Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead;

(Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think,)

And breathed such life with kisses in my lips,

That I revived and was an emperor. Ah, me! how sweet is love itself possessed

When but love's shadows are so rich in joy.

SHAKSPEARE: Romeo and Juliet.
Act v. Sc. 1.

SHIPS AT SEA.

I HAVE ships that went to sea
More than fifty years ago:
None have yet come home to me,

But keep sailing to and fro.
I have seen them, in my sleep,
Plunging through the shoreless deep,
With tattered sails and battered
hulls,

While around them screamed the gulls,

Flying low, flying low.

I have wondered why they staid
From me, sailing round the world; -
And I've said, "I'm half afraid

That their sails will ne'er be
furled."

Great the treasures that they hold,
Silks and plumes, and bars of gold;
While the spices which they bear
Fill with fragrance all the air,
As they sail, as they sail.

Every sailor in the port

Knows that I have ships at sea, Of the waves and winds the sport; And the sailors pity me. Oft they come and with me walk, Cheering me with hopeful talk, Till I put my fears aside, And contented watch the tide

Rise and fall, rise and fall.

I have waited on the piers, Gazing for them down the bay, Days and nights, for many years, Till I turned heart-sick away. But the pilots, when they land, Stop and take me by the hand,

FANTASY.

BREAK, Fantasy, from thy cave of cloud,

And spread thy purple wings,
Now all thy figures are allowed,
And various shapes of things;
Create of airy forms a stream,
It must have blood, and nought of
phlegm,

And, though it be a waking dream,
Yet let it like an odor rise
To all the senses here,
And fall like sleep upon their eyes,
Or music in their ear.

BEN JONSON.

PHOENIX AND TURTLE DOVE.

LET the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,

To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feathered king;
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and
tak'st,

'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder; Distance, and no space was seen 'Twixt the turtle and his queen: But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine, That the turtle saw his right

Flaming in the Phoenix' sight: Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appalled, That the self was not the same; Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was called.

Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either-neither,
Simple was so well compounded:

That it cried, How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain.

Whereupon it made this threne To the Phoenix and the dove, Co-supremes and stars of love; As chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS.

BEAUTY, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the Phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:-
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be; Beauty brag, but 'tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
SHAKSPEARE.

COMPLIMENT TO QUEEN ELIZABETH.

My gentle Puck, come hither, thou

remember'st

Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civil at her

song;

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid's music. That very time, I saw, but thou couldst not,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Cupid all armed: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal, throned by the west;

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft

Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell;

It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,

And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.

Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

Will make a man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:

Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;

And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,

Tickling a parson's nose as he lies asleep,

Then dreams he of another benefice:

Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts, and wakes,

And, being thus frighted, swears a
prayer or two,
And sleeps again.
This is that very

Mab

That plaits the manes of horses in the night,

And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.

SHAKSPEARE: Romeo and Juliet.

SONG FROM GYPSIES' METAMORPHOSES.

THE Owl is abroad, the bat, the toad,

And so is the cat-a-mountain;
The ant and the mole sit both in a

hole;

And frog peeps out o' the fountain; The dogs they bay, and the timbrels play;

The spindle now is a-turning; The moon it is red, and the stars are fled;

But all the sky is a-burning.

THE faery beam upon you, And the stars to glister on you, A moon of light

In the noon of night,

Then to the noblest princes fellow might he be. WARTON: Little Garden of Roses.

KUBLA KHAN.

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran, Through caverns measureless to man,

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incensebearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Infolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demonlover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless

ocean: