XIII.

HAPPY is England! I could be content

To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent ;
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,

And half forget what world or worlding meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,

Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see

Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters.

XIV.

ON THE ELGIN MARBLES.

MY Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

spirit is too weak; mortality

And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of Godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,

That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain

Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;

So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time-with a billowy main
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.

XV.

ENCLOSING THE PRECEDING SONNET.

HDefinitely of these mighty things;

AYDON! forgive me that I cannot speak

Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings, That what I want I know not where to seek. And think that I would not be over-meek, In rolling out upfollowed thunderings, Even to the steep of Heliconian springs, Were I of ample strength for such a freak. Think too, that all these numbers should be thine; Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem? For, when men stared at what was most divine With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm, Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shine

Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them

XVI.

A DREAM,

AFTER READING DANTE'S EPISODE OF PAULO AND

S

FRANCESCA.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,

When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept; So on a Delphic reed my idle sprite

So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
The dragon world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away-
Not unto Ida, with its snow-cold skies;
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day-
But to that second circle of sad hell,

Where, 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flow
Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw ;
Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
I floated with about that melancholy storm.

A

XVII.

FTER dark vapours have oppress'd our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relievèd from its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May,
The eyelids with the passing coolness play,
Like rose leaves with the drip of summer rains.

And calmest thoughts comes round us-as, of leaves Budding-fruit ripening in stillness-autumn suns Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves

Sweet Sappho's cheek-a sleeping infant's breath— The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs— A woodland rivulet-a Poet's death.

XVIII.

WRITTEN ON THE BLANK SPACE OF A LEAF AT THE END OF CHAUCER'S TALE OF THE FLOWRE AND THE LEFE.

HIS pleasant tale is like a little copse:

TH

The honied lines so freshly interlace,
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops;
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops

Come cool and suddenly against his face,
And, by the wandering melody, may trace
Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.
Oh! what a power has white simplicity!
What mighty power has this gentle story!
I that do ever feel athirst for glory,
Could at this moment be content to lie

Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings
Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

XIX.

ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER,

◄OME hither, all sweet maidens soberly,

Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joinèd be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see,

Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea:
"Tis young Leander toiling to his death;
Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile :
He's gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

light,

Fo

XX.

THE HUMAN SEASONS.

OUR seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man :

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves