XVI

MIDNIGHT.

THE pulse of Time is stopt: a silentness
Hath seized the waters, and the winds, and all
That motion claims or musical natural;

The altar of all life stands victimless.
Of beast or bird, in joyance or distress,

All token sleeps; nor leaf is heard to fall

As Midnight holds her breath! The kingly hall

Is barred-the slave inherits an excess

Of infelt loyalty the exile views

His home in dreams; nay, even the student breaks
From his worn volume, and forgets to muse

On laws and worlds-the miser only wakes,

Warming his fingers at a golden heap,

He smiles in Midnight's face, and will not trust to sleep.

XVII

THE MOUNTAINS.

OH! Mountains! On your glorious points sublime,

The threshold of our earth, to stand and see

The seasons on swift wings come forth and flee ;

And from the changes of enchanted time
To draw the moral music of my rhyme,—
How full of joy this simple lot would be ;
To cushion on the grass my bended knee,
And worship Nature in a clearer clime.
For on the hills have mortal footsteps found
The eagle nest of Freedom, and a throne
Where peasant-princes have been proudly crowned.
Full many a stirring air and pastoral tone

Come breathing from them still; and all the ground
Is full of strange delight and glories deeply sown.

XVIII

NATURAL STUDIES.

To see the grace and glory of the year,

Cradled in leaves, grow with the breath of May,
At whose warm touch the winter melts away,
And all the wakened heaven, shows full and clear;
To mark the faint but freshening light appear,
And throw its first fair gold upon the grey,
Giving glad promise of the dazzling day ;
To view the mute and labouring Night uprear
Its starriness through storms; or trace the tide
Forth from its pebbly prison flowing free-
These link the soul, O Nature! unto thee;
And in these scenes are figured and implied
The dawn and growth of life, when taught by pride
The Mind disdains the dust and feels its liberty.

XIX

THE STATE OF MAN.

OH! who can look upon that lofty mind
O'ercome by taunt and tears; observe the vow
Of princes unfulfilled, and the slow plough
Crushing the peasant's hopes; the weak resigned
To wrongs, the crafty trampling on the kind;
The laurel wreathed upon a branded brow,
Hiding, not honouring; the olive bough
Faded, and cast upon the common wind—
And earth a doveless Ark. Oh! who can see
How weak the wise, how fallen are the free ;
How Thirst sits pining by the plenteous main,
While Virtue finds her garlands but a chain,

Nor deem the golden hour is still to be,

When Life shall look to heaven exempt from pride and

XX

IN MEMORY OF KEATS.

1823.

MUTE Minstrel of the Eve, pale, mystical,
When one by one comes forth the pensive train
Of things not born for worldly strife and pain,
That cannot fade, though doomed perchance to fall;
Fond Cherisher of passions, fancies, all

Whose essence fills a poet's flower-like home.
I saw but now, within yon distant dome,
A cloud that passed its transitory pall
Across the quivering light, and I did think
That moment on the cold and shadowing shame
With which thy starry spirit hath been crowned.
How vain their torturings were! for thou didst sink
With the first stone cast at thy martyred fame;
How like the snow that's ruined by a sound!