Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep;
A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's,

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.

Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,

As mountain springs under the morning Sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,

Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still

Burning, yet ever inconsumable:

In one another's substance finding food,

Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,

And one annihilation. Woe is me!

The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of love's rare Universe,

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire.

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire !

Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,

And say:

"We are the masters of thy slave;

"What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?" Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,

All singing loud: "Love's very pain is sweet, "But its reward is in the world divine

"Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave."

So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet

Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,

And bid them love each other and be blest :

And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,

And come and be my guest,

- for I am Love's.

DEATH.

I.

DEATH is here and death is there,

Death is busy everywhere,

All around, within, beneath,

and when

Our hopes, and then our fears

These are dead, the debt is due,

Dust claims dust and we die too.

IV.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish,
Such is our rude mortal lot

Love itself would, did they not.

AUTUM N.

A DIRGE.

I.

THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the year

On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.

Come, months, come away,

From November to May,

In your saddest array ;
Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

II.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling

For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling;

Come, months, come away;

Put on white, black, and grey;

Let your light sisters play –

Ye, follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.

LEGHORN, July 1, 1820.

THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle eyer weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought -
No net of words in garish colours wrought

To catch the idle buzzers of the day —

But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.

Whoever should behold me now, I wist, Would think I were a mighty mechanist, Bent with sublime Archimedean art

To breathe a soul into the iron heart

Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
Which by the force of figured spells might win
Its way over the sea, and sport therein;