THE LAST SONG.

Think of me--still so young,

Silent, tho' fond, who cast my life away,
Daring to disobey

The passionate spirit that around me clung,

Farewell again! and yet,

Must it indeed be so, and on this shore

Shall thou and I no more

Together see the sun of summer set?

For me, my days are done,

No more shall I in vintage-time prepare
Chaplets to bind my hair,

As I was wont; oh! 'twas for you alone.

But on my bier, I'll lay

Me down in frozen beauty, pale and wan
Martyr of love to man,

And like a broken flower, gently decay.

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Barry Cornwall.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;

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That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other

groan;

Where palsy shakes a few sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs ;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards :

Already with thee: tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

K

130

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath ;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstacy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

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Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for
home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn:

The same that oft-times hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades,
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music :-do I wake or sleep?

Keats.