Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, The singing of that happy nightingale In this sweet forest, from the golden close Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail, Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss Of the circumfluous waters,-every sphere wave, And every wind of the mute atmosphere, And every beast stretched in its rugged cave, And bird lulled on its mossy bough, And every silver moth fresh from the grave, every Which is its cradle- -ever from below Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far, To be consumed within the purest glow 20 Of one serene and unapproached star, 1 Compare Epipsychidion, line 224, vol. iii, page 362: As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.-ED. Itself how low, how high beyond all height The heaven where it would perish !—and every form That worshipped in the temple of the night Was awed into delight, and by the charm Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion And so this man returned with axe and saw 40 At evening close from killing the tall treen, The soul of whom by nature's gentle law Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green The pavement and the roof of the wild copse, Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene With jagged leaves,-and from the forest tops Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping oft Fast showers of aërial water-drops Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft, Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness ;Around the cradles of the birds aloft 51 They spread themselves into the loveliness Make a green space among the silent bowers, Surrounded by the columns and the towers All overwrought with branch-like traceries 60 Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute, Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed To such brief unison as on the brain One tone, which never can recur, has cast, One accent never to return again. * * * The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell. 70 FRAGMENT OF AN ADDRESS TO O MIGHTY mind, in whose deep stream this age Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm, Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage? FRAGMENT TO SILENCE. SILENCE! O well are Death and Sleep and Thou Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy Are swallowed up-yet spare me, Spirit, pity me, Until the sounds I hear become my soul, FRAGMENT. THE fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses Track not the steps of him who drinks of it; For the light breezes, which for ever fleet Around its margin, heap the sand thereon. FRAGMENT. My head is wild with weeping for a grief To seek, or haply, if I sought, to find; FRAGMENT. FLOURISHING vine, whose kindling clusters glow Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee; For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below The rotting bones of dead antiquity. SCENE FROM "TASSO." MADDALO, a Courtier. MALPIGLIO, a Poet. PIGNA, a Minister. MADDALO. No access to the Duke! You have not said That the Count Maddalo would speak with him? PIGNA. Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna MALPIGLIO. The Lady Leonora cannot know That I have written a sonnet to her fame, In which I Venus and Adonis. You should not take my gold and serve me not. ALBANO. In truth I told her, and she smiled and said, If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy 66 Art the Adonis whom I love, and he The Erymanthian boar that wounded him." 10 Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin. MALPIGLIO. The words are twisted in some double sense PIGNA. How are the Duke and Duchess occupied ? |