LEIGH HUNT.

Born 1784. Died 1859.

THE FISH, THE MAN, AND THE SPIRIT.
The Man to the Fish.

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
Gulping salt-water everlastingly,

Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
And you all shapes beside that fishy be,-

Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste :-

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,

What is't you do? what life lead? eh, dull goggles?
How do ye vary your dull days and nights?

How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles,
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?

A Fish answers.

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,
With the first sight of thee didst make our race
For ever stare! O, flat and shocking face,

Grimly divided from the breast below!
Thou that on dry land horribly dost go,
With a split body, and most ridiculous pace,
Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,
Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow.

O breather of unbreathable, swordsharp air,
How canst exist? how bear thyself, thou dry
And dreary sloth! What particle canst share
Of the only blessed life, -the watery?

I sometimes see of ye an actual pair

Go by, linked fin by fin! most odiously.

The Fish turns into a Man, and then into a Spirit, and again speaks.
Indulge thy smiling scorn, if smiling still,

O man! and loathe, but with a sort of love :
For difference must its use by difference prove,
And, in sweet clang, the spheres with music fill.
One of the spirits am I, that at his will
Live in whatever has life,-fish, eagle, dove,-
No hate, no pride, beneath nought, nor above,
A visitor of the rounds of God's sweet skill.

Man's life is warm, glad, sad, twixt loves and graves,
Boundless in hope, honoured with pangs austere,

Heaven-gazing; and his angel-wings he craves ;—
The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear,
A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapt in round waves,
Quickened with touches of transporting fear.

ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily bloom,
An Angel, writing in a book of gold

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?"-the Vision raised its head,

And, with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, The names of those that love the Lord."
66 And is mine one?" said Abou. 66

Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names of those whom love of God had

blessed,

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

TO T. L. H., SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A SICKNESS.

MADELINE IN HER CHAMBER.

A CASEMENT high and triple-arched there was,
All garlanded with carven imageries

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,

As are the tiger-moth's deep damasked wings;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings.
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross fair amethyst,

And on her hair a glory, like a saint:

She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven :-Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
Anon his heart revives her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea weed.
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,

But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplexed she lay,
Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
Blissfully havened both from joy and pain;
Clasped like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
From The Eve of St. Agnes,

HYPERION'S GLOOM.

BUT horrors, portioned to a giant nerve,
Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
Bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold,
And touched with shade of bronzed obelisks,
Glared a blood red through all its thousand courts,
Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries;

And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds

Flushed angerly; while sometimes eagles' wings,
Unseen before by Gods or wondering men,

Darkened the place; and neighing steeds were heard,
Not heard before by Gods or wondering men.
Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths
Of incense, breathed aloft from sacred hills,
Instead of sweets, his ample palate took
Savour of poisonous brass and metal sick :
And so, when harboured in the sleepy west,
After the full completion of fair day,
For rest divine upon exalted couch,
And slumber in the arms of melody,
He paced away the pleasant hours of ease
With stride colossal, on from hall to hall;
While far within each aisle and deep recess,
His winged minions in close clusters stood,
Amazed and full of fear; like anxious men
Who on wide plains gather in panting troops,
When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.
Even now, while Saturn, roused from icy trance,
Went step for step with Thea through the woods,
Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,

Came slope upon the threshold of the west :
Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope
In smoothed silence, save what solemn tubes,
Blown by the serious zephyrs, gave of sweet
And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies;
And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape,
In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye,
That inlet to severe magnificence

Stood full blown, for the God to enter in.

He entered, but he entered full of wrath;
His flaming robes streamed out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,

That scared away the meek ethereal Hours
And made their dove-wings tremble.

On he flared,

From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,

Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light,
And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades,
Until he reached the great main cupola;
There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot,
And from the basements deep to the high towers
Jarred his own golden region; and before
The quavering thunder thereupon had ceased,

His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,
To this result: "O dreams of day and night!
O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!
O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!

O lank-eared Phantoms of black-weeded pools!
Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why
Is my eternal essence thus distraught

To see and to behold these horrors new?
Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?
Am I to leave this haven of my rest,
This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,
This calm luxuriance of blissful light,
These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,
Of all my lucent empire? It is left
Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.
The blaze, the splendour, and the symmetry,
I cannot see-but darkness, death and darkness.
Even here, into my centre of repose,

The shady visions come to domineer,
Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp-
Fall!-No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
Over the fiery frontier of my realms

I will advance a terrible right arm

Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,
And bid old Saturn take his throne again."
From Hyperion.

THE TITANS.

ALL eyes were on Enceladus's face,

And they beheld, while still Hyperion's name
Flew from his lips up to the vaulted rocks,
A pallid gleam across his features stern:
Not savage, for he saw full many a God
Wroth as himself. He looked upon them all,
And in each face he saw a gleam of light,
But splendider in Saturn's, whose hoar locks
Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel
When the prow sweeps into a midnight cove.
In pale and silver silence they remained,
Till suddenly a splendour, like the morn,
Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,
All the sad spaces of oblivion,

And every gulf, and every chasm old,

And every height, and every sullen depth,

Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams:

And all the everlasting cataracts,

And all the headlong torrents far and near,

Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,
Now saw the light and made it terrible.

It was Hyperion :-a granite peak

His bright feet touched, and there he staid to view The misery his brilliance had betrayed