XII.

Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove,
When, on the mountain-peak alone,
Ambition lent it a new tone.

XIII.

I had no being but in thee:
The world, and all it did contain
In the earth, the air, the sea,

Its joy--its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure, the ideal,
Dim, vanities of dreams by night,
And dimmer nothings which were real—
(Shadows, and a more shadowy light,)
Parted upon their misty wings,

And so, confusedly, became

Thine image and a name—a name! Two separate, yet most intimate things.

XIV.

I was ambitious-have you known

The passion, father? You have not:

A cottager, I marked a throne

Of half the world as all my own,

And murmured at such lowly lot—

But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapour of the dew

My own had past, did not the beam

Of beauty, which did while it through The minute, the hour, the day, oppress My mind with double loveliness?

We walked together on the crown
Of a high mountain, which looked down,
Afar from its proud natural towers,

Of rock and forest, on the hills—
The dwindled hills-begirt with bowers,
And shouting with a thousand rills.

XVI.

I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically, in such guise
That she might deem it naught beside
The moment's converse; in her eyes

I read, perhaps too carelessly,

A mingled feeling with my own; The flush on her bright cheek to me

Seemed to become a queenly throne,

Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

XVII.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then,
And donned a visionary crown;
Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me;

But that, among the rabble, men,
Lion ambition is chained down,
And crouches to a keeper's hand;
Not so in deserts, where the grand,
The wild, the terrible conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

XVIII.

Look round thee now on Samarcand!

Is she not queen of earth? her pride Above all cities in her hand

Of glory which the world hath known,
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling, her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne;
And who her sovereign? Timour! he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o'er empires haughtily,

A diademed outlaw !

XIX.

O human love! thou spirit given
On earth of all we hope in heaven;
Which fall'st into the soul-like rain
Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness;
Idea, which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound,

And beauty of so wild a birth—

Farewell! for I have won the earth.

XX.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly,

And homeward turned his softened eye.

"Twas sunset: when the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the evening mist,

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming Darkness (known To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who in a dream of night would fly,

But cannot, from a danger nigh.

XXI.

What though the moon -the white moon—
Shed all the splendour of her noon;
Her smile is chilly, and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like, you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun,
Whose waning is the dreariest one;
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown;
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noonday beauty—which is all.

XXII.

I reached my home-my home no more;
For all had flown who made it so.

I passed from out its mossy door,

And, though my tread was soft and low,