A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, At Christabel she look'd askance !-- The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, That look of dull and treacherous hate! And when the trance was o'er, the maid By my mother's soul do I entreat Why is thy cheek so wan and wild, That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled, And wouldst thou wrong thy only child, Her child and thine? Within the Baron's heart and brain Dishonor'd thus in his old age; To the insulted daughter of his friend And said in tones abrupt, austere― Why, Bracy! dost tnou loiter here? I bade thee hence!" The bard obeyed: And turning from his own sweet maid, The aged knight, Sir Leoline, Led forth the lady Geraldine! 1800. 1816. THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE SECOND A little child, a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight As fills a father's eyes with light: And pleasures flow in so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess With words of unmeant bitterness. Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm. Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what, if in a world of sin (0 sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain. So talks as it's most used to do. east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light! And when to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright; When France her front deep-scarr'd and gory Concealed with clustering: wreaths of glory; When insupportably advancing, Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp; While timid looks of fury glancing. Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp, Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore; Then I reproached my fears that would not flee; "And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach her ɔre In the low huts of them that toil and grean; And, conquering by her happiness alone, Shall France compel the nations to be free, Til Love and Joy look round, and call the earth tacir own." From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams! Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished, And ye, that fleeing, spot your mountain snows With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! To scatter rage and traitorous guilt Where Peace her jealous home had built: A patriot-race to disinherit Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear: And with inexpiable spirit To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And patriot only in pernicious toils! Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! And then I felt thee !-on that sea-cliff's verge, Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, Had made one murmur with the distant surge! Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there. FROST AT MIDNIGHT THE Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry Came loud-and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest. Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood. With all the numberless goings-on of life. Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not; Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole ung, thing. Methinks, its motion in this 'ush of nature ་ Gives it dim sympathies with rae who live, Making it a companionable form. Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every ~here Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought. By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, LOVE 1798. ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights, And feed his sacred flame. Oft in my waking dreams do I Beside the ruined tower. The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene She leant against the armed man, Amid the lingering light. Few sorrows hath she of her own, The songs that make her grieve. I played a soft and doleful air, She listened with a flitting blush, I told her of the Knight that wore I told her how he pined: and ah! She listened with a flitting blush, Too fondly on her face! But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, And that he crossed the mountainwoods, Nor rested day nor night; That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade, There came and looked him in the face And that unknowing what he did, The Lady of the Land! And how she wept, and clasped his knees: And how she tended him in vain- The scorn that crazed his brain ;And that she nursed him in a cave; And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest-leaves A dying man he lay ; His dying words-but when I reached That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul with pity! All impulses of soul and sense The rich and balmy eve; And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, She wept with pity and delight, And like the murmur of a dream, She half enclosed me with her arms, 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, I calmed her fears, and she was calm, My bright and beauteous Bride, 1798-1799. December 21, 1799. THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIE A FRAGMENT BENEATH yon birch with silver bark, And there upon the moss she sits, And drops and swells again. The sun was sloping down the sky, |