FAIRY-LAND.

DIM vales—and shadowy floods
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over.

Huge moons there wax and wane
Again again again

Every moment of the night

Forever changing places

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down still down- and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence,

- o'er the sea.

While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be
O'er the strange woods -
Over spirits on the wing -
Over every drowsy thing -
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light-

And then, how deep!-O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.

In the morning they arise,

TO HELEN.

HELEN, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!