Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden; Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden. Folly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love.

Farewell, if it can be to say farewell
To those who—

I will not, as most dedicators do, Assure myself and all the world and you, That you are faultless would to God they were Who taunt me with your love! I then should wear These heavy chains of life with a light spirit, And would to God I were, or even as near it As you, dear heart. Alas! what are we? Clouds Driven by the wind in warring multitudes, Which rain into the bosom of the earth,

And rise again, and in our death and birth,

And through our restless life, take as from heaven
Hues which are not our own, but which are given,
And then withdrawn, and with inconstant glance
Flash from the spirit to the countenance.
There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God,

Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode,
A Pythian exhalation, which inspires

Love, only love a wind which o'er the wires
Of the soul's giant harp —

There is a mood which language faints beneath;
You feel it striding, as Almighty Death
His bloodless steed.

And what is that most brief and bright delight Which rushes through the touch and through the sight,

And stands before the spirit's inmost throne,
A naked Seraph? None hath ever known.
Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire;
Untamable and fleet and fierce as fire,
Not to be touched but to be felt alone,
It fills the world with glory—and is gone.

It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream
Of life, which flows, like a dream
Into the light of morning, to the grave
As to an ocean.

What is that joy which serene infancy
Perceives not, as the hours content them by,
Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys
The shapes of this new world, in giant toys
Wrought by the busy
ever new?
Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, to show
These forms more
sincere
Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.
When everything familiar seemed to be
Wonderful, and the immortality

Of this great world, which all things must inherit,
Was felt as one with the awakening spirit,
Unconscious of itself, and of the strange
Distinctions which in its proceeding change
It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were
A desolation.

Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily,

For all those exiles from the dull insane

Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain, For all that band of sister-spirits known

To one another by a voiceless tone?

LINES WRITTEN FOR ADONAIS

And ever as he went he swept a lyre
Of unaccustomed shape, and strings
Now like the
of impetuous fire,
Which shakes the forest with its murmurings,
Now like the rush of the aërial wings

Of the enamoured wind among the treen,
Whispering unimaginable things,
And dying on the streams of dew serene,
Which feed the unmown meads with ever-during

green.

And the green Paradise which western waves
Embosom in their ever wailing sweep,
Talking of freedom to their tongueless caves,
Or to the spirits which within them keep
A record of the wrongs which, though they sleep,
Die not, but dream of retribution, heard
His hymns, and echoing them from steep to steep,
Kept -

And then came one of sweet and earnest looks, Whose soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyes Were as the clear and ever living brooks Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise, Showing how pure they are: a Paradise Of happy truth upon his forehead low Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow Of star-deserted heaven, while ocean gleams below. Lines written for Adonais. Published by Garnett, 1862.

His song, though very sweet, was low and faint, A simple strain

A mighty Phantasm, half concealed In darkness of his own exceeding light, Which clothed his awful presence unrevealed, Charioted on the night Of thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite.

And like a sudden meteor, which outstrips
The splendor-winged chariot of the sun,

eclipse

The armies of the golden stars, each one
Pavilioned in its tent of light all strewn
Over the chasms of blue night-

-

LINES WRITTEN FOR HELLAS

I

FAIREST of the Destinies,
Disarray thy dazzling eyes:
Keener far thy lightnings are

Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest,
And the smile thou wearest

Wraps thee as a star

Is wrapped in light.

II

Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn
From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,
Or could the morning shafts of purest light

Lines Written for Hellas. Published by Garnett, 1862.

Again into the quivers of the Sun

Be gathered could one thought from its wild

flight

Return into the temple of the brain

Without a change, without a stain,
Could aught that is, ever again
Be what it once has ceased to be,
Greece might again be free!

III

A star has fallen upon the earth
'Mid the benighted nations,

A quenchless atom of immortal light,
A living spark of Night,

A cresset shaken from the constellations.
Swifter than the thunder fell

To the heart of Earth, the well
Where its pulses flow and beat,
And unextinct in that cold source
Burns, and on

course

Guides the sphere which is its prison,
Like an angelic spirit pent
In a form of mortal birth,
Till, as a spirit half arisen

Shatters its charnel, it has rent,
In the rapture of its mirth,

The thin and painted garment of the Earth,
Ruining its chaos- a fierce breath
Consuming all its forms of living death.