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FRAGMENT: UNSATISFIED DESIRES.

To thirst and find no fill-to wail and wander With short uneasy steps-to

ponder

pause and

To feel the blood run through the veins and

tingle

Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle;

To nurse the image of unfelt caresses
Till dim imagination just possesses
The half created shadow.

STANZA: WEALTH AND LOVE.

WEALTH and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When once from our possession they must
pass;

But love, though misdirected, is among
The things which are immortal, and surpass
All that frail stuff which will be-or which was.

FRAGMENT: THOUGHTS.

My thoughts arise and fade in solitude;
The verse that would invest them melts

away

Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading

day:

How beautiful they were, how firm they stood, Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl!

A HATE-SONG:

IMPROVISED.

A HATER he came and sat by a ditch,
And he took an old cracked lute;

And he sang a song which was more of a screech

'Gainst a woman that was a brute.

LINES TO A CRITIC.

I.

HONEY from silkworms who can gather,
Or silk from the yellow bee?

The grass may grow in winter weather
As soon as hate in me.

II.

Hate men who cant, and men who pray,

And men who rail like thee;

An equal passion to repay

They are not coy like me.

III.

Or seek some slave of power and gold,
To be thy dear heart's mate;
Thy love will move that bigot cold
Sooner than me thy hate.

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I hate thy want of truth and love

How should I, then, hate thee?

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818.

SONNET, TO THE NILE.

MONTH after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Æthiopian dells,
And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces
blend

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells

By Nile's aërial urn, with rapid spells
Urging those waters to their mighty end.
O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level;
And they are thine, O Nile-and well thou
knowest

That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou
flowest.

Beware, O Man-for knowledge must to thee Like the great flood to Egypt ever be.

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.

LISTEN, listen, Mary mine,

To the whisper of the Apennine;

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,

Or like the sea on a northern shore,

Heard in its raging ebb and flow

By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day

Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread

On the dim starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.

THE PAST.

I.

WILT thou forget the happy hours
Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,
Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves instead of mould?
Blossoms which were the joys that fell.
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

II.

Forget the dead, the past? O yet

There are ghosts that may take revenge
Memories that make the heart a tomb,

for it,

Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, And with ghastly whispers tell

That joy, once lost, is pain.

SONNET.

LIFT not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,

And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,-behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin destinies; who ever weave

Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.

I knew one who had lifted it—he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

INVOCATION TO MISERY.

I.

COME, be happy!-sit by me,
Shadow-vested Misery :

Coy, unwilling, silent bride,
Mourning in thy robe of pride,
Desolation-deified!

II.

Come, be happy!-sit near me:
Sad as I may seem to thee,
I am happier far than thou,
Lady, whose imperial brow
Is endiademed with woe.

III.

Misery! we have known each other,
Like a sister and a brother

Living in the same lone home,

Many years-we must live some

Hours or ages yet to come.

IV.

'Tis an evil lot, and yet

Let us make the best of it;

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