And white and black the fleecy fold
Lies, panting in the shade;

Where by the fountain dripping cool,
By myrtles overhung,

Sit, doubled in the glassy pool,

The groups of old and young,
To hear some sweet sylvanic lute,
Some oaten pipe or reed,
Or mellow echoes of the flute,
Whilst dancing on the mead;
But not for those Arcadian times
I mourn, although, sad loss!
The fairy spirit of their rhymes
Lies buried 'neath the moss,
Although amid dark emerald groups
Of thickest forest trees,

The snow-white statues stand, like troops

Of frozen Naiades.

Yet hadst thou been a shepherdess,

Thy kirtle green to trim,

Thy crook with pinks and pansies dress,

And dainty daisies slim,

Oh! I had been content with flocks,

Nor envied Jove divine,

With blossoms to have looped thy locks,
Their black with blushes twine.

If but a palmer's garb of grey I bore,

I'd kneel with sacred branches I had won,

Transform my heart into a Troubadour,

To tell thee, love, of green-capped Lebanon. Alas! the age is cold, and I am naught,

A very weed upon the waste of earth,Beneath the musing of thine idlest thought,

Not e'en thy passing contemplation worth; Seems it not strange so mere a glow-worm dull Should trim his lamp for such a Moon as thee. That such a lonely, solitary gull,

Should to a mermaid whisper minstrelsy?

I ask not pity-rather would I make

My nights unblest, and days as dreary prove, Unheard, unseen, my very heart should break With pride, but thou shouldst give me love for love, Hopeless I fear, hopeless 't will be I feel,

The passion that my weak vain bosom bears;
But 'tis a pleasure thus to press the steel

Against my heart, whose anguish no one shares.
Would I had never seen thy beauteous face!
Would I had never looked upon those eyes!
Or that thou didst conceal beneath thy grace
Medusa's power, under Venus' guise;
Or wert thou Sappho, that didst wildly sing
Upon a cliff o'erhanging high the sea,
What were the speechless ecstasy to spring
With thee enclasped into eternity!

O, double torture! thus such charms to know

And still to know 'tis vain of hope to think, Like Tantalus, whose very lips o'erflow,

And almost drowning parches for a drink?
Compound of all that mind and beauty bring
To make this world angelical, I pine,

Like some lone thrush that in his bower doth sing
Sad, and more sad, as Hope's sweet rays decline;
Would thou hadst less of heaven in thy heart!

Or less of that which makes this world so blessed,
For give thee more, or take away a part,

I could not hope, or would not wish the rest; But as thou art, like heliotropes I turn

To that gold orb which luminates each leaf; But truth tells passion vainly it may burn,

And on love-bud's despair drops blighting grief. I will not curse my fate-perchance 't would bar My entrance through some future world's bright gate, Where yet within some unseen, beauteous star, Thy soul, touched for my hapless love, might wait. Oh! talisman of all that Joy and Love, Would they unite to give a being birth, Could ask for this, from any star above, Live in my heart, thou paragon of earth! Yet once again, farewell, angelic face!

Whose light within its beauty doth illume, Like radiance coming from a vestal vase, Eternal lamp, in Hope's black catacomb!

Adieu! around the sun's pavilion
Hang the curtain clouds' vermilion,

And within the East, afar,
Like a silver scymitar

Half sheathed in a cloud of jet,
Comes Night's crescent amulet!
While I waste like summer rain
Falling on a flowered plain,
All my silver drops of song,
Worthless words, which do thee wrong.-
Yet 'neath this red October sun

Setting now far in the West,

Once more, farewell! beloved one,

Be thou evermore thrice blessed!

THE POET'S WAKE.

TO THE MEMORY OF H. C. B.

WEEP for the bright young bard!
Sigh that his wizard lute
Hangs in the hall without regard,
Alone, unstrung and mute.

Let our grief be sad and soft,
Sing sweet music for his fall,
Gather from the hedge and croft
White roses for his coronal!
What should deck the poet's bier?
Surely not the sable weeds,
And the pomps which oft appear
For the man of common deeds;

Not the mere black funeral train,
The types and signs of wordly woe,

Not the momentary rain

With which the worldling's eyes o'erflow,