But see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!

It writhes!-it writhes!-with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out-out are the lights-out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

TO F8 S. Od.

THOU wouldst be loved ?-then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy ge tle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love a simple duty.

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

THOU wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pine

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast !

A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!"-but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er!

"No more-no more-no more- 99 (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams

THE VALLEY OF UNREST.

Once it smiled a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
Now each visiter shall confess
The sad valley's restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless-
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye—
Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave-from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep-from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No

rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes-up spires-up kingly halls-
Up fanes-up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine

The v ol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass-
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-

No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave-there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow—
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones.
Shall do it reverence.