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 can'st have

none;

Thy being's being is a contradiction.

SEPARATION.*

A SWORDED man whose trade is blood,
In grief, in anger, and in fear,
Thro' jungle, swamp, and torrent flood,
I seek the wealth you hold so dear!

The dazzling charm of outward form,

The power of gold, the pride of birth,
Have taken Woman's heart by storm-
Usurp'd the place of inward worth.

* See Note.

1816.

Is not truc Love of higher price
Than outward Form, tho' fair to see,
Wealth's glittering fairy-dome of ice,
Or echo of proud ancestry?—

O! Asra, Asra! couldst thou see
Into the bottom of my heart,
There's such a mine of Love for thee,
As almost might supply desert!

(This separation is, alas!

Too great a punishment to bear; O! take my life, or let me pass

That life, that happy life, with her!)

The perils, erst with steadfast eye
Encounter'd, now I shrink to see-
Oh! I have heart enough to die-
Not half enough to part from Thee!

1814

ON TAKING LEAVE OF

1817.*

To know, to esteem, to love-and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
O for some dear abiding-place of Love,
O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove,
Might brood with warming wings!-O fair as kind,
Were but one sisterhood with you combined,
(Your very image they in shape and mind,)
Far rather would I sit in solitude,

The forms of memory all my mental food,
And dream of you, sweet sisters, (ah, not mine!)
And only dream of you (ah, dream and pine!)
Than have the presence, and partake the pride,
And shine in the eye of all the world beside !

* See Note.

POEMS WRITTEN IN LATER LIFE.

Ἔρως ἀεὶ λάληδρος έταιρος.

In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal;
But in far more th' estranged heart lets know

The absence of the love, which yet it fain would show.

To be a Prodigal's favourite-then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!

O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not.
WORDSWORTH, The Small Celandine.