Ah, less—less bright
                         The stars of the night
                 Than the eyes of the radiant girl! And never a flake
                         That the vapour can make
                 With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
     Can vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl—
     Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless curl. Now Doubt—now Pain
                    Come never again,
            For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
                    And all day long
                    Shines, bright and strong,
            Astarté within the sky,
     While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye—
     While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye. 1845. A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
     Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now,
     Thus much let me avow—
     You are not wrong, who deem
     That my days have been a dream;
     Yet if hope has flown away
     In a night, or in a day,
     In a vision, or in none,
     Is it therefore the less _gone_? _All_ that we see or seem
     Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar
     Of a surf-tormented shore,
     And I hold within my hand
     Grains of the golden sand—
     How few! yet how they creep
     Through my fingers to the deep,
     While I weep—while I weep! O God! can I not grasp
     Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save
     _One_ from the pitiless wave? Is _all_ that we see or seem
     But a dream within a dream?. 1849




TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)


     Of all who hail thy presence as the morning—
     Of all to whom thine absence is the night—
     The blotting utterly from out high heaven
     The sacred sun—of all who, weeping, bless thee
     Hourly for hope—for life—ah! above all,
     For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
     In Truth—in Virtue—in Humanity—
     Of all who, on Despair’s unhallowed bed
     Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen
     At thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!”
      At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled
     In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes—
     Of all who owe thee most—whose gratitude
     Nearest resembles worship—oh, remember
     The truest—the most fervently devoted,
     And think that these weak lines are written by him—
     By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
     His spirit is communing with an angel’s. 1847. TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)


     Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
     In the mad pride of intellectuality,
     Maintained “the power of words”—denied that ever
     A thought arose within the human brain
     Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
     And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
     Two words—two foreign soft dissyllables—
     Italian tones, made only to be murmured
     By angels dreaming in the moonlit “dew
     That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,”—
     Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
     Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
     Richer, far wider, far diviner visions
     Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,
     (Who has “the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures”)
     Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken. The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand. With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,
     I can not write—I can not speak or think—
     Alas, I can not feel; for ’tis not feeling,
     This standing motionless upon the golden
     Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,
     Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
     And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
     Upon the left, and all the way along,
     Amid empurpled vapors, far away
     To where the prospect terminates—_thee only!_

      1848. THE CITY IN THE SEA. Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
     In a strange city lying alone
     Far down within the dim West,
     Wherethe good and the bad and the worst and the best
     Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers
     (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by lifting winds forgot,
     Resignedly beneath the sky
     The melancholy waters lie. No rays from the holy heaven come down
     On the long night-time of that town;
     But light from out the lurid sea
     Streams up the turrets silently—
     Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—
     Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
     Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—
     Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
     Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—
     Up many and many a marvellous shrine
     Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine
     The viol, the violet, and the vine. Resignedly beneath the sky
     The melancholy waters lie. So blend the turrets and shadows there
     That all seem pendulous in air,
     While from a proud tower in the town
     Death looks gigantically down. There open fanes and gaping graves
     Yawn level with the luminous waves;
     But not the riches there that lie
     In each idol’s diamond eye—
     Not the gaily-jewelled dead
     Tempt the waters from their bed;
     For no ripples curl, alas! Along that wilderness of glass—
     No swellings tell that winds may be
     Upon some far-off happier sea—
     No heavings hint that winds have been
     On seas less hideously serene. But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave—there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrown aside,
     In slightly sinking, the dull tide—
     As if their tops had feebly given
     A void within the filmy Heaven. The waves have now a redder glow—
     The hours are breathing faint and low—
     And when, amid no earthly moans,
     Down, down that town shall settle hence,
     Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
     Shall do it reverence. 1845. THE SLEEPER. At midnight in the month of June,
     I stand beneath the mystic moon. An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
     Exhales from out her golden rim,
     And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
     Upon the quiet mountain top. Steals drowsily and musically
     Into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave;
     The lily lolls upon the wave;
     Wrapping the fog about its breast,
     The ruin moulders into rest;
     Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
     A conscious slumber seems to take,
     And would not, for the world, awake. All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
     (Her casement open to the skies)
     Irene, with her Destinies! Oh, lady bright! can it be right—
     This window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
     Laughingly through the lattice drop—
     The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
     Flit through thy chamber in and out,
     And wave the curtain canopy
     So fitfully—so fearfully—
     Above the closed and fringèd lid
     ‘Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
     That o’er the floor and down the wall,
     Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall! Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? Why and what art thou dreaming here?