With forms which live and suffer- let that

pass

His shadow fades away into Destruction's

mass,

CLXV.

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all

That we inherit in its mortal shroud,

And spreads the dim and universal pall Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud

Between us sinks and all which ever glow'd
Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays
A melancholy halo scarce allow'd

To hover on the verge of darkness; rays

Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,

CLXVI.

And send us prying into the abyss,
To gather what we shall be when the frame
Shall be resolved to something less than this
Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
And wipe the dust from off the idle name
We never more shall hear, — but never more,
Oh, happier thought! can we be made the

same:

It is enough, in sooth, that once we bore These fardels of the heart - -the heart whose sweat was gore.

CLXVII.

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, A long, low distant murmur of dread sound, Such as arises when a nation bleeds

With some deep and immedicable wound; Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground,

The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief Seems royal still, though with her head discrown'd

And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

CLXVIII.

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,
Death hush'd that pang for ever: with thee fled

The present happiness and promised joy Which fill'd the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy.

CLXIX.

Peasants bring forth in safety. — Can it be,
O thou that wert so happy, so adored!
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for
thee,

And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to

hoard,

Her many griefs for ONE; for she had pour'd Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head Beheld her Iris. — Thou, too, lonely lord,

And desolate consort — vainly wert thou wed! The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

CLXX.

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made; Thy bridal's fruit is ashes; in the dust

The fair-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is laid, The love of millions! How we did entrust Futurity to her! and, though it must

Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem'd Our children should obey her child, and bless'd Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem'd

Like star to shepherd's eyes; 'twas but a meteor beam'd.

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,

A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

LXVII.

And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails
Down where the shallower wave still tells its
bubbling tales.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean
With Nature's baptism, -'tis to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX.

The roar of waters! - from the headlong height

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX.

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence

again

Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald. How profound
The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and

rent

With his fierce footsteps, yields in chasms a fearful vent.