LXVI.

WAKE the serpent not-lest he
Should not know the way to go.
Let him crawl, which yet lies sleeping,

Through the deep grass of the meadow.
Not a bee shall hear him creeping;

Not a may-fly shall awaken,

From its cradling blue-bell shaken ;
Not the starlight, as he's sliding
Through the grass with silent gliding.

LXVII.

ROME has fallen, ye see it lying

Heaped in undistinguished ruin. Nature is alone undying.

LXVIII.

THE fitful alternations of the rain,

When the chill wind, languid as with pain

Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the grey and beamless atmosphere.

LXIX.

I AM as a spirit who has dwelt

Within his heart of hearts; and I have felt

His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known
The inmost converse of his soul, the tone

Unheard but in the silence of his blood,
When all the pulses in their multitude
Image the trembling calm of summer seas.
I have unlocked the golden melodies

Of his deep soul as with a master-key,

And loosened them, and bathed myself therein—
Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist
Clothing his wings with lightning.

1819.

LXX.

Is not today enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?

Is not tomorrow even as yesterday,

And will the day that follows change thy doom?
Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;
And who waits for thee in that cheerless home
Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return
Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

1819.

LXXI.

Is it that in some brighter sphere

We part from friends we meet with here?

Or do we see the Future pass
Over the Present's dusky glass?
Or what is it that makes us seem
To patch up fragments of a dream,
Part of which comes true, and part
Beats and trembles in the heart?

1819.

LXXII.

As the sunrise to the night,

As the north wind to the clouds,

As the earthquake's fiery flight
Ruining mountain solitudes,
Everlasting Italy,

Be those hopes and fears on thee!

LXXIII.

My head is heavy, my limbs are weary,
And it is not life that makes me move.

1820.

1820.

LXXIV.

SUCH hope as is the sick despair of good,
Such fear as is the certainty of ill,
Such doubt is as pale Expectation's food,

Turned while she tastes to poison, when the will
Is powerless, and the spirit.

Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.'

I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass

Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass

The thoughts of others . . . And, when

I went among my kind, with triple brass

Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate-a woful mass !

LXXV.

THE WANING MOON.

AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.

LXXVI.

TO THE MOON.

ART thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,—
Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?
Thou chosen sister of the spirit,

That gazes on thee till in thee it pities

1820.

LXXVII.

UNRISEN splendour of the brightest sun
To rise upon our darkness, if the star
Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne
Could thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war
With thy young brightness !

LXXVIII.

I WENT into the deserts of dim sleep

That world which, like an unknown wilderness, Bounds this with its recesses wide and deep.

LXXIX.

THE viewless and invisible Consequence
Watches thy goings-out and comings-in,
And hovers o'er thy guilty sleep,
Unveiling every newborn deed, and thoughts
More ghastly than those deeds.

LXXX.

I DREAMED that Milton's spirit rose, and took
From life's green tree his Uranian lute;
And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook
All human things built in contempt of man,-

And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked,
Prisons and citadels.

LXXXI.

HIS face was like a snake's-wrinkled and loose
And withered.

1821.

LXXXII.

The gentleness of rain was in the wind.

LXXXIII.

METHOUGHT I was a billow in the crowd

Of common men, that stream without a shore,
That ocean which at once is deaf and loud;
That I, a man, stood amid many more

By a wayside,

which the aspect bore

Of some imperial metropolis,

Where mighty shapes-pyramid, dome, and tower— Gleamed like a pile of crags.

LXXXIV.

O THOU immortal deity

Whose throne is in the depth of human thought,

I do adjure thy power and thee

By all that man may be, by all that he is not,
By all that he has been and yet must be !

LXXXV.

ON KEATS,

WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED

"HERE lieth One whose name was writ on water."

But, ere the breath that could erase it blew,

Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,

Death, the immortalizing winter, flew

Athwart the stream :-time's printless torrent grew
A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name

Of Adonais.

1821.