IX.

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love which overflows her bower:

X.

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

XI.

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

XII.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,—

All that ever was,

Joyous and clear and fresh,-thy music doth surpass.

XIII.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

XIV.

Chorus hymeneal

Or triumphal chaunt,

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

XV.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

XVI.

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be :

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

XVII.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

XVIII.

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

XIX.

Yet, if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear,

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

XX.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

XXI.

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow

The world should listen then as I am listening now.

(1820.)

FROM 'EPIPSYCHIDION: VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY EMILIA VIVIANI, NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ST. ANNE, PISA.'

Spouse! sister! angel! pilot of the fate

Whose course has been so starless! O too late
Beloved, O too soon adored, by me!

For in the fields of immortality

My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,
A divine presence in a place divine;

Or should have moved beside it on this earth,
A shadow of that substance, from its birth:
But not as now. I love thee; yes, I feel
That on the fountain of my heart a seal
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright
For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight.
We are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?

Such difference without discord as can make
Those sweetest sounds in which all spirits shake,
As trembling leaves in a continuous air.

Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
I never was attached to that great sect

Whose doctrine is that each one should select

Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,

And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend

To cold oblivion; though it is in the code

Of modern morals, and the beaten road

Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

True love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination, which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error the worm with many a sunlike arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow

The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates,
One object and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity!

Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness;
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;

If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gain, of sorrow spared.
This truth is that deep well whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
By which those live to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this elysian earth.

The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me!
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality

Is mine remain a vestal sister still;

To the intense, the deep, the imperishable-
Not mine, but me-henceforth be thou united,
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.

The hour is come :-the destined star has risen
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
The sentinels-but true Love never yet
Was thus constrained. It overleaps all fence:
Like lightning, with invisible violence

Piercing its continents; like heaven's free breath,
Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
Of arms. More strength has Love than he or they;
For it can burst his charnel, and make free

The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,

The soul in dust and chaos.

Emily,

A ship is floating in the harbour now;
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,-
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross whose nest

Is a far Eden of the purple east ;

And we between her wings will sit, while Night And Day and Storm and Calm pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless sea,

Treading each other's heels, unheededly.

It is an isle under Ionian skies,

Beautiful as a wreck of paradise ;

And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude