TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE.

ILLYRIAN Woodlands, echoing falls

Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneïan pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:

And trust me while I turn'd the page,
And track'd you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found

My spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever pour'd

And glisten'd-here and there alone
The broad-limb'd Gods at random thrown

By fountain-urns ;-and Naiads oar'd

A glimmering shoulder under gloom Of cavern pillars; on the swell The silver lily heaved and fell; And many a slope was rich in bloom

From him that on the mountain lea By dancing rivulets fed his flocks, To him who sat upon the rocks, And fluted to the morning sea.

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still !

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

THE POET'S SONG.

THE rain had fallen, the Poet arose,

He pass'd by the town and out of the street, A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat, And he sat him down in a lonely place,

And chanted a melody loud and sweet, That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud, And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,
The snake slipt under a spray,

The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey,

And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many

songs,

But never a one so gay,

For he sings of what the world will be

When the years have died away."

THE BROOK.

HERE, by this brook, we parted; I to the East
And he for Italy-too late-too late :

One whom the strong sons of the world despise;
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,
And mellow metres more than cent for cent;
Nor could he understand how money breeds,
Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make
The thing that is not as the thing that is.
O had he lived! In our schoolbooks we say,
Of those that held their heads above the crowd,
They flourish'd then or then; but life in him
Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd
On such a time as goes before the leaf,

When all the wood stands in a mist of green,