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515

By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For our beloved Friend alone.

ONE WORD IS TOO OFTEN PROFANED

ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdain'd
For thee to disdain it.
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And Pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not

The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not:
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:

516

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

THE FLIGHT OF LOVE

WHEN the lamp is shatter'd
The light in the dust lies dead→→→→
When the cloud is scatter'd,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,

Sweet tones are remember'd not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour

Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render

No song when the spirit is mute-
No song but sad dirges,

Like the wind through a ruin'd cell,
Or the mournful surges

That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possesst.

O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high;

Bright reason will mock thee

Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter

Will rot, and thine eagle home

517

Leave thee naked to laughter,

When leaves fall and cold winds come.

THE CLOUD

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits,

In a cavern under is fretted the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream
The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead,

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

[beneath,

And when sunset may breathe from the lit sea

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

[chair,

When the powers of the air are chained to my
Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

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I am the daughter of the earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

[tomb,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the
I arise and unbuild it again.

STANZAS APRIL, 1814

AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,

Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even: Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.

Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!

Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood: Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;

Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:

The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds

the dead,

Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.