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 ownThe 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-her veriest stepping-stone Shall form the pedestal of a throneAnd who her sovereign? Timour-he Whom the astonished people saw Striding o'er empires haughtily

A diadem'd outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven! Which fall'st into the soul like rain

Upon the Siroc-withered 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, that eagle that tower'd, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly

And homeward turn'd his softened eye.

'Twas 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 often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits hearken) 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 ber 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 noon-day beauty-which is all.
I reach'd my home-my home no more—
For all had flown who made it so.
I passed 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,
An humbler heart-a deeper wo.

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 light'ning 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?