Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,

Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.

LI.

Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrows which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

433

Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng

Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and spheréd skies are riven: I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;

While, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the eternal are.

LII.

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.-Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost
seek!

Follow where all is fled!-Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music,-words are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

LIII.

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my

heart?

Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is passed from the revolving year,
And man, and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles,-the low wind whispers near:
'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,

No more let Life divide what Death can join together.

LIV.

That Light whose smiles kindle the universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast, and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

LV.

The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven

INVOCATION TO NATURE.

FROM "ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE." Earth, ocean, air, belovéd brotherhood! If our great mother have imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight's tingling silentness; If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs; If Spring's voluptuous pantings, when she breathes Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred;—then forgive This boast, belovéd brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favor now!

SONNET.

Ye hasten to the dead! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes

Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?
O thou quick heart which pantest to possess
All that anticipation feigneth fair!
Thou vainly curious mind which wouldst guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou mayst

go,

And that which never yet was known wouldst know

Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press
With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,
Seeking alike from happiness and woe

A refuge in the cavern of gray death?

O heart, and mind, and thoughts! What thing do you

Hope to inherit in the grave below?

435

Is it that now my inexperienced fingers

But strike the prelude to a loftier strain?
Or must the lyre on which my spirit lingers
Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again,
Though it might shake the anarch Custom's reign,
And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway,
Holier than was Amphion's? I would fain
Reply in hope-but I am worn away,

And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.

And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak:
Time may interpret to his silent years.
Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,
And in the light thine ample forehead wears,
And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,
And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy

Is whispered to subdue my fondest fears:
And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see
A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.

They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, Of glorious parents, thou aspiring child:

I wonder not-for one then left this earth Whose life was like a setting planet mild, Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled Of its departing glory; still her fame

Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim

The shelter from thy sire of an immortal name.

One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, Which was the echo of three thousand years; And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, As some lone man, who in a desert hears The music of his home:-unwonted fears Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, And faith and custom and low-thoughted cares, Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place.

Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind!
If there must be no response to my cry-
If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
On his pure name who loves them,-thou and I,
Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,—
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by,
Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's
sight,

That burn from year to year with unextinguished

light.

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats, though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain
shower,

It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim, vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? Ask why the sunlight not forever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom, why man hath such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope ?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given;
Therefore the names of demon, ghost, and heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavor:
Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail
to sever,

From all we hear aud all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his
heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,

Like darkness to a dying flame!

Depart not as thy shadow came:

Depart not, lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed:

I was not heard: I saw them not:

When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me:

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious night: They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past: there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth

Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

LINES TO A REVIEWER.

Alas! good friend, what profit can you see In hating such a hateless thing as me? There is no sport in hate where all the rage Is on one side. In vain would you assuage

Your frowns upon an unresisting smile,
In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile
Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate:
Oh, conquer what you cannot satiate!
For to your passion I am far more coy
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy
In winter noon. Of your antipathy
If I am the Narcissus, you are free
To pine into a sound with hating me.

John Keble.

Keble (1792-1866), the son of a Gloucestershire clergyman, was educated at Oxford, where he took first-class honors. After discharging the duties of Professor of Poetry, he was preferred to the rectory of Hursley, near Winchester, in 1835, which he held until his death. His "Christian Year" was published in 1827, and had a marvellous success, having gone through some seventy editions in England, and about as many in the United States. His "Lyra Innocentium" appeared in 1847. Keble was one of the originators of the "Tractarian Movement," inculcating reverence for Catholic tradition, and belief in the divine prerogatives of the priesthood.

MORNING.

FROM "THE CHRISTIAN YEAR."

Hues of the rich unfolding morn,
That, ere the glorious sun be born,
By some soft touch invisible

Around his path are taught to swell;

Thou rustling breeze, so fresh and gay, That dancest forth at opening day, And, brushing by with joyous wing, Wakenest each little leaf to sing;

Ye fragrant clouds of dewy steam,
By which deep grove and tangled stream
Pay, for soft rains in season given,
Their tribute to the genial heaven;-

Why waste your treasures of delight Upon our thankless, joyless sight, Who day by day to siu awake, Seldom of heaven and you partake?

Oh! timely happy, timely wise,
Hearts that with rising morn arise!
Eyes that the beam celestial view
Which evermore makes all things new!