ON THE SEA.

I

T keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,

That scarcely will the very smallest shell

Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven were unbound. O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea ; O ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,

Or fed too much with cloying melody, Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!

Aug. 1817.

VI.

ON LEIGH HUNT'S POEM, THE “STORY OF

RIMINI.”

HO loves to peer up at the morning sun,
With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek,

Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek
For meadows where the little rivers run;
Who loves to linger with that brightest one
Of Heaven -- Hesperus

let him lowly speak These numbers to the night, and starlight meek, Or moon, if that her hunting be begun. He who knows these delights, and too is prone

To moralize upon a smile or tear,
Will find at once a region of his own,

A bower for his spirit, and will steer
To alleys, where the fir-tree drops its cone,

Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are sear.

1817.

VII.

W

HEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming

brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact’ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr’d face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour !

That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love! then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

VIII.

TO HOMER.

ST

TANDING aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind ! -- but then the veil was rent,

For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spermy tent,

And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive; Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light,

And precipices show untrodden green; There is a budding morrow in midnight ;

There is a triple sight in blindness keen : Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

1818.

IX.

ANSWER TO A SONNET ENDING THUS :

“Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that made the hyacinthine bell."

By J. H. REYNOLDS.

BLO

ocean

LUE! 'Tis the life of heaven, -- the domain
Of Cynthia, — the wide palace of the sun,

The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,
The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.
Blue ! 'Tis the life of waters

And all its vassal streams : pools numberless May range, and foam, and fret, but never can

Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness. Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,

Married to green in all the sweetest flowers Forget-me-not, the blue-bell, and, that queen

Of secrecy, the violet : what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!

Feb. 1818.