'Mid gods of Greece and warriors of romance,
See! Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees
The new-found roll of old Mæonides ;*

But from his mantle's fold, and near the heart,
Peers Ovid's holy book of Love's sweet smart! †

O all-enjoying and all-blending sage,
Long be it mine to con thy mazy page,
Where, half-conceal'd, the eye of fancy views
Fauns, nymphs, and winged saints, all gracious to
thy muse!

Still in thy garden let me watch their pranks,
And see in Dian's vest between the ranks
Of the trim vines, some maid that half believes
The vestal fires, of which her lover grieves,
With that sly satyr peeping through the leaves!

1829.

*Boccaccio claimed for himself the glory of having first introduced the works of Homer to his countrymen.

I know few more striking or more interesting proofs of the overwhelming influence which the study of the Greek and Roman classics exercised on the judgments, feelings, and imaginations of the literati of Europe at the commencement of the restoration of literature, than the passage in the Filocopo of Boccaccio: where the sage instructor, Racheo, as soon as the young prince and the beautiful girl Biancofiore had learned their letters, sets them to study the Holy Book, Ovid's Art of Love. "Incominciò Racheo a mettere il suo officio in esecuzione con intera sollecitudine. E loro, in breve tempo, insegnato a conoscer le lettere, fece leggere il santo libro d'Ovvidio, nel quale il sommo poeta mostra, come i santi fuochi di Venere si debbano ne' freddi cuori accendere."

CHARITY IN THOUGHT.

To praise men as good, and to take them for such,
Is a grace, which no soul can mete out to a tittle;-
Of which he who has not a little too much,

Will by Charity's gage surely have much too little.

ON BERKELEY AND FLORENCE COLERIDGE,

WHO DIED ON THE 16TH OF JANUARY, 1834.*

O FRAIL as sweet! twin buds, too rathe to bear
The Winter's unkind air;

O gifts beyond all price, no sooner given
Than straight required by Heaven;
Match'd jewels, vainly for a moment lent
To deck my brow, or sent

Untainted from the earth, as Christ's, to soar,
And add two spirits more

To that dread band seraphic, that doth lie
Beneath the Almighty's eye;-

Glorious the thought-yet ah! my babes, ah! still
A father's heart ye fill;

Though cold ye lie in earth-though gentle death Hath suck'd your balmy breath,

And the last kiss which your fair cheeks I gave

Is buried in yon grave.

No tears-no tears-I wish them not again;

To die for them was gain,

Ere Doubt, or Fear, or Woe, or act of Sin
Had marr'd God's light within.

* By a friend.

IMPROVED FROM STOLBERG.

ON A CATARACT FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF
A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE.

STROPHE.

UNPERISHING youth!
Thou leapest from forth

The cell of thy hidden nativity;
Never mortal saw

The cradle of the strong one;
Never mortal heard

The gathering of his voices;

The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock,
That is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain.
There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil
At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;

It embosoms the roses of dawn,

It entangles the shafts of the noon,

And into the bed of its stillness

The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,

That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven May be born in a holy twilight!

ANTISTROPHE.

The wild goat in awe

Looks up and beholds

Above thee the cliff inaccessible ;

Thou at once full-born

Madd'nest in thy joyance,

Whirlest, shatter'st, splitt'st,
Life invulnerable.

LOVE'S APPARITION AND EVANISHMENT.

AN ALLEGORIC ROMANCE.

LIKE a lone Arab, old and blind
Some caravan had left behind

Who sits beside a ruin'd well,

Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell; And now he hangs his aged head aslant, And listens for a human sound-in vain! And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant, Upturns his eyeless face from Heaven to gain ;Even thus, in vacant mood, one sultry hour, Resting my eye upon a drooping plant, With brow low bent, within my garden bower, I sate upon the couch of camomile;

And-whether 'twas a transient sleep, perchance,
Flitted across the idle brain, the while

I watched the sickly calm with aimless scope,
In my own heart; or that, indeed a trance,
Turn'd my eye inward-thee, O genial Hope,
Love's elder sister! thee did I behold,
Drest as a bridesmaid, but all pale and cold,
With roseless cheek, all pale and cold and dim
Lie lifeless at my feet!

And then came Love, a sylph in bridal trim,
And stood beside my seat;

She bent, and kiss'd her sister's lips,
As she was wont to do ;-

Alas! 'twas but a chilling breath
Woke just enough of life in death
To make Hope die anew.

L'ENVOY.

In vain we supplicate the Powers above;
There is no resurrection for the Love
That, nurst in tenderest care, yet fades
In the chilled heart by gradual self-decay.

WHAT IS LIFE?

RESEMBLES life what once was deemed of light,
Too ample in itself for human sight?

An absolute self-an element ungrounded-
All that we see, all colours of all shade

Is

By encroach of darkness made ?—
very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling life and death?

1829.

INSCRIPTION FOR A TIME-PIECE.

:

Now! it is gone.—Our brief hours travel post,
Each with its thought or deed, its Why or How:-
But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost
To dwell within thee-an eternal Now!