XX. TO AILSA ROCK. HEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid ! screams! When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams! When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid? How long is't since the mighty power bid Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams? Sleep in the lap of thunder or sun-beams, Or when gray clouds are thy cold cover-lid? Thou answer'st not, for thou art dead asleep! Thy life is but two dead eternities— The last in air, the former in the deep; First with the whales, last with the eagleskies Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant size. XXI. ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES. My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, That I have not the cloudy winds to keep XXII. TO HAYDON. (WITH THE PRECEDING SONNET.) HAYDON! forgive me that I cannot speak Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings, Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine; Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem? For, when men stared at what was most divine XXIII. WRITTEN IN THE COTTAGE WHERE BURNS WAS BORN. THIS mortal body of a thousand days Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room, Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays, Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom! My pulse is warm with thine old Barley-bree, My head is light with pledging a great soul, My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see, Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal; Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor, Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er- XXIV. TO THE NILE. SON of the old moon-mountains African! |