PHANTASMAGORIA.

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'Twas in that hour of soften'd light, More still than noon, than eve more bright, I sat alone: my spirit wrought

With some obscure but mournful thought.

On wall and floor the slanting ray
In golden lines of splendour lay,
Moveless, and clear, and mildly bright,
Like Gentleness in its delight.

Swiftly, yet calmly, o'er my soul

The spirit of sweet Nature stole ;

The mists that clogg'd my heart and brain Fell from me, like a captive's chain.

The anxious now, the gloomy here,
Seem'd, as by spell, to disappear;
The earth and heaven of other days,
With all their glories, met my gaze.

The ghosts of Nature's lovely things
Came fleeting by on spirit-wings;

And rapt, as in a changeful dream,

I

gave my bark to Memory's stream.

-I thought of deep-blue summer noons,
Of purple eves, and midnight moons;
Of long green lanes, and garden-bowers,
And fields ablaze with yellow flowers.

How sweet 'twas once to wake, and spy The first brief dawn o'erspread the sky, So broad, so clear, so pale, it seems Like the bright noon without its beams.

Or on spring morn through fields to fare,
'Midst the green smell, and soft warm air,
And, listening to the song-bird's trill,
With mystery of sweetness thrill.

How oft, at fall of winter night,
I'd watch'd the dark-red western light,
Hung, like a gloomy torch, on high,
Amidst the wild winds' revelry.

How hush'd I lay, while o'er my soul
The awfulness of darkness stole,

And listen'd, half the night-time long,
To Silence, and her murmuring song.

I thought of storms, what time the sun
Look'd brazen through the rain-clouds dun,*
Or glorious o'er the dropping earth
The sudden rainbow brighten'd forth.

Of quick-eyed lightning, and the wonder
Of the many-voiced thunder;

Of glittering frost, and pure white snow,
Spread like a sea o'er all below.

I thought of scenes where youth had been,
And regions but in spirit seen:

Soft grassy slopes, and winding floods,
And silent, shadowy, endless woods,
Where through green arches, window-bough'd,
Gleam broken sun and sever'd cloud.

"The rich brazen light of a rainy sunset."-COLERIDGE.

All goodly forms of air and earth Came forth, as from a second birth : Like wonders in some old romance,

One after one they met my glance :

And as they past, I seem'd to hear
A choral hymn from some far sphere,
Telling of beauty true and high,
That was, and is, and will not die.

THERE IS A LIGHT.

THERE is a light unseen of eye,
A light unborn of sun or star,
Pervading earth, and sea, and sky,
Beside us still, yet still afar :

A power, a charm, whose web is wrought Round all we see, or feel, or know,

Round all the world of sense and thought, Our love and hate, our joy and woe.

It

goes, it comes; like wandering wind, Unsought it comes, unbidden goes: Now flashing sunlike o'er the mind,

Now quench'd in dark and cold repose.

It sweeps o'er the great frame of things, As o'er a lyre of varied tone, Searching the sweets of all its strings,

Which answer to that touch alone.