Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Until Death tramples it to fragments. - Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled !- Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. LIII. Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? No more let Life divide what Death can join together. LIV. That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. LV. The breath whose might I have invoked in song Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. WRITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON. WHAT! alive and so bold, oh earth? Art thou not overbold? What! leapest thou forth as of old Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled, How! is not thy quick heart cold? What spark is alive on thy hearth? Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled — "Who has known me of old," replied Earth, "Or who has my story told? And the lightning of scorn laughed forth All my sons when their knell is knolled, And so with living motion all are fed, And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead. "Still alive and still bold," shouted Earth, "I grow bolder and still more bold. The dead fill me ten thousand fold Till by the spirit of the mighty dead My heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed. "Aye, alive and still bold," muttered Earth, "Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled, In terror and blood and gold, A torrent of ruin to death from his birth. And weave into his shame, which like the dead DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. I. ORPHAN hours, the year is dead, For the year is but asleep. II. As an earthquake rocks a corse So White Winter, that rough nurse, For your mother in her shroud. III. As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, So the breath of these rude days Rocks the year:-be calm and mild, Trembling hours, she will arise |