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DEDICATION TO "THE REVOLT OF ISLAM."

So now my summer task is ended, Mary, And I return to thee, mine own heart's home; As to his queen some victor knight of faery, Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome; Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become A star among the stars of mortal night, If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, Its doubtful promise thus I would unite [light. With thy beloved name, thou child of love and The toil which stole from thee so many an hour Is ended. And the fruit is at thy feet! No longer where the woods to frame a bower With interlaced branches mix and meet, Or where, with sound like many voices sweet, Water-falls leap among wild islands green, Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen: But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first

The clouds which wrap this world from youth

did pass.

I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit's sleep: a fresh Maydawn it was,
When I walk'd forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept I knew not why; until there rose
From the near school-room, voices, that alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes,
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
And then I clasp'd my hands and look'd around-
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which pour'd the warm drops on the sunny
ground-

So without shame, I spake :-"I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check." I then controll'd
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and
bold.

And from that hour did I with earnest thought
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn, but from that secret store
Wrought link'd armour for my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind;
Thus power and hope were strengthen'd more

and more

Within me, till there came upon my mind
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.

Alas, that love should be a blight and snare
To those who seek all sympathies in one!—
Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone :-
Yet never found I one not false to me,
Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone
Which crush'd and wither'd mine, that could not
Aught but a lifeless clog until revived by thee. [be

Thou friend, whose presence on my wintery heart
Fell like bright spring upon some herbless plain;
How beautiful and calm, and free thou wert
In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain
Of custom thou didst burst and rend in twain,
And walk'd as free as light the clouds among,
Which many an envious slave then breathed in

vain

From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long.

No more alone through the world's wilderness, Although I trod the paths of high intent, I journey'd now: no more companionless, Where solitude is like despair, I went.— There is the wisdom of a stern content, When poverty can blight the just and good, When infamy dares mock the innocent, And cherish'd friends turn with the multitude To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood! Now has descended a serener hour, And with inconstant fortune friends return; Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the

power,

Which says:-let scorn be not repaid with scorn. And from thy side two gentle babes are born To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn; And these delights, and thou, have been to me The parents of the song I consecrate to thee. Is it that now my inexperienced fingers But strike the prelude to a loftier strain? Or must the lyre on which my spirit lingers Soon pause in silence ne'er to sound again, Though it might shake the anarch Custom's reign, And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway, Holier than was Amphion's? it would fain Reply in hope--but I am worn away, [prey. And death and love are yet contending for their

And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak:
Time may interpret to his silent years.
Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,
And in the light thine ample forehead wears,
And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,
And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy
Is whisper'd to subdue my fondest fears:
And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see
A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.

They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,
Of glorious parents, thou aspiring child.
I wonder not-for one then left this earth
Whose life was like a setting planet mild,
Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled
Of its departing glory; still her fame
Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and
Which shake these latter days; and thou canst
claim

[wild

The shelter from thy sire, of an immortal name.

One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, Which was the echo of three thousand years; And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it,

As some lone man, who in a desert hears
The music of his home :-unwonted fears
Fell on the pale oppressors of our race,
And faith and custom and low-thoughted cares,
Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space [place,
Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-

Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind!
If there must be no response to my cry-
If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
On his pure name who loves them,-thou and I,
Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,-
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by,
Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's
sight,

[light. That burn from year to year with unextinguished

FROM "ALASTOR, OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE."

THERE was a poet, whose untimely tomb
No human hands with pious reverence rear'd
But the charm'd eddies of autumnal winds
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness;
A lovely youth,-no mourning maiden deck'd
With weeping flowers, or white cypress wreath,
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:-
Gentle and brave, and generous,-no lorn bard
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh:
He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude.
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,
And virgins, as unknown he past, have pined
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
The fire of those orbs has ceased to burn,
And silence, too enamour'd of that voice,
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
In truth, or fable consecrates, he felt
And knew. When early youth had past, he left
His cold fireside and alienated home
To seek strange truths in undiscover'd lands.
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
Has lured his fearful steps; and he has bought
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
He like a shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano over-canopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
On black bare pointed islets ever beat
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
Of fire and poison, inaccessible

To avarice or pride, their starry domes
Of diamond and of gold expand above
Numberless and immeasurable halls,

Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines
Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
Than gems or gold, the varying of heaven
And the green earth lost in his heart its claims
To love and wonder; he would linger long
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
Until the doves and squirrels would partake
From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks;
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er
The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
Her timid steps to gaze upon a form
More graceful than her own.

His wandering step,

Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
The awful ruins of the days of old:

Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,

Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoeʼer of strange
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,

Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,
Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
Stupendous columns, and wild images

Of more than man, where marble demons watch
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around.
He linger'd, poring in memorials

Of the world's youth; through the long burning day
Gazed in those speechless shapes,nor, when the moon
Fill'd the mysterious halls with floating shades
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
Flash'd like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

ALASTOR AND THE SWAN.

AT length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,
Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
It rose as he approach'd, and with strong wings
Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
High over the immeasurable main.

His eyes pursued its flight." Thou hast a home,
Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home,
Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
And what am I that I should linger here,
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.
For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

FROM "THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.”

Ir was a temple, such as mortal hand
Has never built, nor ecstasy nor dream
Rear'd in the cities of enchanted land:

"I was likest heaven, ere yet day's purple stream
Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam
Of the unrisen moon among the clouds
Is gathering, when with many a golden beam
The thronging constellations rush in crowds,
Paving with fire the sky and the Marmoreal floods.

Like what may be conceived of this vast dome, When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce,

Genius beholds it rise, his native home,
Girt by the deserts of the universe;

Yet, nor in paintings light, or mightier verse,
Or sculpture's marble language, can invest
That shape to mortal sense,-such glooms immerse
That incommunicable sight, and rest
Upon the labouring brain, and overburden'd breast.

Winding among the lawny islands fair,
Whose blossomy forests starr'd the shadowy deep,
The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair
Its fretwork in the crystal sea did sleep,
Encircling that vast fane's aerial heap:
We disembark'd, and through a portal wide
We past,-whose roof, of moonstone, carved, did
keep

A glimmering o'er the forms on every side, Sculptures like life and thought'; immovable, deepeyed.

We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof Was diamond, which had drunk the lightning's sheen

In darkness, and now pour'd it through the woof
Of spell-enwoven clouds hung there to screen
Its blinding splendour, through such veil was seen
That work of subtlest power divine and rare;
Orb above orb, with starry shapes between,
And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair,
On night-black columns poised-one hollow he-
misphere!

Ten thousand columns in that quivering light
Distinct,-between whose shafts wound far away
The long and labyrinthine aisles more bright
With their own radiance than the heaven of day;
And on the jasper walls around there lay
Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,
Which did the spirit's history display;

A tale of passionate change, divinely taught, Which in their winged dance unconscious genii wrought.

Beneath there sate on many a sapphire throne
The great, who had departed from mankind;
A mighty senate;-some whose white hair shone
Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind.
Some, female forms, whose gestures beam'd with
mind;

And ardent youths, and children bright and fair; And some had lyres, whose strings were intertwined

With pale and clinging flames, which ever there Walk'd, faint yet thrilling sounds, that pierced the crystal air.

One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne Rear'd on a pyramid, like sculptured flame Distinct, with circling steps, which rested on Their own deep fire-soon as the woman came Into that hall, she shriek'd the spirit's name And fell; and vanish'd slowly from the sight. Darkness arose from her dissolving frame, Which gathering fill'd that dome of woven light, Blotting its sphered stars with supernatural night. Then first, two glittering lights were seen to glide In circles on the amethystine floor, Small serpent eyes wailing from side to side, Like meteors on a river's grassy shore, They round each other roll'd, dilating more And more, then rose commingling into one, One clear and mighty planet, hanging o'er A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown Athwart the glowing steps, and the crystalline throne.

The cloud which rested on that cone of flame Was cloven; beneath the planet sate a form, Fairer than tongue can speak, or thought may frame,

The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm Flow'd forth, and did with softest light inform The shadowy dome, the sculptures and the state Of those assembled shapes-with clinging charm, Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate Majestic, yet most mild-calm, yet compassionate.

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.

THE awful shadow of some unseen power

Floats though unseen among us; visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening, Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. Spirit of beauty, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river: Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given:
Therefore the names of demon, ghost, and heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour :
Frail spells, whose utter'd charm might not avail

to sever,

From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent

Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds, depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lover's eyes;

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame!

Depart not as thy shadow came:
Depart not, less the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. [fed:
I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is
I was not heard: I saw them not:
When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me:

I shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstasy!

I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers

Of studious zeal or loves delight

Outwatch'd with me the envious night: They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, Oh awful loveliness, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. The day becomes more solemn and serene

When noon is past: there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, spirit fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

SONG.

RARELY, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now

Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
"Tis since thou art fled away.
How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.
As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismay'd;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.
Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure,
Thou wilt never come for pity,

Thou wilt come for pleasure.

Pity, then, will cut away

Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,

Spirit of delight!

The fresh earth in new leaves drest,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow, and all the forms

Of the radiant frost:

I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Every thing almost

Which is nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,

And such society

As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me

What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.
I love Love-though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But, above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee-

Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.

DEATH AND SLEEP.

How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon, With lips of lurid blue; The other, rosy as the morn

When throned on ocean's wave,

It blushes o'er the world :

Yet both so passing wonderful!

A PICTURE.

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude [vault, That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon Studded with stars unutterably bright, [rolls, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur Seems like a canopy which love has spread Above the sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, So stainless, that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep, Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower So idly, that 'rapt fancy deemeth it A metaphor of peace ;-all form a scene Where musing solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness; Where silence undisturb'd might watch alone, So cold, so bright, so still! The orb of day, In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; And vesper's image on the western main Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes: Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully; Tempest unfolds its pinions o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns-the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.

Ah! whence yon glare
That fires the arch of heaven?-that dark red smoke
Blotting the silver moon! The stars are quench'd
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals
In countless echoes through the mountains ring,
Startling pale midnight on her starry throne!
Now swells the intermingling din; the jar,
Frequent and frightful, of the bursting bomb;
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage!-Loud and more loud
The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene,
And o'er the conqueror and the conquer'd draws
His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men
Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there,
In proud and vigorous health-of all the hearts
That beat with anxious life at sunset there-
How few survive, how few are beating now!
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm

That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause;
Save when the frantic wail of widow'd love
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapt round its struggling powers.

The gray morn
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance

Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood,
Even to the forest's depth, and scatter'd arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors: far behind
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen—

Each tree which guards its darkness from the day
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.

SPRING.

THE blasts of autumn drive the winged seeds Over the earth,-next come the snows, and rain, And frost, and storms, which dreary winter leads Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train; Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again, Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings; Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things. O spring! of hope, and love, and youth, and glad

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The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest? Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet; Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet [sheet. Disturbing not the leaves which are her windingVirtue, and hope, and love, like light and heaven, Surround the world. We are their chosen slaves. Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves?

Lo, winter comes!—the grief of many graves, The frost of death, the tempest of the sword, The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves Stagnate like ice at faith, the enchanter's word, And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorr'd.

The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile The tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey; Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile Because they cannot speak; and, day by day, The moon of wasting science wanes away Among her stars, and in that darkness vast The sons of earth to their foul idols pray, And gray priests triumph, and like blight or blast A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast. This is the winter of the world ;-and here We die, even as the winds of autumn fade, Expiring in the frore and foggy air.- [made Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who The promise of its birth,-even as the shade Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings The future, a broad sunrise; thus array'd As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, From its dark gulf of chains, earth like an eagle springs,

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