Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.

When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlunar swoon,

Is not sadder in her cell

Than deserted Ariel.

When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth,
Ariel guides you o'er the sea
Of life from your nativity.
Many changes have been run,
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still

Has tracked your steps, and served your will;

Now, in humbler, happier lot,

This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is.
Imprisoned, for some fault of his,
In a body like a grave; -
From you he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.

The artist who this idol wrought,
To echo all harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,

Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine ;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree, -
O that such our death may be !
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again :
From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved Guitar,
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully,
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamoured tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learnt all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,

And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound,
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way -
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before,
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day :
But sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For our belovèd Jane alone.

TO JANE.

I.

THE keen stars were twinkling,

And the fair moon was rising among them,

Dear Jane !

The guitar was tinkling,

But the notes were not sweet till you sung them

Again.

II.

As the moon's soft splendour

O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven

Is thrown,

So your voice most tender

To the strings without soul had then given

Its own.

III.

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later,

To-night;

No leaf will be shaken

Whilst the dews of your melody scatter

Delight.

IV.

Though the sound overpowers,

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing

A tone

Of some world far from ours,

Where music and moonlight and feeling

Are one.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF LERICI.

SHE left me at the silent time
When the moon had ceased to climb
The azure path of Heaven's steep,
And like an albatross asleep,
Balanced on her wings of light,
Hovered in the purple night,
Ere she sought her ocean nest
In the chambers of the West.
She left me, and I staid alone
Thinking over every tone
Which, though silent to the ear,
The inchanted heart could hear,
Like notes which die when born, but still
Haunt the echoes of the hill;
And feeling ever — O too much!
The soft vibration of her touch,
As if her gentle hand, even now,
Lightly trembled on my brow ;
And thus, although she absent were,
Memory gave me all of her