SONG FOR “TASSO."

I LOVED

I.

alas! our life is love ;

But when we cease to breathe and move

I do suppose love ceases too.

I thought, but not as now I do,

Keen thoughts and bright of linkèd lore,

Of all that men had thought before,

And all that nature shows, and more.

II.

And still I love and still I think,

But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live,

And love;

And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.

III.

Sometimes I see before me flee

A silver spirit's form, like thee,

O Leonora, and I sit
Still watching it,

Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.

PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights !

Paradise of golden lights !

Deep, immeasurable, vast,

Which art now, and which wert then !
Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,

Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,

Of acts and ages yet to come !
Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;

Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses ;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;
And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode

Of that power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they
Like a river roll away :

Thou remainest such alway.

SECOND SPIRIT.

Thou art but the mind's first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;
But the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam
From the shadow of a dream!

THIRD SPIRIT.

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn At your presumption, atom-born !

What is heaven? and what are ye Who its brief expanse inherit?

What are suns and spheres which flee

With the instinct of that spirit

Of which ye are but a part?

Drops which Nature's mighty heart

Drives through thinnest veins. Depart!

What is heaven? a globe of dew,

Filling in the morning new

Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world :

Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless, are furled
In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

AN EXHORTATION.

CAMELIONS feed on light and air :
Poets' food is love and fame :
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,

Would they ever change their hue

As the light camelions do, Suiting it to every ray Twenty times a-day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As camelions might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is camelions change :
Where love is not, poets do :
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power

A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright camelions should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
O, refuse the boon!