Where light is, chameleons change; Yet dare not stain with wealth or power MUTABILITY. THE flower that smiles to-day All that we wish to stay, Virtue, how frail it is! Love, how it sells poor bliss For proud despair! But we, though soon they fall, Survive their joy and all Which ours we call. Whilst skies are blue and bright, Whilst flowers are gay, Whilst eyes that change ere night Whilst yet the calm hours creep, 46 TO NIGHT. SWIFTLY walk over the western wave, Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight, Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, When I arose and saw the dawn, When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, And the weary day turned to his rest, Thy brother, Death, came, and cried, Thy sweet child, Sleep, thy filmy-eyed, Shall I nestle near thy side? Death will come when thou art dead, Sleep will come when thou art fled; TO A SKYLARK. HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher, From the earth thou springest The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad day-light Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 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, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden 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, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves : Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, 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 What fields, or waves, or mountains? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be : Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem 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, 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, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. H |