THE HAUNTED PALACE.

O Lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live;
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud,
And would we aught behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate, cold world, allowed
To the poor, loveless, ever anxious crowd,
Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair, luminous cloud,
Enveloping the earth :

And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element !

263

SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.

The Haunted Palace.

N the greenest of our valleys,

IN

By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace-reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion
It stood there :

Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This, all this was in the olden

Time, long ago);

And every gentle air that dallied

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odor, went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-tuned law,

Round about a throne where sitting, (Porphyrogene !)

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of echoes whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.·

But evil things in robes of sorrow

Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate !)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;

While, like a rapid, ghastly river,
Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh-but smile no more.

EDGAR A. POE.

THE SUNKEN CITY.

265

The Sunken City.

ARK! the faint bells of the sunken city

HA

Peal once more their wonted evening chime!

From the deep abysses floats a ditty

Wild and wondrous, of the olden time.

Temples, towers, and domes of many stories
There lie buried in an ocean grave,—
Undescried, save when the golden glories
Gleam at sunset through the lighted wave.

And the mariner who had seen them glisten,

In whose ears those magic bells do sound,Night by night bides there to watch and listen, Though death lowers behind each dark rock round.

So the bells of Memory's wonder-city
Peal for me their old melodious chime,
So
my heart pours forth a changeful ditty,
Sad and pleasant, from the bygone time.

Domes and towers and castles, fancy-builded,
There lie lost to daylight's garish beams,—
There lie hidden till unveiled and gilded,
Glory-gilded, by my nightly dreams!

And then hear I music sweet upwelling

From full many a well-known phantom band, And, through tears, can see my natural dwelling, Far off in the spirit's luminous land!

-'ranslation of JAMES C. MANGAN.

WILHELM MUELLER.

Fancy in Nubibus.

H, it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,

Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,

To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily-persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or, with head bent low,

And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold,

'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go

From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous land! Or, listening to the tide with closed sight,

Be that blind Bard, who on the Chian strand,

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.

On first looking into Chapman's Homer

UCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,

MUCH

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold;
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-ard all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

JOHN KEATS.

IMAGINATION.

267

Imagination.

I NEVER may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ;

That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation, and a name.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Ode.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY

THER

CHILDHOOD.

I.

'HERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore:
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.