What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody :—

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged

thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers,

All that ever was,

Joyous and clear and fresh,-thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine :

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal

Or triumphal chaunt,

Match'd with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt-

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be :

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not :

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn,

Hate and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow

The world should listen then as I am listening now!

P. B. SHELLEY.

THE NIGHTINGALE

As it fell upon a day

In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade,

Which a grove of myrtles made,

Beasts did leap and birds did sing,

Trees did grow and plants did spring,
Everything did banish moan
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast against a thorn,
And there sung the dolefullest ditty
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry;
Tereu, tereu, by-and-by:

That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;

For her griefs so lively shown
Made me think upon mine own.

-Ah, thought I, thou mourn'st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:

Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee:

King Pandion, he is dead,

All thy friends are lapp'd in lead:

All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee
None alive will pity me.

R. BARNEFIEld.

THE SLEEPER

AT midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon:
An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim;
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see, the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps !-and, lo! where lies
(Her casement open to the skies)
Irene, with her destinies !

O, lady bright, can it be right,
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop;
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully, so fearfully,

Above the closed and fringèd lid

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,

That, o'er the floor and down the wall,

Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?

Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees.
Strange is thy pallor, strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all-solemn silentness.

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,