Long life to the grape! for when summer is flown,
The age of our nectar shall gladden our own:

We must die-who shall not?-May our sins be forgiven,

And Hebe shall never be idle in heaven.

STANZAS WRITTEN IN PASSING THE AMBRACIAN GULF.

THROUGH cloudless skies, in silvery sheen,
Full beams the moon on Actium's coast:
And on these waves, for Egypt's queen,
The ancient world was won and lost.

And now upon the scene I look,

The azure grave of many a Roman ;
Where stern Ambition once forsook

His wavering crown to follow woman.

Florence! whom I will love as well
As ever yet was said or sung

(Since Orpheus sang his spouse from hell),
Whilst thou art fair and I am young;

Sweet Florence! those were pleasant times, When worlds were staked for ladies' eyes: Had bards as many realms as rhymes,

Thy charms might raise new Antonies.

Though Fate forbids such things to be,
Yet, by thine eyes and ringlets curl'd!
I cannot lose a world for thee,

But would not lose thee for a world.

"Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!"

AND thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth!

Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,

There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I loved, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot;

To me there needs no stone to tell,
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last

As fervently as thou,

Who didst not change through all the past,
And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours;
The worst can be but mine:

The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
Shall never more be thine.

The silence of that dreamless sleep

I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine,

That all those charms have pass'd away;

I might have watch'd through long decay.

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd Must fall the earliest prey ;

Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,
The leaves must drop away:

And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;

The night that follow'd such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:

Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd,
And thou wert lovely to the last ;
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;

As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep,
My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep
One vigil o'er thy bed;