STANZAS FOR AUGUSTA. The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me, And the love which my spirit hath painted Then when nature around me is smiling, Because it reminds me of thine; And when winds are at war with the ocean, It is that they bear me from thee.. Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd, There is many a pang to pursue me: They may crush, but they shall not contemn They may torture, but shall not subdue me 'Tis of thee that I think not of them. Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake, Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, Though watchful, 't was not to defame me, Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, And more than I once could foresee, From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd, It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee. SOLITUDE. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto ii. Stanzas 25, 26.) To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; NATURE THE CONSOLER. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iii. Stanzas 13-15.) WHERE rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars, Could he have kept his spirit to that flight To which it mounts, as if to break the link That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink. But in Man's dwellings he became a thing Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat. THE SAME. (CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iii. Stanzas 71-75.) Is it not better, then, to be alone, And love Earth only for its earthly sake? A fair but froward infant her own care, Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to inflict or bear? I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life; Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast Which it would cope with, on delighted wing, Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling. And when, at length, the mind shall be all free Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be -- |