In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

DARKNESS.

I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
Morn came,
and went-and came, and brought no day;
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watch-fires-and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face:
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos and their mountain-torch.
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd.
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them: some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled ;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd and died —
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd,
They slept on the abyss without a surge.

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnaut air,
And the clouds perish'd, darkness had no need
Of aid from them-she was the universe.

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE,

A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED.

I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed.
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd
The gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory task'd

shrick'd,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous, and vipers crawld
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:
And war, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again. A meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails. Men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd.
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food
But with a piteous and perpetual moan
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which auswer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place

And thus he answer'd-« Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave. »
And is this all? I thought,-and do we rip
The veil of immortality? and crave

I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon and so successless? As I said,
The architect of all on which we tread,
For earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought,
Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers;-as he caught

As 't were the twilight of a former sun,
Thus spoke he,« I believe the man of whom
You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,

Was a most famous writer in his day,

And therefore travellers step from out their way
To
pay him honour, and myself whate'er
Your houour pleases.» Then most pleased I shook
From out my pocket's avaricious nook

Some certain coins of silver, which as 't were
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently. Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,

Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I-for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that old sexton's natural homily,

In which there was obscurity and fame,

The glory and the nothing of a name.

And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry Its own concentred recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making death a victory.

PROMETHEUS.

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense!
A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of fate,

The ruling principle of hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,

But would not to appease him tell: And in thy silence was his sentence, And in his soul a vain repentance, And evil dread, so ill dissembled

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen man with his own mind.
But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable spirit,

Which earth and heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit.

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source:
And man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,

And his sad unallied existence :
To which his spirit may oppose
Itself-an equal to all woes,

ODE.

OH, shame to thee, land of the Gaul' Oh shame to thy children and thee! Unwise in thy glory, and base in thy fall, How wretched thy portion shall be! Derision shall strike thee forlorn,

A mockery that never shall die: The curses of hate, and the hisses of scorn, Shall burden the winds of thy sky; And proud o'er thy ruin for ever be hurl'd The laughter of triumph, the jeers of the world!

Oh, where is thy spirit of yore,

The spirit that breathed in thy dead,
When gallantry's star was the beacon before,
And honour the passion that led?
Thy storms have awaken'd their sleep,

They groan from the place of their rest,
And wrathfully murmur, and sullenly weep,
To see the foul stain on thy breast;
For where is the glory they left thee in trust?
T is scatter'd in darkness, 't is trampled in dust!

Go look through the kingdoms of earth,
From Indus all round to the pole,

And something of goodness, of honour, and worth,
Shall brighten the sins of the soul.
But thou art alone in thy shame,

The world cannot liken thee there;
Abhorrence and vice have disfigured thy name
Beyond the low reach of compare:

Stupendous in guilt, thou shalt lend us through time A proverb, a by-word, for treachery and crime!

While conquest illumined his sword,
While yet in his prowess he stood,
Thy praises still follow'd the steps of thy lord,
And welcomed the torrent of blood:
Though tyranny sat on his crown,

And wither'd the nations afar,

Yet bright in thy view was that despot's renown,
Till fortune deserted his car;
Then back from the chieftain thou slunkest away,
The foremost to insult, the first to betray!

Forgot were the feats he had done,

The toils he had borne in thy cause;
Thou turned'st to worship a new rising sun,
And waft other songs of applause.
But the storm was beginning to lower,
Adversity clouded his beam;

And honour and faith were the brag of an hour,
And loyalty's self but a dream :-

To him thou hadst banish'd thy vows were restored, And the first that had scoff'd were the first that adored.

What tumult thus burthens the air?

What throng thus encircles his throne?

Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,

Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colours in that soul or face).

Look on her features! and behold her mind,
As in the mirror of itself defined:

Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged-
This is no trait which might not be enlarged;
Yet true to «Nature's journeymen,»> who made
This monster when their mistress left off trade,-
This female dog-star of her little sky,
Where all beneath her influence droop or die.

Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought,
Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought-
The time shall come, nor long remote when thou
Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.

May the strong curse of crush'd affections light
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black as thy will for others would create :
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
Then, when thou fain wouldst Heaven with prayer,
weary
Look on thine earthly victims-and despair!
Down to the dust!-and, as thou rott'st away,
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
Thy name-thy human name-to every eye
The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
Exalted o'er thy less abhorr'd compeers,
And festering in the infamy of years.

March 30, 1816.

CARMINA BYRONIS IN C. ELGIN. ASPICE, quos Scoto Pallas concedit honores, Subter stat nomen, facta superque vide. Scote miser! quamvis nocuisti Palladis ædi, Infandum facinus vindicat ipsa Venus. Pygmalion statuam pro sponsa arsisse refertur; In statuam rapias, Scote, sed uxor abest.

LINES TO MR MOORE.

(The following lines were addressed extempore by Lord Byron to his friend Mr. Moore, on the latter's last visit to Italy.]

My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, TOM MOORE,
Here's a double health to thee.

Here's a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
Though the ocean roar around me,

Yet it still shall bear me on; Though a desert should surround me, It hath springs that may be won.