CHARACTERISTICS OF AUTUMN.

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the year

On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.

Come, months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier

Of the dead, cold year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt-worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling

For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
To his dwelling.

Come, months, come away;

Put on white, black, and gray,

Let your light sisters play:

Ye, follow the bier

Of the dead, cold year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

A CALM WINTER NIGHT.

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,

Seems like a canopy which love had spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow,-

Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pure beam,-yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly that wrapt fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace,-all form a scene
Where musing solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where silence undisturb'd might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still.

THE CLOUD,

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

1 "The odes To the Skylark and The Cloud, the azure sky of Italy, or marking the cloud in the opinion of many critics, bear a purer as it sped across the heavens, while he floated poetical stamp than any other of his produc- in his boat on the Thames. No poet was ever tions. They were written as his mind prompted, warmed by a more genuine and unforced inlistening to the carolling of the bird aloft inspiration. His extreme sensibility gave the

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.

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

When rock'd to rest on their mother's breast,1
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 skyey bowers
Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under is fetter'd 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,

2

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings;

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and 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,

The fanciful conceptions of which this poem consists are embodied in richly colored and most musical language. The obscurity, however, of some passages is a material drawback on the reader's pleasure.

1 Their mother, &c.-i.e. the earth's breast, as she rapidly revolves-" dances"-around the

intensity of passion to his intellectual pursnits, and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the appointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain; to escape from such he delivered his soul to poetry, and felt happy when he 2 Rack-a vapor, mist; here, a body of vapors sheltered himself from the influence of human forming a large cloud. Shakspeare's expression, Sympathies in the wildest regions of fancy."-"Leave not a rack behind," is well known. YES. SHELLEY, Pref. to Poet. Works.

sun.

3 Its ardors,-its warm sympathies with.

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,

When the powers of the air are chain'd to my chair,
Is the million-color'd bow;

The sphere-fire1 above its soft colors wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nurseling 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,2

And out of the caverns of rain,

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

THE EAGLE AND SERPENT3

In the air do I behold indeed

An eagle and a serpent wreathed in fight,
And now, relaxing its impetuous flight,
Before th' aërial rock on which I stood,

The eagle hovering wheel'd to left and right,
And hung with lingering wings over the flood,
And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude.

1 Sphere-fire-i.e. a light from the spheres. of Islam) is too long for insertion here. Result 8 Cenotaph. In this passage the sky-the-the serpent-perhaps a "copperhead”—was proper region of the clouds-being, after the killed. Thus may the noble bird (the emblem rain, empty of them, seems to be called on this to our country of UNION and LIBERTY) ever account their cenotaph. prove victorious over his venomous foes!

The whole fine description (from the Revolt

A shaft of light upon its wings descended,
And every golden feather gleam'd therein,
Feather and scale inextricably blended:

The serpent's mailed and many-color❜d skin
Shone through the plumes, its coils were twined within,
With many a swoln and knotted fold; and high
And far the neck receding lithe and thin,

Sustain❜d a crested head, which warily

Shifted, and glanced before the eagle's steadfast eye.

Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling,
With clang of wings and scream the eagle sail'd
Incessantly; sometimes on high concealing

Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it fail'd,

Droop'd through the air, and still it shriek'd and wail'd,
And, casting back its eager head, with beak

And talon unremittingly assail'd

The wreathéd serpent, who did ever seek

Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak.

THE SKYLARK.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still, and higher,

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight

Like a star of heaven

In the broad daylight,

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd

96

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee;

From rainbow-clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glowworm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower'd

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Match'd with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear, keen joyance

Languor cannot be;

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.