FAIRY-LAND.

I.

DIM vales-and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover

For the tears that drip all over

Huge moons there wax and wane —
Again-again-again-

Every moment of the night—

Forever changing places—

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial.

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down-still down-and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence,

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Over hamlets, over halls,

Wherever they may be -

O'er the strange woods-o'er the sea

Over spirits on the wing—

Over every drowsy thing —
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light-
And then, how deep!-O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss,

Like

almost any thing —

Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more

For the same end as before

Videlicet a tent

Which I think extravagant:

Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies,

Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

SONG.

I.

I SAW thee on thy bridal day-
When a burning blush came o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

II.

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

III.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame.

As such it well may pass-
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

In the breast of him, alas!

IV.

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush would come o'er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

TO M. L. S..

I.

Or all who hail thy presence as the morning-
Of all to whom thine absence is the night-
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun-of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope-for life-ah! above all,
For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
In Truth-in Virtue-in Humanity—

Of all who, on Despair's unhallow'd bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen

At thy soft-murmur'd words, "Let there be light!"
At the soft-murmur'd words that were fulfill'd

In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes-
Of all who owe thee most-whose gratitude
Nearest resembles worship-oh, remember
The truest-the most fervently devoted,

And think that these weak lines are written by him-
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
His spirit is communing with an angel's.

TO HELEN.

HELEN, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy-Land!

London-Printed by G. BARCLAY, Castle St. Leicester Sq.