Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth,
Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth.

Yet there will still be bards: though fate is smoke,
Its fumes are frankincense to human thought;
And the unquiet feelings, which first woke

Song in the world, will seek what then they sought;
As on the beach the waves at last are broke,

Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought
Dash into poetry, which is but a passion,-
Or at least was so ere it grew a fashion.

If in the course of such a life as was

At once adventurous and contemplative,
Men who partake all passions as they pass,
Acquire the deep and bitter power to give
Their images again as in a glass,

And in such colours that they seem to live;
You may do right forbidding them to show 'em,
But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.

LOVE AND GLORY.

O LOVE! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?

There's not a meteor in the polar sky

Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.
Chill, and chain'd to cold earth, we lift on high
Our eyes in search of either lovely light;
A thousand and a thousand colours they
Assume, then leave us on our freezing way.

THE MANIAC.

A VEIN had burst, and her sweet lips' pure dyes*
Were dabbled with the deep blood which ran o'er;
And her head droop'd as when the lily lies

O'ercharged with rain; her summon'd handmaids bore
Their lady to her couch with gushing eyes;

Of herbs and cordials they produced their store,

But she defied all means they could employ,
Like one life could not hold, nor death destroy.
Days lay she in that state unchanged, though chill-
With nothing livid, still her lips were red;

She had no pulse, but death seem'd absent still;
No hideous sign proclaim'd her surely dead;

*This is no very uncommon effect of the violence of conflicting and different passions. The Doge Francis Foscari, on his deposition in 1457, hearing the bells of St. Mark announce the election of his successor. "mourut subitement d'une hémorragie causée par une veine qui s'éclata dans sa poitrine" (see Sismondi and Daru, vols. i. and ii.) at the age of eighty years, when "Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him " Before I was sixteen years of age, I was witness to a melancholy instance of the same effect of mixed passions upon a young person, who, however, did not die in consequence, at that time, but fell a victim some years afterwards to a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected with agitation of mind.

Corruption came not in each mind to kill

All hope; to look upon her sweet face bred
New thoughts of life, for it seem'd full of soul-
She had so much, earth could not claim the whole.
The ruling passion, such as marble shows

When exquisitely chisell'd, still lay there,
But fix'd as marble's unchanged aspect throws
O'er the fair Venus, but for ever fair;
O'er the Laocoon's all-eternal throes,
And ever-dying Gladiator's air,

Their energy like life forms all their fame,
Yet looks not life, for they are still the same.-
She woke at length, but not as sleepers wake,
Rather the dead, for life seem'd something new,
A strange sensation which she must partake
Perforce, since whatsoever met her view
Struck not her memory, though a heavy ache
Lay at her heart, whose earliest beat still true
Brought back the sense of pain without the cause,
For, for a while, the furies made a pause.
She look'd on many a face with vacant eye,
On many a token without knowing what;
She saw them watch her without asking why;
And reck'd not who around her pillow sat;
Not speechless, though she spoke not; not a sigh
Relieved her thoughts; dull silence and quick chat
Were tried in vain by those who served; she gave
No sign, save breath, of having left the grave.
Her handmaids tended, but she heeded not;
Her father watch'd, she turn'd her eyes away;
She recognized no being, and no spot,

However dear or cherish'd in their day;

They changed from room to room, but all forgot,
Gentle, but without memory she lay ;

At length those eyes, which they would fain be weaning Back to old thoughts, wax'd full of fearful meaning;

And then a slave bethought her of a harp;

The harper came, and tuned his instrument:

At the first notes, irregular and sharp,

On him her flashing eyes a moment bent,

Then to the wall she turn'd as if to warp

Her thoughts from sorrow through her heart re-sent; And he began a long low island song

Of ancient days, ere tyranny grew strong.

Anon her thin wan fingers beat the wall

In time to his old tune; he changed the theme,

And sung of love; the fierce name struck through all Her recollection: on her flash'd the dream

Of what she was, and is, if ye could call

To be so being; in a gushing stream

The tears rush'd forth from her o'erclouded brain,
Like mountain mists at length dissolved in rain.

Short solace, vain relief!-thought came too quick,
And whirl'd her brain to madness; she arose
As one who ne'er had dwelt among the sick,
And flew at all she met, as on her foes;
But no one ever heard her speak or shriek,
Although her paroxysm drew towards its close ;-
Hers was a frenzy which disdain'd to rave,
Even when they smote her, in the hope to save.
Yet she betray'd at times a gleam of sense;
Nothing could make her meet her father's face,
Though on all other things with looks intense
She gazed, but none she ever could retrace;
Food she refused, and raiment; no pretence

Avail'd for either; neither change of place,
Nor time, nor skill, nor remedy, could give her
Senses to sleep-the power seem'd gone for ever.
Twelve days and nights she wither'd thus; at last,
Without a groan, or sigh, or glance, to show
A parting pang, the spirit from her pass'd:

And they who watch'd her nearest could not know The very instant, till the change that cast

Her sweet face into shadow, dull and slow, Glazed o'er her eyes-the beautiful, the blackOh! to possess such lustre-and then lack! That isle is now all desolate and bare,

Its dwellings down, its tenants pass'd away; None but her own and father's grave is there, And nothing outward tells of human clay : Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair, No stone is there to show, no tongue to say What was; no dirge, except the hollow sea's, Mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades.

THE BLACK FRIAR.

BEWARE! beware! of the Black Friar,
Who sitteth by Norman stone,

For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air,
And his mass of the days that are gone.

When the Lord of the Hill, Amundeville,

Made Norman Church his prey,

And expell'd the friars, one friar still

Would not be driven away.

Though he came in his might, with King Henry's right, To turn church lands to lay,

With sword in hand, and torch to light

Their walls, if they said nay;

A monk remain'd, unchased, unchain'd,

And he did not seem form'd of clay,

For he's seen in the porch, and he's seen in the church, Though he is not seen by day.

And whether for good, or whether for ill,
It is not mine to say;

But still with the house of Amundeville
He abideth night and day.

By the marriage-bed of their lords, 'tis said,
He flits on the bridal eve;

And 'tis held as faith, to their bed of death
He comes but not to grieve.

When an heir is born, he's heard to mourn,
And when aught is to befall

That ancient line, in the pale moonshine
He walks from hall to hall.

His form you may trace, but not his face
"Tis shadow'd by his cowl:

But his eyes may be seen from the folds between,
And they seem of a parted soul.

But beware! beware! of the Black Friar,
He still retains his sway,
For he is yet the Church's heir,
Whoever may be the lay.
Amundeville is lord by day,

But the monk is lord by night;

Nor wine nor wassail could raise a vassal,
To question that friar's right.

Say nought to him as he walks the hall,
And he'll say nought to you;

He sweeps along in his dusky pall,
As o'er the grass the dew.

Then grammercy! for the Black Friar ;
Heaven sain him! fair or foul,

And whatsoe'er may be his prayer,
Let ours be for his soul.

NORMAN OR NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

To Norman Abbey whirl'd the noble pair,-
An old, old monastery once, and now
Still older mansion,-of a rich and rare
Mix'd Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare
Withal it lies perhaps a little low,
Because the monks preferr'd a hill behind
To shelter their devotion from the wind.
It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak
Stood like Caractacus in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke ;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters-as day awoke

The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.

Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a river, which its soften'd way did take

In currents through the calmer water spread
Around the wildfowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed;
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix'd upon the flood.

Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade,
Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding,
Its shriller echoes-like an infant made

Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding

Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art:

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march,
In gazing on that venerable arch.

Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone;

But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,

When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone,—

The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign.

But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child, With her Son in her bless'd arms, look'd round,

Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd ; She made the earth below seem holy ground. This may be superstition, weak or wild,

But even the faintest relics of a shrine

Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.
A mighty window, hollow in the centre,

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,

Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter;
Streaming from off the sun like seraphs' wings,
Now yawns all desolate now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire.

But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is wingèd from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven