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Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep; Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep, Piloted by the many-wandering blast,

And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast.

All this is beautiful in every land.

But what see you beside? A shabby stand
Of hackney-coaches-a brick house or wall
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics ;-or worse-

A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse, Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade,

You must accept in place of serenade,
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
To Henry some unutterable thing.

I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root

Of the living stems who feed them, in whose bowers

There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers.
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air; and, borne
In circles quaint and ever-changing dance,
Like winged stars the fireflies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,

A meteor tamed, a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way.
Afar the contadino's song is heard,

Rude but made sweet by distance, and a bird
Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour :-and then all is still.
Now, Italy or London, which you will!

I'll have

Next winter you must pass with me.
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
And all the dreams which our tormentors are.
Oh, that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith, were
there,

With everything belonging to them fair!
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek ;
And ask one week to make another week
As like his father as I'm unlike mine.

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry. We'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper; and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,—

Feasting on which we will philosophise.

And we'll have fires out of the Grand-Duke's wood,

To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk ;-what shall we talk about?
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout

Of thought-entangled descant! As to nerves—
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me, when you are with me there;
And they shall never more sip laudanum
From Helicon or Himeros. Well, come,
And in despite of . . . and of the devil
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers
Warm the obscure inevitable hours

Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew :-
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

ODE TO NAPLES.

EPODE I. α.

I STOOD within the city disinterred;

And heard the autumnal leaves like light

footfalls

Of spirits passing through the streets; and

heard

The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls.

The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood ;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke-
I felt, but heard not. Through white columns

glowed

The isle-sustaining ocean-food,

A plane of light between two heavens of azure. Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre, Of whose pure beauty Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; But every living lineament was clear

As in the sculptor's thought, and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine, Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded

snow,

Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air Weighed on their life, even as the Power divine Which then lulled all things brooded upon mine.

EPODE II. α.

Then gentle winds arose,

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour

keen.

And where the Baian ocean

Welters, with air-like motion,

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the elysian realm,

It bore me (like an angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm).

I sailed where ever flows
Under the calm serene

A spirit of deep emotion

From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of melody.
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal ether; heaven stripped bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime,
There streamed a sunlit vapour, like the
standard

Of some ethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there
wandered

Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate-
They seize me I must speak them ;-be they
fate!

STROPHE I. a.

NAPLES! thou heart of men which ever pantest

Naked beneath the lidless eye of heaven! Elysian City, which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea,—they round thee, even

As Sleep round Love, are driven !

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