Laurels upon me: and the rush,
The torrent of the chilly air,
Gurgled within my ear the crush

Of empires with the captive's prayer, The hum of suitors, and the tone

Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,
Usurped a tyranny which men

Have deemed, since I have reached to power,
My innate nature be it so:

But, father, there lived one who, then, Then, in my boyhood, when their fire Burned with a still intenser glow

(For passion must, with youth, expire) E'en then who knew this iron heart In woman's weakness had a part.

Nor would I now attempt to trace
The more than beauty of a face
Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
Are

shadows on the unstable wind:

Thus I remember having dwelt
Some page of early lore upon,
With loitering eye, till I have felt
The letters, with their meaning, melt
To fantasies with none.

Oh, she was worthy of all love!

Love, as in infancy, was mine:

"T was such as angel minds above

Might envy; her young heart the shrine

On which my every hope and thought

Were incense, then a goodly gift,
For they were childish and upright,
Pure as her young example taught:
Why did I leave it, and, adrift,

Trust to the fire within, for light?
We grew in age and love together,
Roaming the forest and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather;
And when the friendly sunshine smiled,
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven but in her eyes.
Young Love's first lesson is the heart:

For 'mid that sunshine and those smiles, When, from our little cares apart,

And laughing at her girlish wiles, I'd throw me on her throbbing breast And pour my spirit out in tears, There was no need to speak the rest, No need to quiet any fears

Of her

who asked no reason why, But turned on me her quiet eye.

Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove,
When on the mountain peak alone
Ambition lent it a new tone,
I had no being but in thee:

The world, and all it did contain

In the earth, the air, the sea,

Its joy, its little lot of pain

That was new pleasure, the ideal

Dim vanities of dreams by night, And dimmer nothings which were real

(Shadows, and a more shadowy light), Parted upon their misty wings,

And so confusedly became

Thine image, and a name, a name, Two separate yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious - have you known
The passion, father? You have not.

A cottager, I marked a throne
Of half the world as all my own,

And murmured at such lowly lot;
But, just like any other dream,

Upon the vapor of the dew

My own had passed, did not the beam

Of beauty which did while it through The minute, the hour, the day, oppress My mind with double loveliness.

We walked together on the crown
Of a high mountain which looked down,
Afar from its proud natural towers
Of rock and forest, on the hills-
The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers
And shouting with a thousand rills.
I spoke to her of power and pride,

But mystically, in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside
The moment's converse; in her eyes

I read, perhaps too carelessly,

A mingled feeling with my own; The flush on her bright cheek to me

Seemed to become a queenly throne

Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then
And donned a visionary crown;
Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me;
But that, among the rabble - men,
Lion ambition is chained down
And crouches to a keeper's hand:
Not so in deserts where the grand,
The wild, the terrible, conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand!
Is she not queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand

Their destinies? in all beside

Of glory which the world hath known,
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling, her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne!
And who her sovereign? Timour - he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o'er empires haughtily
A diademed outlaw!

O human love, thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth-
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly,

And homeward turned his softened eye. "T was sunset: when the sun will part, There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the evening mist

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly,
But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What though the moon - the white moon
Shed all the splendor of her noon?
Her smile is chilly, and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one;
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown.
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noonday beauty — which is all!

I reached my home, my home no more,
For all had flown who made it so.

I passed from out its mossy door,
And, though my tread was soft and low,

A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known: