SONNET-TO SCIENCE.

CIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art !
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee: or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty-the unhidden heart—
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks-
Which glistens then, and trembles-
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
Her worshipper resembles;
For in his heart, as in thy stream,
Her image deeply lies-

His heart which trembles at the beam

Of her soul-searching eyes.

TAMERLANE.

I.

KIND solace in a dying hour!

Such, father, is not (now) my themeI will not madly deem that power

Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revelled in-

I have no time to dote or dream :
You call it hope—that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire :
If I can hope-Oh God! I can—

Its fount is holier-more divine-
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.

II.

Know thou the secret of a spirit

Bowed from its wild pride into shame.

O yearning heart! I did inherit

Thy withering portion with the fame,

The searing glory which hath shone
Amid the Jewels of my throne,
Halo of Hell! and with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again—
O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The undying voice of that dead time,
With its interminable chime,
Rings, in the spirit of a spell,
Upon thy emptiness-a knell.

III.

I have not always been as now,
The fevered diadem on my brow
I claimed and won usurpingly-

Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Cæsar-this to me?

The heritage of a kingly mind, And a proud spirit which hath striven. Triumphantly with human kind.

IV.

On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head,
And, I believe, the winged strife
And tumult of the headlong air
Have nestled in my very hair.