SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
RIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon
the mountains and the moors-
No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.
ONG time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I;
yet I lived like one not born to die:
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears,
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking
I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran:
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, though I be old,
Time is my debtor for my years untold.
HE mellow year is hastening to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last, Their small notes twitter in the dreary blastThat shrill-piped harbinger of early snows; The patient beauty of the scentless rose, Oft with the Morn's hoar crystal quaintly glass'd, Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past, And makes a little summer where it grows: In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day The dusky waters shudder as they shine, The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define, And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array, Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy twine.
AR from the sight of earth, yet bright and plain
FAs the clear noon-day sun, an "orb of song"
Lovely and bright is seen, amid the throng
Of lesser stars that rise, and wax, and wane,
The transient rulers of the fickle main;
One constant light gleams through the dark and long
And narrow aisle of memory. How strong,
How fortified with all the numerous train
Of truths wert thou, Great Poet of mankind,
Who told'st in verse as mighty as the sea,
And various as the voices of the wind,
The strength of passion rising in the glee
Of battle. Fear was glorified by thee,
And Death is lovely in thy tale enshrin'd.
|