CCXLV.

A DREAM.

BENEATH the loveliest dream there coils a fear :Last night came she whose eyes are memories now, Her far-off gaze seemed all-forgetful how

Love dimmed them once; so calm they shone and clear. 'Sorrow (I said) hath made me old, my dear;

"Tis I, indeed, but grief doth change the brow, A love like mine a seraph's neck might bow,— Vigils like mine would blanch an angel's hair.'

Ah, then I saw, I saw the sweet lips move!

I saw the love-mists thickening in her eyes, – I heard wild wordless melodies of love

Like murmur of dreaming brooks in Paradise; And, when upon my neck she fell, my dove,

I knew her hair though heavy of amaranth-spice.

CCXLVI.

THE BROOK RHINE.

SMALL current of the wilds afar from men,
Changing and sudden as a baby's mood;
Now a green babbling rivulet in the wood,
Now loitering broad and shallow through the glen,
Or threading 'mid the naked shoals, and then

Brattling against the stones, half mist, half flood,
Between the mountains where the storm-clouds

brood;

And each change but to wake or sleep again.

Pass on, young stream, the world has need of thee; Far hence a mighty river on its breast

Bears the deep-laden vessels to the sea;

Far hence wide waters feed the vines and corn.
Pass on, small stream, to so great purpose born,
Ou to the distant toil, the distant rest.

CCXLVII.

TO NIGHT.

MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue ?

Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,

And lo Creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed

Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,

Whilst flow'r and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

CCXLVIII.

WHAT art Thou, Mighty One, and where Thy seat?
Thou broodest on the calm that cheers the lands,
And Thou dost bear within Thine awful hands
The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet:
Stern on Thy dark-wrought car of cloud and wind
Thou guid'st the northern storm at night's dead noon,
Or on the red wing of the fierce monsoon
Disturb'st the sleeping giant of the Ind.
In the drear silence of the Polar span
Dost Thou repose? or in the solitude

Of sultry tracts, where the lone caravan

Hears nightly howl the tiger's hungry brood? Vain thought, the confines of His throne to trace

Who glows through all the fields of boundless space!

CCXLIX.

As yonder lamp in my vacated room

With arduous flame disputes the darksome night,
And can, with its involuntary light,

But lifeless things that near it stand, illume;
Yet all the while it doth itself consume;

And, ere the sun begin its heavenly height
With courier beams that meet the shepherd's sight,
There, whence its life arose, shall be its tomb.

So wastes my light away. Perforce confined
To common things, a limit to its sphere,
It shines on worthless trifles undesigned,
With fainter ray each hour imprison'd here.
Alas! to know that the consuming mind
Shall leave its lamp cold, ere the sun appear!