LINES.

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC.

INCE did she hold the gorgeous East in fee,

And was the safeguard of the West:
the worth

Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest child of Liberty.
She was a maiden city, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And when she took unto herself a mate,
She must espouse the everlasting sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid

When her long life hath reached its final day : Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade

Of that which once was great is passed away.

SCORN NOT THE SONNET.

CORN not the Sonnet; critic, you have frowned,

Mindless of its just honors; with this key

Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;

A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glowworm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-
land

To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet ; whence he blew Soul-animating strains, — alas! too few.

LINES

COMPOSED AT GRASMERE, ON RECEIVING TID

INGS OF THE APPROACHING DEATH OF CHARLES JAMES FOX.

Te

OUD is the Vale! the voice is up

With which she speaks when storms

are gone,

A mighty unison of streams!

Of all her voices, one!

Loud is the Vale! this inland depth
In peace is roaring like the sea;
Yon star upon the mountain-top
Is listening quietly.

Sad was I, even to pain depressed,
Importunate and heavy load!
The comforter hath found me here,
Upon this lonely road;

And many thousands now are sad,
Wait the fulfilment of their fear ;
For he must die who is their stay,
Their glory disappear.

A power is passing from the earth
To breathless Nature's dark abyss ;
And when the mighty pass away,
What is it more than this,

That man, who is from God sent forth,
Doth yet again to God return?
Such ebb and flow must ever be;
Then wherefore should we mourn?

LINES

ON A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM,

PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT.

WAS thy neighbor once, thou rugged pile !

Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight
of thee:

I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So

pure the sky, so quiet was the air! So like, so very like, was day to day! Whene'er I looked, thy image still was there; It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep,

No mood, which season takes away, or brings: I could have fancied that the mighty deep Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then, if mine had been the painter's hand,

To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,

The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream ;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile!
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss :

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house, a mine

Of peaceful years; a chronicle of Heaven :
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine,
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;