV. Its passions will rock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter When leaves fall and cold winds come. TO JANE--THE RECOLLECTION. I. We wandered to the pine-forest That skirts the ocean's foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The whispering waves were half asleep, And on the bosom of the deep It seemed as if the hour were one Which scattered from above the sun (1822.) II. We paused amid the pines that stood, The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude And soothed, by every azure breath Now all the tree-tops lay asleep Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean-woods may be. III. How calm it was!-The silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller with her sound The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less To the soft flower beneath our feet, A spirit interfused around, To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature's strife. And still, I felt, the centre of The magic circle there Was one fair form that filled with love The lifeless atmosphere. |