FEAR no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done.
Home art gone, and ta'en thy
wages:

Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' the great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat,

To thee the reed is as the oak. The sceptre, learning, physic, must, All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash, Nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone; Fear not slander, censure rash,

Thou hast finished joy and moan. All lovers young, all lovers must, Consign to thee, and come to dust,

[From Venus and Adonis.]

THE HORSE OF ADONIS.

Look, when a painter would surpass the life,

In limning out a well-proportioned steed,

His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,

As if the dead the living should exceed:

So did this horse excel a common

one

In shape, in courage, color, pace and bone.

ONE word is too often profaned For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it,

One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not:
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle,-
Why not I with thine ?

See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea; What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?

TO A SKYLARK.

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

[art.

In profuse strains of unpremeditated

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 daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy 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 overflowed.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or moun-
tains?

What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures
That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow,

hidden want.

listening now.

deep woe

DEATH.

DEATH is here, and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above, is death,—and we are death.

First our pleasures die,- and then Our hopes, and then our fears, and when

These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust,— and we die too.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves, must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot,-
Love itself would, did they not.

THE CLOUD.

tears!

ing flowers,

From the seas and the streams; bear light shades for the leaves

when laid

In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

light

Speed thee in thy fiery flight, In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, In what depth of night or day

Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest Like the world's rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On the tree or billow?

low,

And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the

blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,

Lightning, my pilot sits, In a cavern under, is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls by fits; Over earth and ocean with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,