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"It is impossible to know how far knowledge will console us for the death of a friend and the ill that flesh is heir to.' With respect to the affections and poetry, you must know by a sympathy my thoughts that way, and I dare say these few lines will be but a ratification. I wrote them on May-day, and intend to finish the ode ail in good time."

D

OTHER of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!
May I sing to thee

As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiæ ?
Or may I woo thee

In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles

Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan?

O, give me their old vigour, and unheard
Save of the quiet primrose, and the span
Of heaven and few ears,

Rounded by thee, my song should die away
Content as theirs,

Rich in the simple worship of a day.'

It is much to be regretted he did not finish this ode; this commencement is in his best manner: the sentiment VOL. III.

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and expression perfect, as every traveller in modern Greece will recognize.-ED.

TO PSYCHE.

TO HIS BROTHER AND SISTER.

"The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have, for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry; this one I have done leisurely; I think it reads the more richly for it, and it will, I hope, encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist, who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour, and perhaps never thought of in the old religion: I am more orthodox than to let a heathen goddess be so neglected." Feb. 1819.

O

GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers,

wrung

By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung, Even into thine own soft-couched ear: Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes? I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran A brooklet, scarce espied: 'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed, Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass; Their arms embraced, and their pinions too; Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!

O latest-born and loveliest vision far

Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers;

Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming ;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retired
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours!

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming :

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane.
In some untrodden region of my mind,

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Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleas

ant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name.
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!

S

TO AUTUMN.

EASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

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