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The sun, beneath the horizon's brow
Has sunk, not passed away;

His

presence is far lordlier now

Than on the throne of day;

His spirit of splendour has gone forth,

Sloping wide violet rays,

Possessing air and sea and earth

With his essential blaze.*

Transpierced, transfused, each densest mass

Melts to as pure a glow,

As images on painted glass
Or silken screens can show.
Gaze on the city,-contemplate
With that fine sense of thine
The Palace of the ancient state,

That wildly-grand design!

How 'mid the universal sheen

Of marble amber-tinged,

Like some enormous baldaquin
Gay-chequered and deep-fringed,

*The perfect transparency and rich colour of all objects, and their reflections, in southern countries, for some short time after sunset, has an almost miraculous effect to a northern eye. Whenever it has been imitated in art, it has been generally pronounced unnatural or exaggerated. I do not remember to have ever seen the phenomenon so astonishingly beautiful as at Venice, at least in Italy.

It stands in air and will not move,
Upheld by magic power,—

The dun-lead Domes just caught above-
Beside, the glooming Tower.

Now a more distant beauty fills

Thy scope of ear and eye,——

That graceful cluster of low hills,

Bounding the western sky,

Which the ripe evening flushes cover

With purplest fruitage-bloom,

Methinks that gold-lipt cloud may

hover

Just over Petrarch's tomb !

Petrarch! when we that name repeat,

Its music seems to fall

Like distant bells, soft-voiced and sweet,

But sorrowful withal

That broken heart of love !—that life

Of tenderness and tears!

So weak on earth,-in earthly strife,

So strong in holier spheres !

How in his most of godlike pride,

While emulous nations ran

To kiss his feet, he stept aside

And wept the woes of man!

How in his genius-woven bower

Of passion ever green,

The world's black veil fell, hour by hour,

Him and his rest between.

Welcome such thoughts ;-they well atone

With this more serious mood

Of visible things that night brings on,

In her cool shade to brood;

The moon is clear in heaven and sea,
Her silver has been long

Slow-changing to bright gold, but she
Deserves a separate song.

ODE

TO THE MOON OF THE SOUTH.

LET him go down,-the gallant Sun!

His work is nobly done;
Well may He now absorb

Within his solid orb

The rays so beautiful and strong,

The rays that have been out so long

Embracing this delighted land as with a mystic song.

Let the brave Sun go down to his repose,
And though his heart be kind,

He need not mourn for those

He leaves behind;

He knows, that when his ardent throne
Is rolled beyond the vaulting sky,
The Earth shall not be left alone
In darkness and perplexity.

We shall not sit in sullen sorrow
Expectant of a tardy morrow,
But there where he himself arose,
Another power shall rise,

And gracious rivalry disclose

To our reverted eyes,

Between the passing splendour and the born, Which can the most our happy world adorn.

The light of night shall rise,—

Not as in northern skies,

A

memory of the day, a dream

Of sunshine, something that might seem

Between a shadow and a gleam,

A mystery, a maiden

Whose spirit worn and sorrow laden

Pleasant imaginations wile

Into a visionary smile,

A novice veiled in vapoury shrouds,
A timid huntress, whom the clouds
Rather pursue than shun,-
With far another mien,

Wilt thou come forth serene,

Thou full and perfect Queen,

Moon of the South! twin-sister of the Sun !

Still harboured in his tent of cloth of gold
He seems thy ordered presence to await,
In his pure soul rejoicing to behold
The majesty of his successor's state,—
Saluting thy ascent

With many a tender and triumphant tone
Compassed in his celestial instrument,

And harmonies of hue to other climes unknown.

He too, who knows what melody of word

May with that visual music best accord,

Why does the Bard his homage now delay ?
As in the ancient East,

The royal Minstrel-Priest

Sang to his harp that Hallelujah lay
Of the Sun-bridegroom ready for his way,
So, in the regions of the later West

This blessed even-tide,

Is there no Poet whose divine behest
Shall be to hail the bride ?

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