XV.

HE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and

softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous

waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms,

Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,

Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradiseVanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve,

When the dusk holiday—or holinight Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave

The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight; But, as I've read love's missal through to-day, He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

1819.

XVI.

CRY your mercy - pity - love!-- aye, love!

Merciful love that tantalises not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,

Unmask'd, and being seen— without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,— all — all — be mine!

That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes

divine,

That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured

breast,-
Yourself—your soul-in pity give me all,

Withhold no atom's atom or I die,
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,

Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind !

1819.

XVII.

HIS LAST SONNET.'

R RIGHT star! would I were steadfast as

thou artNot in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors — No- yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.?

This was written in a copy of Shakespeare's Poems given to Mr. Severn a few days before. ? Another reading:

“ Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death."

SONNET

OF DOUBTFUL AUTHENTICITY.

TO LEASURES lie thickest where no pleas

ures seem. There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground But holds some joy of silence or of sound

Some sprite begotten of a summer dream.

The very meanest things are made supreme, With innate ecstasy : the grain of sand But rolls a bright and million peopled land,

And hath its Eves and Edens—so I deem. For Love, though blind, a microscopic eye Has lent me, to behold the hearts of things,

And touch'd mine ear with power: thus far or nigh, Minute or mighty, fix'd or feet with wings,

Delight from many a nameless covert-sky Peeps sparkling, and in tones familiar rings."

? I believe this to be one of George Byron's forgeries.

PAESS OF THEO. L. DE VINNE & CO. NEW-YORK.