THOυ, who plumed with strong desire Wouldst float above the earth, beware! A shadow tracks thy flight of fire— Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air, And among the winds and beams It were delight to wander there- Night is coming!
The deathless stars are bright above: If I would cross the shade at night, Within my heart is the lamp of love, And that is day!
And the moon will sinile with gentle light On my golden plumes where'er they move; The meteors will linger round my flight,
But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain- See, the bounds of the air are shaken; Night is coming!
The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken :
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plainNight is coming!
I see the light, and I hear the sound.
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark, With the calm within and the light around Which makes night day :
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound; My moonlight flight thou then mayst mark On high, far away.
Some say there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice 'Mid Alpine mountains;
And that the languid storm, pursuing That winged shape, for ever flies Round those hoar branches, aye renewing Its airy fountains.
Some say when nights are dry and clear, And the death-dews sleep on the morass, Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller, Which make night day;
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, And when he awakes on the fragrant grass, He finds night day.
LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.
THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree; The silkworm in the dark-green mulberry leaves His winding-sheet and cradle ever weaves! So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, Sit spinning still round this decaying form, From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought, No net of words in garish colours wrought, To catch the idle buzzers of the day;
But a soft cell, where, when that fades away, Memory may clothe in wings my living name And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me Grow, making love an immortality.
Whoever should behold me now, I wist, Would think I were a mighty mechanist, Bent with sublime Archimedean art
To breathe a soul into the iron heart
Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, Which by the force of figured spells might win Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
For round the walls are hung dread engines, such As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
Ixion or the Titan :-or the quick Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic; Or those in philosophic councils met,
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation, By giving a faint foretaste of damnation To Shakspeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest Who made our land an island of the blest, When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her firo On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire :- With thumb-screws, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,
With fishes found under the utmost crag Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles, Where to the sky the rude sea seldom smiles Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn When the exulting elements in scorn, Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, As panthers sleep:-and other strange and dread Magical forms the brick floor overspread- Proteus transformed to metal did not make More figures, or more strange; nor did he take Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass Of tin and iron not to be understood, And forms of unimaginable wood,
Tc puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood.
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved
The elements of what will stand the shocks Of wave and wind and time.-Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able To catalogize in this verse of mine:
A pretty bowl of wood-not full of wine,
But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who Reply to them in lava-cry, halloo !
And call out to the cities o'er their head,—
Roofs, towns, and shrines, the dying and the
[quaff Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. This quicksilver no gnome has drunk-within The walnut-bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon
The inmost shower of its white fire-the breeze Is still-blue heaven smiles over the pale seas. And in this bowl of quicksilver-for I Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood-I have made to float A rude idealism of a paper boat,
A hollow screw with cogs-Henry will know The thing I mean, and laugh at me, if so He fears not I should do more mischief.-Next Lie bills and calculations much perplext,
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint
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