As is the Moon, whose changes ever run Into themselves, to the eternal Sun; The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,

Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,

That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame

Which ever is transformed, yet still the

same,

And warms not but illumines. Young and fair

As the descended Spirit of that sphere, She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night From its own darkness, until all was bright

Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,

And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,
She led me to a cave in that wild place,
And sate beside me, with her downward
face
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion.
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,
And all my being became bright or dim
As the Moon's image in a summer sea,
According as she smiled or frowned on
me;

And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:

Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead :-
For at her silver voice came Death and
Life,
Unmindful each of their accustomed
strife,

Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,

The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,

Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air :
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,
When light is changed to love, this
glorious One

Floated into the cavern where I lay,
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming

clay

Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below

As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow

I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night

Was penetrating me with living light:
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
So many years-that it was Emily.

Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,

This world of love, this me; and into birth [dart Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and

Magnetic might into its central heart; And lift its billows and its mists, and guide

By everlasting laws, each wind and tide To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave; And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave

Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers

The armies of the rainbow-winged showers;

And, as those married lights, which from the towers

Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe

In liquid sleep and splendor, as a robe; And all their many-mingled influence blend,

If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end';So ye, bright regents, with alternate

Emily,

A ship is floating in the harbor now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's

brow: There is a path on the sea's azure floor, No keel has ever ploughed that path before;

The halcyons brood around the foamless
isles;
[wiles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its
The merry mariners are bold and free :
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail
with me?

Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit,
while Night

And Day, and storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,

Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an Isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbors are not safe and
good,

This land would have remained a solitude

But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden

air

Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and spirited; innocent and bold. The blue Egean girds this chosen home, With ever-changing sound and light and foam, Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar; And all the winds wandering along the shore

Undulate with the undulating tide:
There
are thick woods where sylvan
forms abide :
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats

and deer (Which the rough shepherd treads but Once a year),

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers,

and halls

Built round with ivy, which the water

falls

Illumining, with sound that never fails Accompany the noonday nightingales; And all the place is peopled with sweet The light clear element which the isle

wears

Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, Which floats like mist laden with unseen

showers

And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; And from the moss violets and jonquils

peep,

And dart their arrowy odor through the

brain

Till you might faint with that delicious pain,

And every motion, odor, beam, and tone With that deep music is in unison : Which is a soul within the soul-they

seem

Like echoes of an antenatal dream.-
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth,

and Sea,

Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,Possessing and possest by all that is Within that calm circumference of bliss, And by each other, till to love and live Be one-or, at the noontide hour, arrive Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep

The moonlight of the expired night asleep, Through which the awakened day can never peep;

A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's, Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;

Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.

And we will talk, until thought's melody Become too sweet for utterance, and it die

In words, to live again in looks, which dart

Confused in passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning
Sun.

We shall become the same, we shall be

one

Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?

One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,

Till like two meteors of expanding flame, Those spheres instinct with it become the same, Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still

Burning, yet ever inconsumable : In one another's substance finding food, Like flames too pure and light and unimbued To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away: One hope within two wills, one will beneath

Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,

One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The wingéd words on which my soul
would pierce

Into the height of love's rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

TO NIGHT

SWIFTLY walk o'er the western wave
Spirit of Night!

Out of thy misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?—And I replied,
No, not thee!

Death will come when thou art dead
Soon, too soon-
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night--
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

1821. 1824.

TIME UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep

woe

Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,

Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ;