The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning-star shines dead.
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of tolden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calin rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

Higher still and higher, From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad day-light Thou art unseen, but yet I hearthy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not; What is most like thee ? From rainbow clouds there flow not - Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden * In the light of thought, - Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view :

Like a rose embower'd In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflower'd, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

217

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came;
Depart not, lest the grave should be,

Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead:
I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed:
I was not heard: I saw them not.
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me:
I shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstacy!
I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illumed my brow,
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful Love liness,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past: there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been '
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spiait fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

MARIANNE'S DREAM.

A pale dream came to a Lady fair,
And said, a boon, a boon, I pray!
I know the secrets of the air,
And things are lost in the glare of day,
Which I can make the sleeping see,
If they will put their trust in me.

And thou shalt know of things unknown,
If thou wilt let me rest between
The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen:
And half in hope, and half in fright,
The Lady closed her eyes so bright.

At first all deadly shapes were driven
Tumultuously across her sleep,
And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven
All ghastly visaged clouds did sweep;
And the Lady ever look'd to spy
If the gold sun shone forth on high.

And as towards the east she turn'd,
She saw aloft in the morning air,

Which now with hues of sunrise burn'd,
A great black Anchor rising there;

And wherever the Lady turn'd her eyes,

It hung before her in the skies.

The sky was blue as the summer sea,
The depths were cloudless over-head,

The air was calm as it could be,
There was no sight or sound of dread,

But that black Anchor floating still

Over the piny eastern hill.

The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear,
To see that Anchor ever hanging,
And veil'd her eyes; she then did hear
The sound as of a dim low clanging,
And look'd abroad if she might know
Was it aught else, or but the flow
Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro.

There was a mist in the sunless air,
Which shook as it were with an earthquake's
shock,
But the very weeds that blossom'd there
Were moveless, and each mighty rock
Stood on its basis stedfastly;
The Anchor was seen no more on high.

But piled around, with summits hid
In lines of cloud at intervals,
Stood many a mountain pyramid,
Among whose everlasting walls
Two mighty cities shone, and ever
Through the red mist their domes did quiver.

On two dread mountains, from whose crest,
Might seem, the eagle, for her brood,
Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest,
Those tower-encircled cities stood.
A vision strange such towers to see,
Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously,
Where human art could never be.

And columns framed of marble white,
And giant fanes, dome over dome
Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright
With workmanship, which could not come
From touch of mortal instrument,
Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent
From its own shapes magnificent.

But still the Lady heard that clang
Filling the wide air far away;
And still the mist whose light did hang
Among the mountains shook alway,

So that the Lady's heart beat fast,
As, half in joy and half aghast,
On those high domes her look she cast.

Sudden, from out that city sprung
A light that made the earth grow red;
Two flames that each with quivering tongue
Lick'd its high domes, and over head
Among those mighty towers and fanes
Dropp'd fire, as a volcano rains
Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.

And hark! a rush as if the deep
Had burst its bonds; she look'd behind,
And saw over the western steep
A raging flood descend, and wind
Through that wide vale; she felt uo fear,
But said within herself, "t is clear
These towers are Nature's own, and she
To save them has sent forth the sea.

And now those raging billows came
where that fair Lady sate, and she
Was borne towards the showering flame
By the wild waves heap'd tumultuously,
And on a little plank, the flow
Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.

The waves were fiercely vomited
From every tower and every dome,
And dreary light did widely shed
O'er that vast flood's suspended foam,
Beneath the smoke which hung its night
On the stain'd cope of heaven's light.

The plank whereon that Lady sate
Was driven through the chasms, about and about,
Between the peaks so desolate
Of the drowning mountain, in and out,
As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails—
While the tlood was filling those hollow vales.

At last her plank an eddy crost,
And bore her to the city's wall,
Which now the flood had reach'd almost:
It might the stoutest heart appal
To hear the fire roar and hiss
Through the domes of those mighty palaces.

The eddy whirl’d her round and round
Before a gorgeous gate, which stood
Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound
Its aery arch with light like blood;
She look'd on that gate of marble clear,
With wonder that extinguish’d fear.

For it was fill'd with sculptures rarest,
Or forms most beautiful and strange,
Like nothing human, but the fairest
Of winged shapes, whose legions range
Throughout the sleep of those that are,
Like this same Lady, good and fair.

And as she look'd, still lovelier grew
Those marble forms;—the sculptor sure
Was a strong spirit, and the hue

Of his own mind did there endure After the touch, whose power had braided Such grace, was in some sad change faded.

She look'd, the flames were dim, the flood
Grew tranquil as a woodland river
Winding through hills in solitude;
Those marble shapes then seem'd to quiver,
And their fair limbs to float in motion,
Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.

And their lips moved; one seem'd to speak,
When suddenly the mountain crackt,
And through the chasm the flood did break
With an earth-uplifting cataract:
The statues gave a joyous scream,
And on its wings the pale thin dream
Lifted the Lady from the stream.

The dizzy flight of that phantom pale Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, And she arose, while from the veil Of her dark eyes the dream did creep, And she walk'd about as one who knew That sleep has sights as clear and true As any waking eyes can view. Marlow, 1817.

MONT BLANC. LINEs written IN the vale of CHAMoUxi.

I. The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters, with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

- li. Thus thou, Ravine of Arve–dark, deep Ravine– Thou many-colourd, many-voiced vale, Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail Fast clouds, shadows, and sunbeams: awful scene, Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down From the ice gulfs that gird his secret throne, Bursting through these dark mountains, like the flame Of lightning through the tempest; thou dost lie, Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, Children of elder time, in whose devotion The chainless winds still come and ever came To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear—an old and solemn harmony: Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep Which, when the voices of the desert fail, Wraps all in its own deep etermity:Thy caverns, echoing to the Arve's commotion A loud lone sound, no other sound can tame:

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound–
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate phantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by,
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recals them, thou art there!

iii. Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep, +that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.—I look on high; Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl’d The veil of life and death 1 or do i lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Spread far around and inaccessibly Its circles? For the very spirit fails, Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep That vanishes among the viewless gales! Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy, and serene— Its subject mountains their unearthly forms Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread And wind among the accumulated steeps; A desert peopled by the storms alone, Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, And the wolf tracks her there—how hideously Its shapes are heap'd around ! rude, bare, and high, Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven.—ls this the scene where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young Ruin Were these their toys” or did a sea Of fire envelop once this silent snow? None can reply—all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be But for such faith with nature reconciled : Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood by all, but which the wise, and great, and good Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die, revolve, subside and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains,
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep,
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far foun-
tains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled—dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
ls there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaim'd. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever tone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which, from those secret chasms in tumult welling,
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

V.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high —the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them :—Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Switzer LAND, June 23, 1816.

ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA WINCI, 1x the Flort ENtine GALLERY.

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;

Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.

Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine,