LINES.

The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone ;

And all around,

With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow

Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,

The birds did rest

On the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack

Which the frost had made between.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;
- As a fen-fire's beam, .. : .

On a sluggish stream,
Gleams dimly-so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair

That shook in the wind of night,

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy hosom chill;

The night did shed
On thy dear head

Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky

Might visit thee at will.

November, 1815.

DEATH.

They die—the dead return not-Misery

Sits near an open grave and calls them over, A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye

They are the names of kindred, friend, and lover, Which he so feebly called—they all are gone ! Fond wretch, all dead, those vacant names alone,

This most familiar scene, my pain-
These tombs alone remain.

Misery, my sweetest friend-oh! weep no more !

Thou wilt not be consoled-- I wonder not! For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door

Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot
Was even as bright and calm, but transitory,
And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary ;

This most familiar scene, my pain-
These tombs alone remain.

TO

WHEN passion's trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep

It were enough to feel, to see
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest--and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.

After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets re-appear,
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move,
And for all others, life and love,

TO MARY

Or ! Mary dear, that you were here With your brown eyes bright and clear, And your sweet voice, like a bird Singing love to its lone mate In the ivy bower disconsolate ; Voice the sweetest ever heard ! And your brow more * * Than the # # # sky Of this azure Italy. - Mary dear, come to me soon, * I am not well whilst thou art far; • As sunset to the sphered moon, As twilight to the western star, Thou, beloved, art to me.

Ob! Mary dear, that you were here;
The Castle echo whispers “ Here!”

Este, September 1818.

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.

LISTEN, listen, Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apenuine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow
By the captives pent in the cave below. A
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay ;
But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. May 4th, 1818.

TIME.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore,
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,

Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea: