VI.

ON LEIGH HUNT'S POEM, THE 66 STORY OF RIMINI.

WHO loves to peer up at the morning sun,
With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek,
Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek
For meadows where the little rivers run;
Who loves to linger with that brightest one

1817.

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 moralise 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.

1817.

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact'ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love!-then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

VIII.

TO HOMER.

1818.

STANDING aloof in giant ignorance,

Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

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 befel,

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.

Feb. 1818.

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, grey 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 queen
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!

X.

TO J. H. REYNOLDS.

O THAT a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,

So time itself would be annihilate,

So a day's journey in oblivious haze

To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate. O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!

To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant! In little time a host of joys to bind,

And keep our souls in one eternal pant! This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught Me how to harbour such a happy thought.