Aud with curses wild The best, loveliest, and last, Of his name! A LAMENT. SWIFTER far than summer's flight, Art thou come and gone: As the earth when leaves are dead, The swallow Summer comes again, To fly with thee, false as thou. My heart each day desires the morrow, Vainly would my winter borrow Sunny leaves from any bough. Lilies for a bridal bed, Roses for a matron's head, Violets for a maiden dead, Pansies let my flowers be: On the living grave I bear, Scatter them without a tear, Waste one hope, one fear for me. THE PINE FOREST OF THE CASCINE, NEAR PISA. DEAREST, best, and brightest, Come away, To the woods and to the fields ! The eldest of the hours of spring, Bending from heaven, in azure mirth, Radiant Sister of the Day, Sapless, grey, and ivy dun, Round stones that never kiss the sun, To the sandhills of the sea, Where the earliest violets be. Now the last day of many days, For the Earth has changed its face, We wandered to the Pine Forest The whispering waves were half asleep, The smile of Heaven lay. It seemed as if the day were one We paused amid the Pines that stood Tortured by storms to shapes as rude, How calm it was-the silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness ; The breath of peace we drew, With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. It seemed that from the remotest seat A spirit interfused around, To momentary peace it bound Our mortal Nature's strife. For still it seemed the centre of Was one whose being filled with love Were not the crocusses that grew Under that ilex tree, As beautiful in scent and hue As ever fed the bee? We stood beside the pools that lie Under the forest bough, And each seemed like a sky Gulphed in a world below ; A purple firmament of light, Which in the dark earth lay, More boundless than the depth of night, And clearer than the day In which the massy forests grew, As in the upper air, More perfect both in shape and hue Than any waving there. Like one beloved, the scene had lent To the dark water's breast Its every leaf and lineament With that clear truth expressed. There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn, The white sun twinkling like the dawn Sweet views, which in our world above Can never well be seen, Of that fair forest green. And all was interfused beneath Within an Elysium air, An atmosphere without a breath, A silence sleeping there. Until a wandering wind crept by, Like an unwelcome thought, Which from my mind's too faithful eye L |