What, though no mice are caught by a young

kitten, May it not leap and play as grown cats do, Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time, Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

II.

What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,

The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's

dominions ? Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die, When day shall hide within her twilight

pinions, The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile, Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

III.

To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a

day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,

And in thy sight its fading plumes display ; The watery bow burned in the evening flame, But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his

wayAnd that is dead.—0, let me not believe That any thing of mine is fit to live!

IV.

Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years

Considering and retouching Peter Bell ; Watering his laurels with the killing tears

Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the

spheres Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers;

this well May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.

V.

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature

As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise Clothes for our grandsons--but she matches

Peter, Though he took nineteen years, and she three

days In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre

She wears ; he, proud as dandy with his stays, Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress Like King Lear's “looped and windowed

raggedness."

VI.

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow,

Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow :

A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;

a

In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello,

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate Can shrive you of that sin,-if sin there be In love, when it becomes idolatry.

THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

I.

BEFORE those cruel Twins, whom at one birth

Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth All those bright natures which adorned its

prime, And left us nothing to believe in, worth

The pains of putting into learned rhyme, A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

II.

Her mother was one of the Atlantides :

The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas

So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden In the warm shadow of her loveliness ;He kissed her with his beams, and made all

golden The chamber of gray rock in which she layShe, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

III.

'Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour,

And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit, Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,

Round the red west when the sun dies in it; And then into a meteor, such as caper

On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit ; Then, into one of those mysterious stars Which hide themselves between the Earth and

Mars.

IV.

Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent

Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden With that bright sign the billows to indent

The sea-deserted sand: like children chidden, At her coinmand they ever came and went :

Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden, Took shape and motion : with the living form Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.

A lovely lady garmented in light

From her own beauty-deep her eyes, as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a tempest's cloven roof;—her

hair Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,

Picturing her form ;—her soft smiles shone afar, And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new.

VI.

And first the spotted camelopard came,

And then the wise and fearless elephant; Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame

Of his own volumes intervolved ;—all gaunt And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.

They drank before her at her sacred fount: And every beast of beating heart grew bold, Such gentleness and power even to behold.

VII.

The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should

forego Their inborn thirst of death ; the pard unstrung

His sinews at her feet, and sought to know, With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue,

How he might be as gentle as the doe. The magic circle of her voice and eyes All savage natures did imparadise.

VIII.

And old Silenus, shaking a green stick

Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew Came, blithe, as in the olive

copses

thick Cicadæ are, drunk with the noonday dew: And Driope and Faunus followed quick,

Teasing the God to sing them something new, Till in this cave they found the lady lone, Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.