When the silent leaves are still
In the shadow of the hill,

Shall our souls be upon thine,

With a power and with a sign. BYRON.

THE BROTHERS.

A Monody.

AGAIN-yet once again-oh winter's wind!
I hear thee: as the cloudy rack fleets by,
And the bare trees with crashing boughs aloft
Rock and re-echo, and at whiles are hush'd:
I commune with my spirit and am still.

Is the gust raging round the scenes I left
So suddenly? and does its angry breath
Now work and chafe with the quick heaving surge,
That foams and gurgles round those weedy rocks,
Or clangs in dash'd commotion? Lies there now
A tremulous line of level light above

The toiling sea, as when I last beheld

Its waters rolling in their strength, and stood
On the high headland in my mute despair?—

A respite and an interval of tears

My soul that ached with that vacuity,
That pressure of life's hopelessness, the sense

Of the drear present, and the future, dim

And anxious, trod the vista of the past:

A vision and the picture of a dream

Lay on mine eyes and heart: those eyes must close, That heart be still, or ere they pass away.

I stood upon a lawn whose greensward lay
Smooth-levell'd by the scythe: two mulberry-trees
Beyond it spread their old and foliaged arms:
Th' Acacia quiver'd in the wind: the thick
And deep-leaved laurel darken'd the recess
Of massive buttresses: the mansion's walls,
Grey in antiquity, were tapestried o'er

With the fig's downy leaves, and roses climb'd
Clustering around the casements' gothic panes :
With terraces and verdant slopes, where pines
Arch'd their plumed boughs, and fruits espalier-train'd
Were mix'd with myrtles and with arbute-trees,

The scene behind look'd sylvan; higher rose
The bounding hill, where turfy paths were track'd
Up the bare herbage, gnarl'd with scatter'd crags
And topt with straggling firs or chestnuts broad:
A sweet, yet solemn landscape, for it spoke
Of sacred home. Beside me on the lawn
One sate, who should be master of these walks,
And that grey mansion and those home-green nooks
Of sylvan tracery, and whose heart was form'd
To sympathize with all that flourish'd there.
The locks were crisp'd upon his head: his lip
Form'd like the rose-bud, and his forehead snow:
His garb a summer-mantle, and he held

A book upon his knees, and seem'd to bend
His thoughts on what the father-teacher told:
But still his eye would wander from the page
To where the holly glisten'd in the sun,

Or some streak'd bird had bent the rustling bough
With fluttering motion: for his heart was link'd
To nature, and his fancy fed itself

With sights and sounds beneath the open sky:

It then was so, and in his after years:

I see him in his summer-dress the same,

With that loved listless eye, till in my tears

I lose him, and the scene is changed and gone.
That boy outgrew his infant pupillage

And was himself the teacher of a child,

Who learnt from him what he had learnt, and coped
With that his young instructor, whom he loved,
Himself beloved: they turn'd th' allotted leaves
Together, in their own paternal home,

And shared alike each other's meadow sports
And ramblings in the vallies: chiefly there

Where the cragg'd dale o'erhangs the Avon side,
And may-thorns blossom on the midway steep

Their steps were found: their half-bower'd heads were

seen

Above the thicket, while the noonday birds.

Flew round them, blithe and innocent as they :

Nor seldom with a troop of youthful friends