If dale it might be called so near to heaven,
A little lake, where never fish leaped up,
Lay like a spot of ink amid the snow;
A star, the only one in that small sky,

On its dead surface glimmering. 'Twas a scene
Resembling nothing I had left behind,

As though all worldly ties were now dissolved;
And to incline the mind still more to thought,
To thought and sadness, on the eastern shore
Under a beetling cliff stood half in shadow
A lonely chapel destined for the dead,
For such as, having wandered from their way,
Had perished miserably. Side by side,
Within they lie, a mournful company

All in their shrouds, no earth to cover them;
Their features full of life, yet motionless
In the broad day, nor soon to suffer change,
Though the barred windows, barred against the
wolf,

We wandered to the pine forest

That skirts the ocean's foam;
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced,

And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own:

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.

How calm it was! - the silence there

By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,
A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life;
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.

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;

Each seemed as 't were a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;

A firmament of purple light

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night
And purer than the day,

In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighboring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen

Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green :
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.

Like one beloved, the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With more than truth exprest;
Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought

Which from the mind's too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.

- Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,

Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind
Than calm in waters seen!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

TO THE WEST-WIND.

O WILD west-wind, thou breath of autumn's being,

Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion c'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill :
Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and

ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams
Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble, and despoil themselves: O hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed !
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless and swift and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is :
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

PERCY BYSshe Shelley.

WHAT THE WINDS BRING.

WHICH is the wind that brings the cold?

The north-wind, Freddy, and all the snow; And the sheep will scamper into the fold When the north begins to blow.

Which is the wind that brings the heat?

The south-wind, Katy; and corn will grow, And peaches redden for you to eat,

When the south begins to blow.

Which is the wind that brings the rain?

The east-wind, Arty; and farmers know That cows come shivering up the lane When the east begins to blow.

Which is the wind that brings the flowers? The west-wind, Bessy; and soft and low The birdies sing in the summer hours When the west begins to blow.

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

A VIEW ACROSS THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA. 1861.

I.

OVER the dumb campagna-sea,

Out in the offing through mist and rain,
St. Peter's Church heaves silently
Like a mighty ship in pain,

Facing the tempest with struggle and strain.

II.

Motionless waifs of ruined towers,

Soundless breakers of desolate land! The sullen surf of the mist devours That mountain-range upon either hand, Eaten away from its outline grand.

III.

And over the dumb campagna-sea

Fast frozen, and among huge blocks of ice
That in their long career had stopt midway;
At length, unchecked, unbidden, he stood still,
And all his bells were muffled. Then my guide,
Lowering his voice, addressed me: "Through
this chasm

On, and say nothing, for a word, a breath,
Stirring the air, may loosen and bring down
A winter's snow, enough to overwhelm

The Christ walks! Ay, but Peter's neck Is stiff to turn on the foundering deck.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

VIEW FROM THE EUGANEAN HILLS,
NORTH ITALY.

MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on

Day and night, and night and day,
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track;
Whilst above, the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail and cord and plank
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o'er-brimming deep;
And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;
And the dim low line before
Of a dark and distant shore
Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will,
But no power to seek or shun,
He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave,
To the haven of the grave.

Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide agony :
To such a one this morn was led
My bark, by soft winds piloted.

Mid the mountains Euganean

I stood listening to the pean
With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun's uprise majestical:
Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Through the dewy mist they soar

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
Flecked with fire and azure, lie

In the unfathomable sky,

So their plumes of purple grain

Starred with drops of golden rain Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes

On the morning's fitful gale
Through the broken mist they sail;
And the vapors cloven and gleaming
Follow down the dark steep streaming,
Till all is bright and clear and still
Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath day's azure eyes,
Ocean's nursling, Venice, lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright,

Column, tower, and dome, and spire
Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies;
As the flames of sacrifice

From the marble shrines did rise
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt city! thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier.

A less drear ruin then than now
With thy conquest-branded brow
Stooping to the slave of slaves
From thy throne among the waves,
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew
Flies, as once before it flew,
O'er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its ancient state,
Save where many a palace-gate,
With green sea-flowers overgrown
Like a rock of ocean's own,
Topples o'er the abandoned sea
As the tides change sullenly.
The fisher on his watery way
Wandering at the close of day
Will spread his sail and seize his oar
Till he pass the gloomy shore,

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep

Bursting o'er the starlight deep,
Lead a rapid mask of death
O'er the waters of his path.

Noon descends around me now:
"T is the noon of autumn's glow,
When a soft and purple mist
Like a vaporous amethyst,
Or an air-dissolvéd star
Mingling light and fragrance, far
From the curved horizon's bound
To the point of heaven's profound,
Fills the overflowing sky;
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath; the leaves unsodden
Where the infant frost has trodden
With his morning-winged feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines
Piercing with their trellised lines
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;

And my spirit, which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song,
Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky;

Be it love, light, harmony,
Odor, or the soul of all

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noon.
Autumn's evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister

Half the crimson light she brings
From the sunset's radiant springs:
And the soft dreams of the morn
(Which like wingéd winds had borne
To that silent isle, which lies
Mid remembered agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being)
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.
Other flowering isles must be
In the sea of life and agony ;

Other spirits float and flee

O'er that gulf; even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folding winds they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it

To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love,
May a windless bower be built,
Far from passion, pain, and guilt,
In a dell mid lawny hills

Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
And soft sunshine, and the sound
Of old forests echoing round,
And the light and smell divine

Of all flowers that breathe and shine.

- We may live so happy there,

That the spirits of the air,
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing paradise

The polluting multitude;

But their rage would be subdued

By that clime divine and calm,

And the winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves
Under which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies;

And the love which heals all strife
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood.
They, not it, would change; and soon
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again!

PERCY BYSSHE SHElley.

THE ORIENT.

"
FROM THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS."

KNOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever

shine :

Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,

Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gúl in her bloom! Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute, Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,

Now, upon Syria's land of roses
Softly the light of eve reposes,
And, like a glory, the broad sun
Hangs over sainted Lebanon ;
Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
And whitens with eternal sleet,
While summer, in a vale of flowers,
Is sleeping rosy at his feet.

To one who looked from upper air
O'er all the enchanted regions there,
How beauteous must have been the glow,
The life, how sparkling from below!
Fair gardens, shining streams, with ranks
Of golden melons on their banks,
More golden where the sunlight falls;
Gay lizards, glittering on the walls
Of ruined shrines, busy and bright
As they were all alive with light;

And, yet more splendid, numerous flocks
Of pigeons, settling on the rocks,
With their rich restless wings, that gleam
Variously in the crimson beam

-

Of the warm west, as if inlaid
With brilliants from the mine, or made
Of tearless rainbows, such as span

The unclouded skies of Peristan !
And then, the mingling sounds that come,
Of shepherd's ancient reed, with hum
Of the wild bees of Palestine,

Banqueting through the flowery vales ; And, Jordan, those sweet banks of thine, And woods, so full of nightingales!

THOMAS Moore.

THE VALE OF CASHMERE.

FROM "THE LIGHт of the HAREM. WHO has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, With its roses the brightest that earth ever

gave,