LXXXVI. It is the hush of night, and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more; LXXXVII. He is an evening reveller, who makes LXXXVIII. Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. LXXXIX. All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, Of that which is of all Creator and defence. VOL. II. E XC. Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone; A truth, which through our being then doth melt And purifies from self: it is a tone, The soul and source of music, which makes known Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm, Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone, Binding all things with beauty;-'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm. XCI. Not vainly did the early Persian make Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, (20) and thus take XCII. The sky is changed!-and such a change! Oh night, (21) From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! XCIII. And this is in the night:-Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black,—and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. Of XCIV. Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed:— years all winters,-war within themselves to wage. XCV. Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way, The brightest through these parted hills hath fork'd That in such gaps as desolation work'd, There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurk'd. |