If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves, each fittest to create And to repay each other! Why rejoices

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none;
Thy being's being is contradiction.

MOLES.

-THEY shrink in, as Moles

(Nature's mute monks, live mandrakes

of the ground)

Creep back from Light-then listen for its sound;See but to dread, and dread they know not whyThe natural alien of their negative eye.

THE VISIT OF THE GODS.

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER.

NEVER, believe me,

Appear the Immortals,
Never alone:

Scarce had I welcomed the sorrow-beguiler,
Iacchus! but in came boy Cupid the smiler;
Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his

throne !

They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!
With divinities fills my
Terrestrial hall !

How shall I yield you
Due entertainment,

Celestial quire?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance

Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joy

ance,

That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!

Hah! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul !

O give me the nectar!

O fill me the bowl!

Give him the nectar!

Pour out for the poet,

Hebe! pour free !

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry!
The wine of the Immortals

Forbids me to die!

THE PANG MORE SHARP THAN ALL.

AN ALLEGORY.

I.

HE too has flitted from his secret nest,
Hope's last and dearest child without a

name!

Has flitted from me, like the warmthless flame,
That makes false promise of a place of rest
To the tired Pilgrim's still believing mind;-
Or like some Elfin Knight in kingly court,
Who having won all guerdons in his sport,
Glides out of view, and whither none can find!

II.

Yes! he hath flitted from me-with what aim,
Or why, I know not! 'Twas a home of bliss,
And he was innocent, as the pretty shame
Of babe, that tempts and shuns the menaced kiss,
From its twy-cluster'd hiding place of snow!
Pure as the babe, I ween, and all aglow

As the dear hopes, that swell the mother's breast—
Her eyes down gazing o'er her clasped charge ;—
Yet gay as that twice happy father's kiss,
That well might glance aside, yet never miss,
Where the sweet mark emboss'd so sweet a targe—
Twice wretched he who hath been doubly blest!

III.

Like a loose blossom on a gusty night
He flitted from me--and has left behind

(As if to them his faith he ne'er did plight) Of either sex and answerable mind

Two playmates, twin-births of his foster-dame :-The one a steady lad (Esteem he hight)

And Kindness is the gentler sister's name.

Dim likeness now, though fair she be and good,
Of that bright boy who hath us all forsook ;-
But in his full-eyed aspect when she stood,
And while her face reflected every look,
And in reflection kindled-she became
So like him, that almost she seem'd the same!

IV.

Ah! he is gone, and yet will not depart !—
Is with me still, yet I from him exiled!
For still there lives within my secret heart
The magic image of the magic Child,
Which there he made up-grow by his strong art,
As in that crystal* orb-wise Merlin's feat,—
The wondrous "World of Glass," wherein inisled
All long'd for things their beings did repeat ;-
And there he left it, like a Sylph beguiled,
To live and yearn and languish incomplete!

V.

Can wit of man a heavier grief reveal?
Can sharper pang from hate or scorn arise ?—
Yes! one more sharp there is that deeper lies,
Which fond Esteem but mocks when he would
heal.

VOL. II.

*Faërie Queene, B. III. C. 2, s. 19.

T

Yet neither scorn nor hate did it devise,
But sad compassion and atoning zeal !

One pang more blighting-keen than hope betray'd!
And this it is my woeful hap to feel,

When, at her Brother's hest, the twin-born Maid
With face averted and unsteady eyes,
Her truant playmate's faded robe puts on;
And inly shrinking from her own disguise
Enacts the faery Boy that's lost and gone.
O worse than all ! O pang all pangs above.
Is Kindness counterfeiting absent Love!

KUBLA KHAN: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

[OF THE FRAGMENT OF KUBLA KHAN.

THE following Fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in "Purchas's Pilgrimage:" :” “Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace