The sweet night reaches thee, my lady fair!
The winds caress thee, and the same stars shine
Upon thee, — thy pure heavens are also mine;
The same rich darkness mixes with thy hair, —
We breathe the same involuntary air, —
In thy soft locks the braided vapours twine, —
And all their countless scents of larch and pine
From each to each the darkling hill-sides bear.

The sweet night reaches thee; — we are not far
Apart, — the sweet night reaches thee, and falls
About thee like a mantle; every star
That lights the blue illimitable halls

TO ENGLAND

Dark days are coming, England. Lo! the sky
Is foul and rank with treason, and there are
Who say they see the setting of thy star
And hold that thou wilt pass away and die.
With storm and strife, with keen device and lie
Thy foes assail thee. Thou hast journeyed far
Since on the Belgian plain thine hosts did bar
The hosts of France, and mocked the eagle's cry.

But thou art still the same. Thine eyes of fire

When first I saw thee, lady of my dreams,
And watched love's sunrise shed its ardent gold
O'er hill and valley and wild purple wold —
The golden light which once superbly gleams,
Then fades for ever; when, beside the streams
Of that fair Northern many-tinted sea,
Thy girlish tender presence shone on me,
But fifteen years had crowned thee with sunbeams.

And Dante's Beatrice was but fifteen!
And her sweet deathless eyes were soft sea-green,
When first she stood before him in the way; —
So wast thou girl-soft, simple and divine,

A GLORY of light beyond his utmost dream
Had flashed with sunlike flame and moonlike gleam
On Wordsworth's eyes
Had he discerned the sovereign force that fills
With lovelier light than theirs the laughing hills
And answering skies.

The secrets of the grass and of the dew,
And of the lakes, the lonely poet knew:
These spake aloud.
He heard the voices of the stars at night
As they climbed upward from slow height to height,
From cloud to cloud.

And yet he missed the magic of each place,
Because he missed the magic of the face

False and ill-grounded were my hopes,
My expectations vain;
Each step increases my complaints,
And nourishes my pain.

Here will I pause — this shady walk,
That variegated field,
Nor all the lovely landscape round,
Their wonted pleasures yield.

One black and universal cloud
Wide overspreads the whole;
Creation sickens, and is dark
And gloomy as my soul.

Clyde's plaintive wave, the sighing gale,
The warbler of each tree,
Sing one sad melancholy song,
In unison with me.

Slowly my song grows, — as from day to day
I add fresh flowers of ever-intenser thought;
Bright buds the calm of riper age has brought,
Soft violets, roses, red leaves, — many a spray
Rich with the flying tints of autumn gay,
Or blossoms in dense woods of summer sought: —
Blue hyacinths and crocus-petals fraught
With spring, and spikes of frost from winter grey.

Slowly my song grows: to each word a year
Of patient and of earnest thought I give,
If haply, when the world's last leaf is sere,

I.

It was but in a room;—I had been sleeping;
 The still night deepened,—and I was alone.
When on a sudden I awoke low-weeping,
 And through and through me rang thy silver tone.
And then I saw thee, sweet one, far more clearly
 Than I shall ever see again in life,
Not face to face, but soul to soul,—more nearly
 Than mother is to son, or man to wife.
Then all the room was filled as with some essence
 Ethereal, heavenly, fragrant and divine;—
God's own intoxicating gracious presence,

The pale-ey'd moon serenes the silent hour,
And many a star adorns the clear blue sky;
While pleas'd I view this desolated tow'r
That rears it's time-struck tott'ring top so high.

Here was the garden, there the festive hall,
This the broad entry, that the crowded street;
The task how pleasant to repair it's fall,
And ev'ry stone arrange in order meet!

The scheme is finish'd; — ages backward roll'd
And all it's former majesty restor'd: —
Imagination hastens to unfold
The pomp, the pleasures of it's long-lost lord.

A sense of sleeping in between dark firs
That clothe some dreamy monstrous Apennines, —
A sense of fragrance wafted from sweet pines
Across the illimitable mountain-spurs, —
And then, as the awaking mind demurs,
The soft discovery that a woman twines
Long leafy tresses, — that her splendour shines
Through sleep, and that the ambrosial breath was hers.

So dreamed I; and my spirit took its flight,
Invulnerable, o'er the mountain-tops,
On beatific pinions, softly bright
As are the golden crowns of August crops; —

A poet lay beneath a tropic moon
And heard strange noises in the misty woods,
The impervious spirit-haunted solitudes,
And felt across his face a silver swoon
Stream as a veil of gauze, — and, sleeping soon,
The inner universal life revealed
Shone through him, and creation's music pealed
About him, like some all-embracing tune.

And through the trees came many figures flitting
Under the crimson candles of the night;
And voices of triumphant lovers sitting
On mossy knolls, by still pools clear and bright;