And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings,
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away-forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

FAIRY-LAND.

DIM vales, and shadowy floods,
And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over;

Huge moons there wax and wane—
Again, again, again-

Every moment of the night,

For ever changing places;

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces,

About twelve by the moon-dial.

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down-still down-and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence;

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be-

O'er the strange woods, o'er the sea.

Over spirits on the wing,
Over every drowsy thing-
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light;

And then, how deep !—oh, deep
Is the passion of their sleep!

In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss
Like-almost anything-
Or a yellow albatross.

They use that moon no more
For the same end as before --

Videlicet a tent

Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies
Of earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.