V. ON THE SEA. It keeps eternal whisperings around That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven were unbound. O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; O ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody,Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired! Aug. 1817. VI. ON LEIGH HUNT'S POEM, THE "STORY OF RIMINI. Who loves to peer up at the morning sun, Of Heaven Hesperus- let him lowly speak These numbers to the night, and starlight meek, Or moon, if that her hunting be begun. He who knows these delights, and too is prone To moralize upon a smile or tear, Will find at once a region of his own, A bower for his spirit, and will steer To alleys, where the fir-tree drops its cone, Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are sear. VII. WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; Of unreflecting love! then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. 1817. VIII. TO HOMER. STANDING aloof in giant ignorance, So thou wast blind! - but then the veil was rent, For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spermy tent, And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive; Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light, And precipices show untrodden green; There is a budding morrow in midnight; There is a triple sight in blindness keen : Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell. IX. ANSWER TO A SONNET ENDING THUS : "Dark eyes are dearer far Than those that made the hyacinthine bell." BY J. H. REYNOLDS. BLUE! 'Tis the life of heaven, the domain - Of Cynthia, the wide palace of the sun,The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun. Blue! 'Tis the life of waters ocean And all its vassal streams: pools numberless May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness. Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers Forget-me-not, the blue bell, and, that qeeen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate! Feb. 1818. |