Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element ! Utter forth GOD, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy skypointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise, Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth! Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? three treasures, LOVE, and LIGHT, And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infant's breath: And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH! 1802. September 23, 1802. THE PAINS OF SLEEP ERE on my bed my limbs I lay, But yester-night I pray'd aloud me: A lurid light, a trampling throng, For all seem'd guilt, remorse or woe, So two nights passed the night's dis- The third night, when my own loud scream Had waked me from the fiendish dream. O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild, Strew'd before thy advancing! Nor do thou, Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour Of thy communion with my nobler nrind By pity or grief, already felt too long! Nor let my words import more blame than needs. The tumult rose and ceased: for Peace is nigh Where wisdom's voice has found a Histening heart Amid the howl of more than wintry storms, The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours Already on the wing. Eve following eve. Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed And more desired, more precious, for thy song, In silence listening, like a devout child, My soul lay passive, by thy various strain Driven as in surges now beneath the VERSE, a breeze mid blossoms straying, Where Hope clung feeding, like a beeBoth were mine! Life went a-maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young! When I was young ?-Ah, woeful When! Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then! This breathing house not built with hands, This body that does me grievous wrong, weather When Youth and I lived in't together. Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; the joys, that came down shower-like, Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, Ere I was old! Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere, This drooping gait, this altered size: That only serves to make us grieve Or pause and listen to the tinkling bells Frow the high tower, and think that there she dwells. With old Boccaccio's soul I stand possest. And breathe an air like life, that swelis my chest. The brightness of the world, O thou once free, And always fair, rare land of courtesy! O Florence! with the Tuscan fields and hills And famous Arno, fed with all their rills; Thou brightest star of star-bright Italy! Rich, ornate, populous, all treasures thine, The golden corn, the olive, and the vine. |