must be hush’d;When I do speak, I’ll think upon this hour,
Because I feel my forehead hot and flush’d,
Even at the simplest vassal of thy power, -
A lock of thy bright hair, —
Sudden it came,
And I was startled, when I caught thy name
Coupled so unaware;
Yet, at the moment, temperate was my blood.
I thought I had beheld it from the flood.
Addressed to Haydon
Highmindedness, a jealousy for good,
A loving-kindness for the great man’s fame,
Dwells here and there with people of no name,
In noisome alley, and in pathless wood:
And where we think the truth least understood,
Oft may be found a “singleness of aim,”
That ought to frighten into hooded shame
A money mong’ring, pitiable brood.
How glorious this affection for the cause
Of stedfast genius, toiling gallantly!
What when a stout unbending champion awes
Envy, and Malice to their native sty?
Unnumber’d souls breathe out a still applause,
Proud to behold him in his country’s eye.
On Death
I
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s to die.
II
How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.
Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds
Dear Reynolds! as last night I lay in bed,
There came before my eyes that wonted thread
Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances,
That every other minute vex and please:
Things all disjointed come from north and south, -
Two Witch’s eyes above a Cherub’s mouth,
Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon,
And Alexander with his nightcap on;
Old Socrates a-tying his cravat,
And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth’s cat; And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so,
Making the best of s way towards Soho.
Few are there who escape these visitings, -
Perhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings,
And thro’ whose curtains peeps no hellish nose,
No wild-boar tushes,and no mermaid’s toes;
But flowers bursting out with lusty pride,
And young Aeolian harps personified;
Some Titian colours touch’d into real life, -
The sacrifice goes on; the pontiff knife Gleams in the sun, the milk-white heifer lows,
The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows:
A white sail shows above the green-head cliff,
Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff;
The mariners join hymn with those on land.
You know the Enchanted Castle, - it doth stand
Upon a rock, on the border of a lake,
Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake
From some old magic-like Urganda’s Sword.”
O Phoebus! that I had thy sacred word To show this castle, in fair dreaming wise,
Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!
You know it well enough, where it doth seem
A mossy place, a Merlin’s Hall, a dream;
You know the clear lake, and the little isles,
The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills.
All which elsewhere are but half animate;
There do they look alive to love and hate,
To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound
Above some giant, pulsing underground.
Part of the Building was a chosen See,
Built by a banish’d Santon of Chaldee;
The other part, two thousand years from him.
Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;
Then there’s a little wing, far from the sun,
Built by a Lapland witch tum’d maudlin nun:
And many other juts of aged stone
Founded with many a mason-devil’s groan.
The doors all look as if they op’d themselves,
The windows
