TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR.

ARIEL to Miranda :-Take
This slave of music, for the sake
Of him, who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain.
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own;
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.

When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell
Than deserted Ariel;
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen Star of birth,
Ariel guides you o'er the sea
Of life from your nativity:

Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun

Your course of love, and Ariel still

Has tracked your steps and served your will.

Now in humbler, happier lot,

This is all remembered not;

And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned for some fault of his
In a body like a grave-
From you, he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song-to morrow.

The artist who this idol wrought,
To echo all harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of autumn past.
And some of spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree,-
O that such our death may be !-
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again :

From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star,

The artist wrought this loved Guitar,
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully,
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamoured tone

Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learnt all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound,
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way-
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before,
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For our beloved friend alone.

He came like a dream in the dawn of life,
He fled like a shadow before its noon;
He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,
And I wander and wane like the weary moon.
O sweet Echo, wake,
And for my sake

Make answer the while my heart shall break!

But my heart has a music which Echo's lips,
Though tender and true, yet can answer not,
And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse
Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;
Sweet lips! he who hath
On my desolate path

Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!

The Enchantress makes her spell: she is answered by a

Spirit.

SPIRIT.

Within the silent centre of the earth

My mansion is; where I have lived insphered
From the beginning, and around my sleep
Have woven all the wondrous imagery

Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;
Infinite depths of unknown elements
Massed into one impenetrable mask;

Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins

Of gold, and stone, and adamantine iron.
And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven

I have wrought mountains, seas, waves, and clouds,
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
In the dark space of interstellar air.

A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate's fate, leads, in a mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the En

chanted Isle. She is accompanied by a youth, who loves her, but whose passion she returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place between them on their arrival at the Isle.

INDIAN.

And thou lovest not? If so Young as thou art, thou canst afford to weep.

LADY.

Oh! would that I could claim exemption
From all the bitterness of that sweet name.
I loved, I love, and when I love no more
Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair
To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,
The embodied vision of the brightest dream,
Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;
The shadow of his presence made my world
A paradise. All familiar things he touched,
All common words he spoke, became to me
Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.
He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
As terrible and lovely as a tempest;
He came, and went, and left me what I am.
Alas! Why must I think how oft we two
Have sat together near the river springs,
Under the green pavilion which the willow
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,
Strewn by the nurslings that linger there,
Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,
While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson
snow,

Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,
Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own.

INDIAN.

Your breath is like soft music, your words are The echoes of a voice which on my heart

Sleeps like a melody of early days. But as you said

LADY.

He was so awful, yet

So beautiful in mystery and terror,
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven
Soothes the unquiet sea :-and yet not so,
For he seemed stormy, and would often seem
A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;
For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;
But he was not of them, nor they of him,
But as they hid his splendour from the earth.
Some said he was a man of blood and peril,
And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.
More need was there I should be innocent,
More need that I should be most true and kind,
And much more need that there should be found one
To share remorse, and scorn, and solitude,
And all the ills that wait on those who do
The tasks of ruin in the world of life.
He fled, and I have followed him.

ΤΟ

THE INVITATION.

BEST and brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair day,
Which like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.

The brightest hour of unborn spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found it seems the halcyon morn,
To hoar February born;
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free;
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May,

Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress

Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor :-
"I am gone into the fields

To take what this sweet hour yields ;-
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside of Sorrow.-
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,
I will pay you in the grave,
Death will listen to your stave.-
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough;
Hope in pity mock not woe

With smiles, nor follow where I go ;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment good
After long pain-with all your love,
This you never told me of."

Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun,
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea.
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dim and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one,
In the universal sun.

THE RECOLLECTION.

Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise !
Up to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory dead,

For now the Earth has changed its face, A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

I.

We wandered to the pine Forest That skirts the Ocean foam, The lightest wind was in its nest, The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play,

And on the bosom of the deep,

The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

II.

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced.

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree tops lay asleep,

Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

III.

How calm it was !-the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy wood-pecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste,

To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,

A spirit interfused around

A thrilling silent life,

To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife ;-
And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there,

Was one fair form that filled with love The lifeless atmosphere.

IV.

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,

Each seemed as 'twere a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;

A firmament of purple light,

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,

And purer than the day

In which the lovely forests grew,

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green wood

The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above

Can never well be seen,

Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.

And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow

An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.