What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
To be after life what we have been before?

Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those eyes,
Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise
Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit,-which I, day by day,
Have so long called my child, but which now fades away
Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?"

Lo! the ship

Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip.
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine

Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne,
Stand rigid with horror. A loud, long, hoarse cry

Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously;

And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,
Rebounding, like thunder from crag to cave,
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane.
The hurricane came from the west, and passed on
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form

Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
Black as a cormorant, the screaming blast

Between ocean and heaven like an ocean passed,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world,
Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest. It rent them in twain,
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag;
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast.
They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and, where
The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air
Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.

And that breach in the tempest is widening away;
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day;
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lulled by the motion and murmurings,
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea;
And overhead, glorious but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,

Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold
The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above;
And, like passions made still by the presence of Love,
Beneath the clear surface, reflecting it, slide
Tremulous with soft influence. Extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,

Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's azure smile,
The wide world of waters is vibrating.

Where

Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay,
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray

With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle
Stain the clear air with sunbows. The jar and the rattle
Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress

Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness;

And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins
Swoln with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash,
As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash
The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams
And hissings-crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams,
Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,
A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other
Is winning his way, from the fate of his brother,
To his own with the speed of despair.

Lo! a boat
Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought
Urge on the keen keel, the brine foams. At the stern
Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn
In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone
('Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone)
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously,

With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, fear,
Love, beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,

Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread
Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,
Like a meteor of light o'er the waters. Her child
Is yet smiling and playing and murmuring; so smiled
The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother,
The child and the ocean still smile on each other,
Whilst

1820.

XXI.

THE WANING MOON.

AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.

1820.

1820.

1820.

1. DEATH is here, and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere;

All around, within, beneath,

Above, is death-and we are death.

2. Death has set his mark and seal
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

3. First our pleasures die, and then

Our hopes, and then our fears: and, when
These are dead, the debt is due,

Dust claims dust-and we die too.

4. All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves, must fade and perish.
Such is our rude mortal lot:

Love itself would, did they not.

XXIII.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?

XXIV.

PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.

HERALD OF ETERNITY.

It is the day when all the Sons of God
Wait in the roofless senate-house whose floor
Is chaos and the immovable abyss
Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline.

The shadow of God, and delegate

Of that before whose breath the universe
Is as a print of dew.

Hierarchs and kings,

Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past
Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit
Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom
Of mortal thought, which, like an exhalation
Steaming from earth, conceals the . . of heaven
Which gave it birth, .. assemble here
Before your Father's throne. The swift decree
Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation

Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall

The fairest of those wandering isles that gem
The sapphire space of interstellar air,—

That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped
Less in the beauty of its tender light

Than in an atmosphere of living spirit

Which interpenetrating all the

it rolls from realm to realm

And age to age, and in its ebb and flow
Impels the generations

To their appointed place,

Whilst the high Arbiter

Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time

Sends his decrees veiled in eternal

Within the circuit of this pendent orb

There lies an antique region, on which fell

The dews of thought, in the world's golden dawn, Earliest and most benign; and from it sprung

Temples and cities and immortal forms,

And harmonies of wisdom and of song,

And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And, when the sun of its dominion failed,

And when the winter of its glory came,

The winds that stripped it bare blew on, and swept That dew into the utmost wildernesses

In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed

The unmaternal bosom of the North.
Haste, Sons of God, . . for ye beheld,
Reluctant or consenting or astonished,

The stern decrees go forth which heaped on Greece
Ruin and degradation and despair.

A fourth now waits. Assemble, Sons of God,
To speed or to prevent or to suspend

(If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld)
The unaccomplished destiny.

CHORUS.

The curtain of the universe
Is rent and shattered,

The splendour-winged worlds disperse
Like wild doves scattered.

Space is roofless and bare,

And in the midst a cloudy shrine,
Dark amid thrones of light.
In the blue glow of hyaline
Golden worlds revolve and shine.
In

From every point of the Infinite,

flight

Like a thousand dawns on a single night
The splendours rise and spread.

And through thunder and darkness dread
Light and music are radiated,

And, in their pavilioned chariots led

By living wings, high overhead

The giant Powers move,

Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill.

A chaos of light and motion
Upon that glassy ocean.

The senate of the Gods is met,
Each in his rank and station set;
There is silence in the spaces—
Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet,
Start from their places!

CHRIST.

Almighty Father!

Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny

here are two fo:

n mortals er.

which spirits weep
and Slavery named;