O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
The heart's division divideth us.

Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
To the place of the slaying of Itylus,
The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.

O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
I pray thee sing not a little space.

Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
The woven web that was plain to follow,
The small slain body, the flower-like face,
Can I remember if thou forget?

O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!

The hands that cling and the feet that follow, The voice of the child's blood crying yet Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten? Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow, But the world shall end when I forget.

BYRON'S LAST POEM.

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move :
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze A funeral pile.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share,
But wear the chain.

But 'tis not thus - and 'tis not here
Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now,
Where glory decks the hero's bier,
Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece, around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece — she is awake!)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom.
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood! unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live?
The land of honorable death

Is here:- up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!

Seek out less often sought than found —
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.

- LORD BYRON.

21.

TO THE MUSES.

WHETHER On Ida's shady brow,
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the Sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceased;
Whether in heaven ye wander fair,

Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air

Where the melodious winds have birth;

Whether on crystal rocks ye rove
Beneath the bosom of the sea,
Wandering in many a coral grove,
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry;
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoyed in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few!
WILLIAM BLAKE,

NOTES.

No. 10. KUBLA KHAN. Coleridge says that this poem came to him in a dream, as he was sleeping one day in a chair. As soon as he awoke he seized a pen and wrote thus far, when he was interrupted by a visitor. He was never able to recall the rest of the dream. It was probably suggested by a passage in Purchas's travels, which he was reading.

No. 11. TO A LADY, WITH A Guitar. Drummond, entitled To his Lute.

See the sonnet by William

Ariel, Miranda, Prince Ferdinand, Prospero. Characters in Shakespeare's drama of The Tempest, which see.

No. 12. DAVID PLAYING BEFORE SAUL. From Browning's tragedy of Saul. See I Samuel, xvi. 23.

No. 13. STANZAS FROM "WINE OF CYPRUS." See Classical Dictionary for the numerous proper names mentioned in these verses.

No. 14. ODE ON A GRECIAN URN. "We do not know in the whole field of English poetry a more exquisite piece of fancy than this, which supposes a moment of early Greek life, with its buoyant gaiety and all its simple incidents, transferred to the surface of the Urn and there arrested forever." - Miss A. B. Edwards.

No. 15. TO THE SPIRIT OF ACHILLES. From the drama entitled The Deformed Transformed, 1824.

No: 16. CORINNA, FROM ATHENS, TO TANAGRA. From Landor's Imaginary Conversations. Corinna was a woman of Tanagra, (a town near Thebes,) who five times won the prize of poetry from Pindar.

No. 17. ARETHUSA. For the myth of Arethusa, see Classical Dictionary. See also the references to Arethusa in The Book of Elegies.

No. 19. ITYLUS. See note on Philomel, page 65. Also the poem on The Nightingale by Richard Barnfield, page 47.

No. 20. BYRON'S LAST POEM. "These lines, written in Greece, and only three months before his death, are the last which Byron wrote, and, in their earlier stanzas at least, about the truest."- Trench.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES.