Bright as the path to a beloved home,
O light us to the isles of th' evening land!
Like floating Edens, cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Tinged by departing Hope, they gleam! Lone
regions,

Where power's poor dupes and victims yet have

never

Propitiated the savage fear of kings

With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man's free worship from the God who loves,
Towards the worm, who envies us his love:
Receive thou, young [
] of Paradise.

These exiles from the old and sinful world!
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through the veil

Of pale-blue atmosphere, whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers;
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow vault:
The mighty universe becomes a cell
Too narrow for the soul that owns no master.
While the loathliest spot

Of this wide prison, England, is a nest

Of cradled peace built on the mountain tops,
To which the eagle-spirits of the free,

Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn

the storm

Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,

Return to brood over the [

thoughts

That cannot die, and may not be repelled.

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.

SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,

To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With Orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent,

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own and then imposed on them:
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem

Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread

Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew

That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair And sat as thus upon that slope of lawn

Under the self-same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains, and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air, And then a vision on my brain was rolled.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream :—
Methought I sat beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream. Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the multitude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky One of the million leaves of summer's bier; Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear:
Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another's fear;

And others as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath.

And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:

But more, with motions which each other crost, Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew,— And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed,

With overarching elms and caverns cold,

[they

And violet banks where sweet dreams brood; but Pursued their serious folly as of old.

And as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,

And a cold glare intenser than the noon,
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon

When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,

And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,