And murmur'd at such lowly lot
But, just like any other dream,

Upon the vapor of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam

Of beauty which did while it thro'
The minute the hour the day — oppress
My mind with double loveliness.

We walk'd together on the crown
Of a high mountain which look'd down
Afar from its proud natural towers

Of rock and forest, on the hills —
The dwindled hills ! begirt with bowers

And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,

But mystically — in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside

The moment's converse; in her eyes
I read, perhaps too carelessly,

A mingled feeling with my own ; The flush on her bright cheek, to me

Seem'd to become a queenly throne Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapp'd myself in grandeur then

And donn'd a visionary crown

Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me But that, among the rabble - men,

Lion ambition is chain'd down -
And crouches to a keeper's hand
Not so in deserts where the grand
The wild — the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand !

Is she not queen of Earth? her pride Above all cities ? in her hand

Their destinies ? in all beside Of glory which the world hath known Stands she not nobly and alone? Falling - hier veriest stepping-stone Shall form the pedestal of a throne And who her sovereign? Timour — he

Whom the astonished people saw Striding o'er empires haughtily

A diadem'd outlaw !

0, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven !
Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-wither'd plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness !

Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth-
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky, His pinions were bent droopingly

And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye. 'T was sunset; when the sun will part There comes a sullenness of heart To him who still would look upon The glory of the summer sun. That soul will hate the ev'ning mist So osten lovely, and will list To the sound of the coming darkness (known To those whose spirits harken) as one Who, in a dream of night, would fly But cannot from a danger nigh. What tho' the moon the white moon Shed all the splendor of her noon, Her smile is chilly -- and her beam, In that time of dreariness, will seem (So like you gather in your breath) A portrait taken after death. And boyhood is a summer sun Whose waning is the dreariest one

For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noonday beauty — which is all.

I reach'd

my

home my home no more For all had flown who made it so. I pass'd from out its mossy door,

And, tho' my tread was soft and low, A voice came from the threshold stone Of one whom I had earlier known

O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,

A humbler heart a deeper woe.
Father, I firmly do believe
I know- - for Death who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see

Are flashing thro’ Eternity -
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path
Else how, when in the holy grove,
I wandered of the idol, Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt offerings

From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellis'd rays from Heaven,
No mote may shun no tiniest fly
The lightning of his eagle eye -
How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love's very hair?

1

TO

HE bowers whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds, Are lips — and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words.

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined, ,

Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall.

Thy heart - thy heart - I wake and sigh,

And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy –

Of the baubles that it may.