Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,
Their full divinity inadequate.
That feeling to express, or to improve,
The gods become as mortals, and man's fate
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight
Of earth recoils upon us :let it go!
We can recall such visions, and create,

From what has been, or might be, things which grow Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.

Turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain-
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending :—Vain
The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain

Rivets the living links,- the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poesy, and light-
The Sun in human limbs array'd, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight:
The shaft hath just been shot—the arrow bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might

And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.

But in his delicate form-a dream of Love,
Shaped by some solitary Nymph, whose breast
Long'd for a deathless lover from above,

And madden'd in that vision--are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever blest
The mind with in its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest--

A ray of immortality-and stood,
Starlike, around, until they gather'd to a god !

And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
The fire which we endure, it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given
Which this poetic marble hath array'd
With an eternal glory—which, if made
By human hands, is not of human thought;
And Time himself hath hallow'd it, not laid

One ringlet in the dust-nor hath it caught A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.

Id.

MAN'S INSIGNIFICANCY AND THE OCEAN'S

UNCHANGEABLENESS.
ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain :
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make

Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war :-
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,

,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee---
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage ; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :—not so thou ;
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

:

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime
The image of Eternity—the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

Id.

DULCIA.

'Tis sweet to hear At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep, The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,

By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep;

'Tis sweet to see the evening star appear ;

"Tis sweet to listen, as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; ’tis sweet to view on high

The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark,

Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark

Our coming, and look brighter when we come; 'Tis sweet to be awaken'd by the lark,

Or lull’d by falling waters; sweet the hum Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds, The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

Don Juan

THE SHIPWRECK.

THEN rose from sea to sky the wild farewell

Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave,Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell,

As eager to anticipate their grave;
And the sea yawn'd around her like a hell ;

And down she suck'd with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.

a

And first one universal shriek there rush'd,

Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hush'd,

Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gush'd,

Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in bis

a

DEATH OF HAIDEE.

AFRIC is all the Sun's, and as her earth

Her human clay is kindled ; full of power For good or evil, burning from its birth,

The Moorish blood partakes the planet's hour, And, like the soil beneath it, will bring forth :

Beauty and love were Haidee's mother's dower; But her large dark eye show'd deep Passion's force, Though sleeping like a lion near a source.

Her daughter, temper'd with a milder ray,

Like summer clouds all silvery, smooth, and fair, Till, slowly charged with thunder, they display

Terror to earth, and tempest to the air, Had held till now her soft and milky way;

But, overwrought with passion and despair, The fire burst forth from her Numidian veins, E'en as the Simoom sweeps the blasted plains.

The last sight which she saw was Juan's gore,

And he himself o'ermaster'd and cut down ; His blood was running on the very floor

Where late he trod, her beautiful, her own;
Thus much she view'd an instant and no more,-

Her struggles ceased with one convulsive groan;
On her sire's arm, which until now scarce held
Her writhing, fell she like a cedar fell’d.

A vein had burst, and her sweet lips' pure dyes

Were dabbled with the deep blood which ran o'er; And her head droop'd as when the lily lies O'ercharged with rain : her summond handmaids