sonnet

Stately yon vessel sails adown the tide,
To some far distant land adventurous bound;
The sailors' busy cries from side to side,
Pealing among the echoing rocks, resound:
A patient, thoughtless, much-enduring band,
Joyful they enter on their ocean way,
With shouts exulting leave their native land,
And know no care beyond the present day.
But is there no poor mourner left behind,
Who sorrows for a child or husband there?
Who at the howling of the midnight wind
Will wake and tremble in her boding prayer?

Corston.

As thus I stand beside the murmuring stream,
And watch its current, memory here portrays
Scenes faintly form'd of half-forgotten days,
Like far-off woodlands by the moon's bright beam
Dimly descried, but lovely. I have worn
Amid these haunts the heavy hours away,
When childhood idled through the Sabbath-day;
Risen to my tasks at winter's earliest morn;
And when the summer twilight darken'd here,
Thinking of home, and all of heart forlorn,
Have sigh'd and shed in secret many a tear.

Could I look forward to a distant day
With hope of building some elaborate lay,
Then would I wait till worthier strains of mine
Might bear inscribed thy name, O Caroline!
For I would, while my voice is heard on earth,
Bear witness to thy genius and thy worth.
But we have both been taught to feel with fear
How frail the tenure of existence here,
What unforeseen calamities prevent,
Alas, how oft! the best-resolved intent;
And therefore this poor volume I address
To thee, dear friend, and sister Poetess.

Above the battlements of heaven rise
The glittering domes of the gods' golden dwelling,
Whence, like a constellation, passion-quelling,
The truth of all things feeds immortal eyes.
There all forgotten dreams of paradise
From the deep caves of memory upwelling,
All tender joys beyond our dim foretelling
Are ever bright beneath the flooded skies.
There we live o'er, amid angelic powers,
Our lives without remorse, as if not ours,
And others' lives with love, as if our own;
For we behold, from those eternal towers,

A thousand beauties that have never been
Haunt me with hope and tempt me to pursue;
The gods, methinks, dwell just behind the blue;
The satyrs at my coming fled the green.
The flitting shadows of the grove between
The dryads' eyes were winking, and I knew
The wings of sacred Eros as he flew
And left me to the love of things not seen.
'T is a sad love, like an eternal prayer,
And knows no keen delight, no faint surcease.
Yet from the seasons hath the earth increase,
And heaven shines as if the gods were there.

A wall, a wall to hem the azure sphere
And hedge me in from the disconsolate hills!
Give me but one of all the mountain rills,
Enough of ocean in its voice I hear.
Come no profane insatiate mortal near
With the contagion of his passionate ills;
The smoke of battle all the valleys fills,
Let the eternal sunlight greet me here.
This spot is sacred to the deeper soul
And to the piety that mocks no more.
In nature's inmost heart is no uproar,
None in this shrine; in peace the heavens roll,

His Muse speakes to him.

Thy vowes are heard, and thy Castara's name
Is writ as faire ith' Register of Fame,
As th' ancient beauties which translated are
By Poets up to heaven; each there a starre.
And though Imperiall Tiber boast alone
Ovids Corinna , and to Arn is knowne
But Petrarchs Laura ; while our famous Thames
Doth murmur Sydneyes Stella to her streames.
Yet hast thou Severne left, and she can bring
As many quires of Swans, as they to sing
Thy glorious love: Which living shall by thee

I.

Again among the Mountains, and again
That same old question on my faltering tongue!
Purged if not purified by fires of pain,
I seek the solitudes I loved when young;
And lo, the prayers I prayed, the songs I sung,
Echo like elfin music in my brain,
While to these lonely regions of the Rain
I come, a Pilgrim worn and serpent-stung.
The bitter wormwood of the creeds hath pass'd
To poison in my blood of dull despair,
I have torn the mask from Death and stood aghast
To find the Phantom's features foul not fair,

It is a sacrilege in form I fear,
To make this photograph of him and thee,
From my own sunny south sent north to me,
In all my heart my own Madonna, dear;
Yet Raphael could paint no face or brow
To make me worship it with glory lit,
Although the Holy Virgin sat for it,
As I do this, our baby's face and thou.
Though priests my worship may condemn to scorn,
I think the virgin with her mother love,
The Babe of Bethlehem, of woman born,
And later all my sins and sorrows bore,
If my great love for thee they watch above,

In dreams I hear a music made of snow,
Harmonic chilly idyl of cold sound:
Its echo-twin in polar stars is found,
It moans to still white moons its utter woe.

Gaunt ghost-musicians by the frost-gods crowned,
Drunk upon icicles and snow-drops, glow
With dismal thought in frigid murmurs drowned,
I hear ice melodies through dreamland flow.

Sounds like a dark, cold pond, inviting rime,
Sounds like the freezing, vague, uncertain chime
Of distant bells through airs of endless mist,
Clanging unconsciously to fates above;