You could not penetrate his soul, but found,
Despite your wonder, to your own he wound;
His presence haunted still; and from the breast
He forced an all unwilling interest:

Vain was the struggle in that mental net,
His spirit seemed to dare you to forget!

WHEN all around grew drear and dark,
And reason half withheld her ray -
And hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;

In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When dreading to be deemed too kind,
The weak despair-the cold depart;

When fortune changed - and love fled far,
And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast,

Thou wert the solitary star

Which rose and set not to the last.

Oh! blest be thine unbroken light!

That watched me as a seraph's eye,
And stood between me and the night,
For ever shining sweetly nigh.

And when the cloud upon us came,
Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray-
Then purer spread its gentle flame,

And dashed the darkness all away.

Still may thy spirit dwell on mine,

And teach it what to brave or brook There's more in one soft word of thine, Than in the world's defied rebuke.

Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree,
That still unbroke, though gently bent,
Still waves with fond fidelity

Its boughs above a monument.

The winds might rend — the skies might pour, But there thou wert and still would'st be Devoted in the stormiest hour

To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

But thou and thine shall know no blight,
Whatever fate on me may fall;

For heaven in sunshine will requite

The kind- and thee the most of all.

Then let the ties of baffled love

Be broken-thine will never break; Thy heart can feel - but will not move; Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.

And these, when all was lost beside,
Were found and still are fixed in thee

And bearing still a breast so tried,

Earth is no desert- ev'n to me.

-

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

THERE's not a joy the world can give like that it takes

away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;

'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,

But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself

be past.

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness,

Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of

excess:

The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in

vain

The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.

Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;

It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its

own;

That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our

tears,

And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the

ice appears.

Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,

Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest,

'Tis but as ivy leaves around the ruined turret

wreath,

All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath.

Oh could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have

been,

Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene:

As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,

So midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

WRITTEN AT ATHENS.

THE spell is broke, the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life's fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan;
Delirium is our best deceiver.

Each lucid interval of thought

Recalls the woes of Nature's charter,
And he that acts as wise men ought,

But lives, as saints have died, a martyr.

TO LADY CAROLINE LAMB.

AND say'st thou that I have not felt,
Whilst thou wert thus estranged from me?
Nor know'st how dearly I have dwelt
On one unbroken dream of thee?

But love like ours must never be,

And I will learn to prize thee less;

As thou hast fled, so let me flee,

And change the heart thou mayest not bless.

They'll tell thee, Clara! I have seemed,
Of late, another's charms to woo,
Nor sighed, nor frowned, as if I deemed
That thou wert banished from my view.
Clara! this struggle to undo

What thou hast done too well, for me
This mask before the babbling crew-
This treachery - was truth to thee!

I have not wept while thou wert gone,
Nor worn one look of sullen woe;
But sought, in many, all that one

(Ah! need I name her?) could bestow. It is a duty which I owe

To thine to thee to man- to God,

To crush, to quench this guilty glow,

Ere yet the path of crime be trod.