"Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained In drops of sorrow. I became aware

"Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained The track in which we moved. After brief space, From every form the beauty slowly waned;

From every firmest limb and fairest face

The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace

"Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft

With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone, Desire, like a lioness bereft

"Of her last cub, glared ere it died: each one Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly

These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown

"In autumn evening from a polar tree,
Each like himself, and like each other were
At first; but some distorted seemed to be

"Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrapt all the busy phantoms that were there,
"As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way
Mask after mask fell from the countenance

And form of all; and long before the day

Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;

And some grew weary of the ghastly dance,

And fell, as I have fallen, by the way side;

Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past. And least of strength and beauty did abide.

"Then, what is life? I cried."

END OF THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

00

A VISION OF THE SEA.

Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:

From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
And, when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from heaven,
She sees the black trunks of the water-spouts spin,
And bend, as if heaven was raining in,

Which they seem to sustain with their terrible mass
As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,
And the waves and the thunders, made silent around,
Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now toss'd
Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep
Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale

Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale,
Dim mirrors of ruin hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,
With splendour and terror the black ship environ,
Or, like sulphur flakes hurl'd from a mine of pale fire,
In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire
The pyramid billows, with white points of brine,
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea.
The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree,
While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast
Of the whirlwind that stript it of branches has past.
The intense thunder-balls which are raining from heaven
Have shatter'd its mast, and it stands black and riven.
The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk
On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,

Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold
Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold,
One deck is burst up from the waters bele*,

And it splits like the ice when the thaw-b Les blow
O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other?

Is that all the crew that lie burying each other,
Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those
Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose,

In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold:

(What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold;)

Who crouch side by side, and have driven, like a crank,
The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank,
Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain
On the windless expanse of the watery plain,
Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon,
And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon,
Till a lead-colour'd fog gather'd up from the deep,
Whose breath was quick pestilence; then the cold sleep
Crept, like blight, through the ears of a thick field of corn,
O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn.
With their hammocks for coffins, the seamen aghast,
Like dead men, the dead limbs of their comrades cast
Down the deep, which closed on them above and around,
And the sharks and the dog-fish their grave-clothes
unbound,

And were glutted like Jews, with this manna rain'd down
From God on their wilderness. One after one
The mariners died; on the eve of this day,

When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array,
But seven remain'd. Six the thunder had smitten,
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has
written

His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck
An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back
And hung out to the tempest a wreck on the wreck.
No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair
Than heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.
She clasps a bright child on her upgather'd knee:

It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder
Of the air and the sea; with desire and with wonder
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near:

It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear
Is outshining the meteors: its bosom beats high,
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye,

Whilst its mother's is lustreless. "Smile not, my child,
But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!

Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed,
Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beating with dread!
Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we,
That when the ship sinks we no longer may be!
What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
To be after life what we have been before?
Not to touch those sweet hands?

eyes,

Not to look on those

Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise
Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day,
Have so long called my child, but which now fades away
Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?"-Lo! the
ship

Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;

The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine

Crawling inch by inch on them, hair, ears, limbs, and

eyne,

Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse, cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously,

And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,
Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,

Hurried on by the might of the hurricane.

The hurricane caine from the west, and pass'd on
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form

Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
Black as a cormorant the screaming blast,

Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, pass'd,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world.

Which, bas'd on the sea and to heaven upcurl'd,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain,
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag;
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has past,
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast;
They are scatter'd like foam on the torrent; and where
The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the ai:
Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.

And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
And the caverns of clouds are torn up by the day,
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lulled by the motion and murmurings,

And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,
And over head glorious, but dreadful to see
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,

Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold
The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above,

And, like passions made still by the presence of Love,
Beneath the clear surface reflecting, it slide

Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's azure
smile,

The wide world of waters is vibrating. Where

Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay

One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray

With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle Stain the clear air with sunbows: the jar and the rattle Of solid bones crush'd by the infinite stress

Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness,

And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins, Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash

As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams