One tone is mute within the starry singing,
    The unison fulfilled, complete before;
    One chord within the music sounds no more,
    And from the stir of flames forever winging
    The pinions of our sister, motionless
    In pits of indefinable duress,
    Are fallen beyond all recovery
    By exultation of the flying dance,
    Or rhythms holding as with sleep or trance
    The maze of stars that only death may free -
    Flung through the void's expanse.

    In gulfs depressed nor in the gulfs exalted
    Shall shade nor lightening of her flame be found;
    In space that litten orbits gird around,
    Nor in the bottomless abyss unvaulted
    Of unenvironed, all-outlying night.
    Allotted gyre nor lawless comet-flight
    Shall find, ...

        When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,
        And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
        Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned
        Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,
        Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,
        Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,--
        Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
        My heart.    I know that Beauty must ail and die,
        And will be born again,--but ah, to see
        Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
        Oh, Autumn!    Autumn!--What is the Spring to me?

An Epilogue, through custom, is your right,
But ne'er perhaps was needful till this night:
To-night the virtuous falls, the guilty flies,
Guilt's dreadful close our narrow scene denies.
In history's authentic record read
What ample vengeance gluts Demetrius' shade;
Vengeance so great, that, when his tale is told,
With pity some e'en Perseus may behold.
    Perseus surviv'd, indeed, and fill'd the throne,
But ceaseless cares in conquest made him groan:
Nor reign'd he long; from Rome swift thunder flew,
And headlong from his throne the tyrant threw:
Thrown headlong down, by Rome in triumph led,
For this night's deed his perjur'd bosom bled:
His brother's ghost each moment made him start,
And all his father's anguish rent his heart.
    When, rob'd in black, his ...

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow
Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;
For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below
The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!

Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender as sun-smitten dew;
Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes
The wastes of your limitless lakes,
Wide-eyed as the sea-line’s blue.

O strong-winged soul with prophetic
Lips hot with the bloodheats of song,
With tremor of heartstrings magnetic,
With thoughts as thunders in throng,
With consonant ardours of chords
That pierce men’s souls as with swords
And hale them hear...

("Allah! qui me rendra-")

[XVL, May, 1828.]


Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array?
My emirs and my cavalry that shook the earth to-day;
My tent, my wide-extending camp, all dazzling to the sight,
Whose watchfires, kindled numberless beneath the brow of night,
Seemed oft unto the sentinel that watched the midnight hours,
As heaven along the sombre hill had rained its stars in showers?
Where are my beys so gorgeous, in their light pelisses gay,
And where my fierce Timariot bands, so fearless in the fray;
My dauntless khans, my spahis brave, swift thunderbolts of war;
My sunburnt Bedouins, trooping from the Pyramids afar,
Who laughed to see the laboring hind stand terrified at gaze,
And urged their desert horses on amid the ripening maize?<...

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,
That thou consum’st thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind:
Look! what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

I


In the anatomical plates
displayed on the dusty quays
where many a dry book sleeps
mummified, as in ancient days,


drawings to which the gravity
and skill of some past artist,
despite the gloomy subject
have communicated beauty,


you’ll see, and it renders those
gruesome mysteries more complete,
flayed men, and skeletons posed,
farm-hands, digging the soil at their feet.



II


Peasants, dour and resigned,
convicts pressed from the grave,
what’s the strange harvest, say,
for which you hack the ground,


bending your backbones there,
flexing each fleshless sinew,
what farmer’s barn must you
labour to fill with such care?


Do you seek to show – by tha...

1.
Fairest of the Destinies,
Disarray thy dazzling eyes:
Keener far thy lightnings are
Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest,
And the smile thou wearest
Wraps thee as a star
Is wrapped in light.

2.
Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn
From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,
Or could the morning shafts of purest light
Again into the quivers of the Sun
Be gathered - could one thought from its wild flight
Return into the temple of the brain
Without a change, without a stain, -
Could aught that is, ever again
Be what it once has ceased to be,
Greece might again be free!

3.
A star has fallen upon the earth
Mid the benighted nations,
A quenchless atom of immortal light,
A living spark of Night,
A cresset shaken from th...

Noon's fervid hour perchance six thousand miles
From hence is distant; and the shadowy cone
Almost to level on our earth declines;
When from the midmost of this blue abyss
By turns some star is to our vision lost.
And straightway as the handmaid of the sun
Puts forth her radiant brow, all, light by light,
Fade, and the spangled firmament shuts in,
E'en to the loveliest of the glittering throng.
Thus vanish'd gradually from my sight
The triumph, which plays ever round the point,
That overcame me, seeming (for it did)
Engirt by that it girdeth. Wherefore love,
With loss of other object, forc'd me bend
Mine eyes on Beatrice once again.

If all, that hitherto is told of her,
Were in one praise concluded, 't were too weak
To furnish out this turn. Mine ey...

Oh, who may this dead warrior be
    That to his grave they bring?
'Tis William, Duke of Normandy,
    The conqueror and king.

Across the sea, with fire and sword,
    The English crown he won;
The lawless Scots they owned him lord,
    But now his rule is done.

A king should die from length of years,
    A conqueror in the field,
A king amid his people's tears,
    A conqueror on his shield.

But he, who ruled by sword and flame,
    Who swore to ravage France,
Like some poor serf without a name,
    Has died by mere mischance.

To Caen now he comes to sleep,
    The minster bells they toll,
A solemn sound it is and deep,
    May God receive his soul!

With priests that chant a wailing hymn,
    He slowly co...

Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage.


Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings
Where the noisome insect stings
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air;
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash
Shall a mother's kindness bless them
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, g...

ACT IV. SCENE 5.

SONG OF THE FATES.

Ye children of mortals
The deities dread!
The mastery hold they
In hands all-eternal,
And use them, unquestioned,
What manner they like.

Let him fear them doubly,
Whom they have uplifted!
On cliffs and on clouds, oh,
Round tables all-golden,
he seats are made ready.

When rises contention,
The guests are humid downwards
With shame and dishonor
To deep depths of midnight,
And vainly await they,
Bound fast in the darkness,
A just condemnation.

But they remain ever
In firmness unshaken
Round tables all-golden.
On stride they from mountain
To mountain far distant:
From out the abysses'
Dark jaws, the breath rises
Of torment-choked Titans
Up ...

Send out the singers,let the room be still;
They have not eased my pain nor brought me sleep.
Close out the sun, for I would have it dark
That I may feel how black the grave will be.
The sun is setting, for the light is red,
And you are outlined in a golden fire,
Like Ursula upon an altar-screen.
Come, leave the light and sit beside my bed,
For I have had enough of saints and prayers.
Strange broken thoughts are beating in my brain,
They come and vanish and again they come.
It is the fever driving out my soul,
And Death stands waiting by the arras there.

Ornella, I will speak, for soon my lips
Shall keep a silence till the end of time.
You have a mouth for loving,listen then:
Keep tryst with Love before Death comes to tryst;
For I, who die, could wi...

Low as a lute, my love, beneath the call
Of storm, I hear a melancholy wind;
The memorably mournful wind of yore
Which is the very brother of the one
That wanders, like a hermit, by the mound
Of Death, in lone Annatanam. A song
Was shaped for this, what time we heard outside
The gentle falling of the faded leaf
In quiet noons: a song whose theme doth turn
On gaps of Ruin and the gay-green clifts
Beneath the summits haunted by the moon.
Yea, much it travels to the dens of dole;
And in the midst of this strange rhyme, my lords,
Our Desolation like a phantom sits
With wasted cheeks and eyes that cannot weep
And fastened lips crampt up in marvellous pain.

A song in whose voice is the voice of the foam
And the rhyme of the wintering wave,
And the to...

'Twas dead of the night when I sate in my dwelling,
One glimmering lamp was expiring and low, -
Around the dark tide of the tempest was swelling,
Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling,
They bodingly presaged destruction and woe!

'Twas then that I started, the wild storm was howling,
Nought was seen, save the lightning that danced on the sky,
Above me the crash of the thunder was rolling,
And low, chilling murmurs the blast wafted by. -

My heart sank within me, unheeded the jar
Of the battling clouds on the mountain-tops broke,
Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear,
This heart hard as iron was stranger to fear,
But conscience in low noiseless whispering spoke.
'Twas then that her form on the whirlwind uprearing,
The dark ghost of the...

They have left the doors ajar; and by their clash,
And prelude on the keys, I know the song,
Their favourite—which I call ‘The Tables Turned.’
Evelyn begins it ‘O diviner Air.’

EVELYN.

O diviner Air,
Thro’ the heat, the drowth, the dust, the glare,
Far from out the west in shadowing showers,
Over all the meadow baked and bare,
Making fresh and fair
All the bowers and the flowers,
Fainting flowers, faded bowers,
Over all this weary world of ours,
Breathe, diviner Air!

A sweet voice that—you scarce could better that.
Now follows Edith echoing Evelyn.

EDITH.

O diviner light,
Thro’ the cloud that roofs our noon with night,
Thro’ the blotting mist, the blinding showers,
Far from out a sky for ever bright,
Over ...

Er-Heb beyond the Hills of Ao-Safai
Bears witness to the truth, and Ao-Safai
Hath told the men of Gorukh. Thence the tale
Comes westward o'er the peaks to India.

The story of Bisesa, Armod's child,
A maiden plighted to the Chief in War,
The Man of Sixty Spears, who held the Pass
That leads to Thibet, but to-day is gone
To seek his comfort of the God called Budh
The Silent showing how the Sickness ceased
Because of her who died to save the tribe.

Taman is One and greater than us all,
Taman is One and greater than all Gods:
Taman is Two in One and rides the sky,
Curved like a stallion's croup, from dusk to dawn,
And drums upon it with his heels, whereby
Is bred the neighing thunder in the hills.

This is Taman, the God of all Er-Heb,
W...