Is not true Love of higher price
Than outward form, though fair to see,
Wealth's glittering fairy-dome of ice,
Or echo of proud ancestry?—

O! Asra, Asra! couldst thou see
Into the bottom of my heart,
There's such a mine of Love for thee,
As almost might supply desert!

(This separation is, alas!

Too great a punishment to bear; O! take my life, or let me pass

That life, that happy life, with her!)

The perils, erst with steadfast eye
Encounter'd, now I shrink to see-
Oh! I have heart enough to die—
Not half enough to part from Thee!

ITS

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT.

TS balmy lips the infant blest Relaxing from its mother's breast, How sweet it heaves the happy sigh Of innocent satiety!

And such my infant's latest sigh!
O tell, rude stone! the passer by,
That here the pretty babe doth lie,
Death sang to sleep with Lullaby.

TELL'S BIRTH-PLACE.

IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

I.

MARK this holy chapel well!

The birthplace, this, of William Tell. Here, where stands God's altar dread, Stood his parents' marriage-bed.

II.

Here first, an infant to her breast,

Him his loving mother prest;

And kiss'd the babe, and bless'd the day,
And pray'd as mothers use to pray.

III.

"Vouchsafe him health, O God! and give
The child thy servant still to live !"
But God had destined to do more
Through him, than through an armed power.

IV.

God gave him reverence of laws,

Yet stirring blood in Freedom's cause—

A spirit to his rocks akin,

The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein !

V.

To Nature and to Holy Writ

Alone did God the boy commit:

Where flash'd and roar'd the torrent, oft

His soul found wings, and soar'd aloft !

VI.

The straining oar and chamois chase

Had form'd his limbs to strength and grace :
On wave and wind the boy would toss,
Was great, nor knew how great he was!

VII.

He knew not that his chosen hand,
Made strong by God, his native land
Would rescue from the shameful yoke
Of Slavery-the which he broke !

HUMAN LIFE.

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY.

A FRAGMENT.

F dead, we cease to be; if total gloom

IF

Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom, Whose sound and motion not alone declare, But are their whole of being! If the breath Be Life itself, and not its task and tent, If even a soul like Milton's can know death; O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant, Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes, Surplus of Nature's dread activity,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

She form'd with restless hands unconsciously. Blank accident! nothing's anomaly !

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create
And to repay each other! Why rejoices
Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good?
Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood,
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,
Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none;
Thy being's being is contradiction.

MOLES.

-THEY shrink in, as Moles

(Nature's mute monks, live mandrakes

of the ground)

Creep back from Light-then listen for its sound ;See but to dread, and dread they know not whyThe natural alien of their negative eye.

THE VISIT OF THE GODS.

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER.

NEVER, believe me,

Appear the Immortals,
Never alone:

Scarce had I welcomed the sorrow-beguiler,
Iacchus! but in came boy Cupid the smiler;
Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his

throne

They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!
With divinities fills my
Terrestrial hall !

How shall I yield you
Due entertainment,

Celestial quire?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance

Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joy

ance,

That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!

Hah! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul !

O give me the nectar !

O fill me the bowl!

Give him the nectar!

Pour out for the poet,

Hebe! pour free!

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Paan, I cry!
The wine of the Immortals

Forbids me to die!