Dancing music, music sad,

Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses pale;
Sombre Saturn, Momus hale ;-
Laugh and sigh, and laugh again;
Oh the sweetness of the pain!
Muses bright, and muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil ;
Let me see; and let me write
Of the day, and of the night-
Both together:-let me slake
All my thirst for sweet heart-ache!
Let my bower be of yew,

Interwreath'd with myrtles new ;
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass-tomb.

SONNET.

20

25

339

WHEN

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

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.

A A

SONNET.

TO HOMER.

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 spumy 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.

A DRAUGHT OF SUNSHINE.

HENCE Burgundy, Claret, and Port,

Away with old Hock and Madeira, Too earthly ye are for my sport;

There's a beverage brighter and clearer. Instead of a pitiful rummer,

My wine overbrims a whole summer;

My bowl is the sky,

And I drink at my eye,

5

Till I feel in the brain

A Delphian pain

Then follow, my Caius! then follow:

On the green of the hill

ΙΟ

We will drink our fill

Of golden sunshine,

Till our brains intertwine

With the glory and grace of Apollo !

God of the Meridian,

And of the East and West,

To thee my soul is flown,

And my body is earthward press'd.It is an awful mission,

A terrible division;

And leaves a gulph austere
To be fill'd with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled

To high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,
As doth a mother wild,

When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws-

And is not this the cause

Of madness?-God of Song,

Thou bearest me along

Through sights I scarce can bear:

35

O let me, let me share

With the hot lyre and thee,

The staid Philosophy.

Temper my lonely hours,

And let me see thy bowers
More unalarm'd!

40

FAERY SONGS.

I.

SHED no tear-O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more—O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
Dry your eyes-O dry your eyes,

For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies-
Shed no tear.

Overhead-look overhead

'Mong the blossoms white and red—
Look up, look up-I flutter now
On this flush pomegranate bough—
See me 'tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man's ill—
Shed no tear-O shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.

Adieu-Adieu-I fly, adieu,

I vanish in the heaven's blue

Adieu, Adieu!

II.

Ah! woe is me! poor silver-wing!
That I must chant thy lady's dirge,
And death to this fair haunt of spring,

Of melody, and streams of flowery verge,Poor silver-wing! ah! woe is me!

That I must see

These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall!
Go, pretty page! and in her ear

Whisper that the hour is near!
Softly tell her not to fear

Such calm favonian burial!

Go, pretty page! and soothly tell,

The blossoms hang by a melting spell,
And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice
Upon her closed eyes,

That now in vain are weeping their last tears,

At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green,—

Rich dowry from the Spirit of the Spheres,-
Alas! poor Queen!

SONG.

Written on a blank page in Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, between "Cupid's Revenge" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen."

I.

SPIRIT here that reignest!

Spirit here that painest!

Spirit here that burnest!

Spirit here that mournest!
Spirit, I bow

My forehead low,

Enshaded with thy pinions.
Spirit, I look

All passion-struck
Into thy pale dominions.