A BRIDAL SONG.

THE golden gates of sleep unbar

Where strength and beauty, met together, Kindle their image like a star

In a sea of glassy weather!

Night, with all thy stars look down,-
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,—
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.

Let eyes not see their own delight;—
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.

Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy powers, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, ere it be long.

O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!

A FRAGMENT.

THEY were two cousins, almost like two twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins

Nature had razed their love-which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.

And so they grew together, like two flowers

Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,

Which the same hand will gather-the same clime
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
All those who love,-and who e'er loved like thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,

Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
The ardours of a vision which obscure

The very idol of its portraiture;

He faints, dissolved into a sense of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above,
But thou art Love itself-ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit :-such emotion

Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May

Had not brought forth this morn-your wedding-day.

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR.

GOOD-NIGHT.

GOOD-NIGHT? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,

Then it will be good night.

How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight!
Be it not said, thought, understood,
That it will be good night.

To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR.

ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,

For the year is but asleep :
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.

As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,

So White Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the dead-cold year to-day;
Solemn hours! wail aloud

For your mother in her shroud.

As the wild air stirs and sways

The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days

Rocks the year:-be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise
With new love within her eyes.

January grey is here,

Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier,

March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps-but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822.

THE ZUCCA.*

SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring,
And infant Winter laughed upon the land
All cloudlessly and cold;-when I, desiring

More in this world than any understand,
Wept o'er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,

Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand Of my poor heart, and o'er the grass and flowers Pale for the falsehood of the flattering hours.

Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
The instability of all but weeping;
And on the earth lulled in her winter sleep

I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
From unremembered dreams shalt [
No death divide thy immortality.

I loved-O no, I mean not one of ye,

Or any earthly one, though ye are dear

As human heart to human heart may be ;

] see

I loved, I know not what-but this low sphere,

And all that it contains, contains not thee,

Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere, Dim object of my soul's idolatry.

By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest, Neither to be contained, delayed, or hidden,

Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,

When for a moment thou art not forbidden

To live within the life which thou bestowest,

And leaving noblest things, vacant and chidden,

Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight,

Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

• Pumpkin

In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common, In music, and the sweet unconscious tone

Of animals, and voices which are human,

Meant to express some feelings of their own; In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,

In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shown,

Or dying in the autumn, I the most

Adore thee present, or lament thee lost.

And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
A plant upon the river's margin lie,
Like one who loved beyond his Nature's law,
And in despair had cast him down to die;
Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the thaw
Had blighted as a heart which hatred's eye
Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.

The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth
Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast

I bore it to my chamber, and I planted

It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted

Fell through the window panes, disrobed of cold,
Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted

In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled Over the horizon's wave, with looks of light Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.

The mitigated influences of air

And light revived the plant, and from it grew
Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
Full as a cup with the vine's burning dew,
O'erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere
Of vital warmth, infolded it anew,

And every impulse sent to every part
The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.

Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,
Even if the sun and air had smiled not on it;

For one wept o'er it all the winter long

Tears pure as Heaven's rain, which fell upon it
Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song

Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it
To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,
Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept;

Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers On which he wept, the while the savage storm Waked by the darkest of December's hours

Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm ; The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers, The fish were frozen in the pools, the form Of every summer plant was dead [ Whilst this

THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT.

"SLEEP, sleep on! forget thy pain;

My hand is on thy brow,

My spirit on thy brain;

My pity on thy heart, poor friend;
And from my fingers flow

The powers of life, and like a sign,
Seal thee from thine hour of woe;
And brood on thee, but may not blend
With thine.

"Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not;
But when I think that he

Who made and makes my lot

As full of flowers, as thine of weeds,
Might have been lost like thee;

And that a hand which was not mine
Might then have chased his agony
As I another's-my heart bleeds
For thine.

"Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of

The dead and the unborn

Forget thy life and love;

Forget that thou must wake for ever;

Forget the world's dull scorn;

Forget lost health, and the divine

Feelings which died in youth's brief morn;

And forget me, for I can never

Be thine.

"Like a cloud big with a May shower,
My soul weeps healing rain

On thee, thou withered flower;
It breathes mute music on thy sleep;
Its odour calms thy brain!

Its light within thy gloomy breast
Spreads like a second youth again.

By mine thy being is to its deep
Possest.