II.

Ah! woe is me! poor silver-wing !

That I must chant thy lady's dirge,
And death to this fair haunt of spring,

Of melody, and streams of flowery verge, —
Poor silver-wing! ah! woe is me!

5
That I must see
These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall!

Go, pretty page! and in her ear
Whisper that the hour is near!

Softly tell her not to fear
Such calm favonian burial!

Go, pretty page! and soothly tell,

The blossoms hang by a melting spell,
And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice
Upon her closed eyes,

15 That now in vain are weeping their last tears,

At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green,Rich dowry from the Spirit of the Spheres,

Alas! poor Queen !

IO

of them as characteristic-not, however, the curious orthography Paradize in line 6, or bow for bough in line 12.

SONG.

Written on a blank page in Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, between “Cupid's Revenge" and

“The Two Noble Kinsmen."

I.

Spirit here that reignest!
Spirit here that painest!
Spirit here that burnest !
Spirit here that mournest !

Spirit, I bow

My forehead low,
Enshaded with thy pinions.

Spirit, I look

All passion-struck
Into thy pale dominions.

2.

Spirit here that laughest!
Spirit here that quaffest !

First given among the Literary Remains in 1848 as an independent song ; but included in the Aldine edition among Faery Songs, with the two preceding. The fact that the Song was written where it was leads me to prefer the earlier arrangement. The variation from the printed text shown by the manuscript in the third and fourth lines of each stanza is curious, namely burneth, mourneth, danceth, and pranceth. There are several differences of punctuation

Spirit here that dancest !
Noble soul that prancest!

Spirit, with thee

I join in the glee
A-nudging the elbow of Mom us.

Spirit, I flush

With a Bacchanal blush
Just fresh from the Banquet of Comus.

which I have adopted ; and there is a cancelled reading, wings for pinions in line 7 of stanza 1. Lord Houghton reads While nudging in stanza 2.

STANZAS.

I.

In a drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember

Their green felicity :
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

2.

In a drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember

Apollo's summer look ;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

I have not succeeded in tracing this poem further back than to Galignani's edition of Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge (1829). In 1830 it appeared in The Gem, a Literary Annual. Some years ago a correspondent sent me for inspection a manuscript varying slightly from the received text : thus, each stanza began with In drear nighted December; the second happy in line 2 of stanza i appeared

3.

Ah! would 'twere so with many

A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any

Writh'd not at passed joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,

Was never said in rhyme.

to be an after-thought; in stanza 3, line 2, happy stood cancelled in favour of gentle, and line 5 was

The feel of not to feel it.

In The Gem we read told for said in the last line.