Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

XVI.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then,
And donned a visionary crown——
Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me-
But that, among the rabble-men,
Lion ambition is chained down-
And crouches to a keeper's hand-
Not so in deserts where the grand--

The wild--the terrible conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

XVII.

Look round thee now on Samarcand !— Is she not queen of Earth? her pride Above all cities in her hand

Their destinies in all beside Of glory which the world hath known Stands she not nobly and alone? Falling her veriest stepping-stone Shall form the pedestal of a throne And who her sovereign? Timour-he Whom the astonished people saw Striding o'er empires haughtily

A diademed outlaw !

XVIII.

O human love! thou spirit given,

On Earth, of all we hope in heaven!

Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness !
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth-
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

XIX.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly—

And homeward turned his.softened eye. 'Twas sunset: when the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the ev'ning mist

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly,

But cannot, from a danger nigh.

XX.

What tho' the moon-the white moon
Shed all the splendour of her noon,
Her smile is chilly-and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem

(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one-
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown-
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty-which is all.

XXI.

I reached my home-my home no more— For all had flown who made it so.

I passed from out its mossy door,

And, tho' my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known-
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show

On beds of fire that burn below,

An humbler heart—a deeper woe.

XXII.

Father, I firmly do believe

I know for Death who comes for me From regions of the blest afar, Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar,

And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro' Eternity

I do believe that Eblis hath

A snare in every human path-