XII.

HY did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell :

No God, no Demou of severe re

sponse,

Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
Heart! Thou and I are here, sad and alone;

I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,

To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease, My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads; Yet would I on this very midnight cease,

And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds; Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, But Death intenser-Death is Life's high meed.

1819.

XIII.

ON A DREAM.

S Hermes once took to his feathers light,

When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,

So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright,

So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes.

And seeing it asleep, so fled away, Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day ; But to that second circle of sad Hell,

Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell

Their sorrows,-pale were the sweet lips I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

1819.

XIV.

F by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,

And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet
sweet

Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wrean crown; So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.

1819.

XV.

HE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,

Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist!

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise-
Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday-or holinight
Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I've read love's missal through to-day,
He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

1819.

XVI.

CRY your mercy-pity-love!-aye,

love!

Merciful love that tantalises not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,

Unmask'd, and being seen-without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,-all-all-be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor

zest

Of love, your kiss,- those hands, those eyes

divine,

That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,

Yourself your soul-in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die,
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes,-the palate of iny mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

1819.

B

XVII.

HIS LAST SONNET.1

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 sweil,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.2

This was written in a copy of Shakespeare's Poems given to Mr Severn a few days before.

SONNET

OF DOUBTFUL AUTHENTICITY.

LEASURES lie thickest where no pleasures seem.

There's not a leaf that falls upon the
ground

But holds some joy of silence or of sound-
Some sprite begotten of a summer dream.
The very meanest things are made supreme,
With innate ecstasy: the grain of sand
But rolls a bright and million-peopled land,

And hath its Eves and Edens-so I deem.
For Love, though blind, a microscopic eye
Has lent me, to behold the hearts of things,
And touch'd mine ear with power: thus far o
nigh,

Minute or mighty, fix'd or fleet with wings,
Delight from many a nameless covert-sky
Peeps sparkling, and in tones familiar rings.'

I believe this to be one of George Byron's forgeries