SONNET: TO ZANTE.

FAIR isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,

Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take! How many memories of what radiant hours

At sight of thee and thine at once awake! How many scenes of what departed bliss!

How many thoughts of what entombéd hopes ! How many visions of a maiden that is

No more-no more upon thy verdant slopes!

No more alas, that magical sad sound

Transforming all! Thy charm shall please no

more

Thy memory no more! Accursed ground!

Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,

O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante !

"Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!"

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and

the best,

Have gone to their eternal rest.

Their shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free

Up domes-up spires-up kingly halls-
Up fanes-up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol's diamond eye

Not the gaily-jewelled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed;

For no ripples curl, alas !

Along that wilderness of glass

No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-

No heavings hint that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave-there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide—
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-

The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

THOU wast all that to me, love,

For which my soul did pine

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast !

A voice from out the Future cries,

"On! on!"-but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er !

No more-no more-no more