Form, float, and die in all their phantom joy. ANOTHER SUNSET. But lo! again the magic sunset woos: The heavens are flow'ring with a rosy mass Of splendor, richly hued; and, floating on, It deepens round the dying sun, who glares With fierce redundancy awhile, then sinks Away, like glory from Ambition's eye. Behind him-many a cloud-idolater Will say,-what rocks, and hills, and waves of light! When the rash boy-god charioted the skies, AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE. Here alone, With Summer hymning through her haunted vales, 'Tis beauty, bloom, and brightness all! How rich The wooing luxury of floral meads, Reposing in the noon; where scented winds Tall mansions, shadow'd through patrician trees, LONDON. Myriads of domes, and temples huge, or high, Myriads of streets, whose river-windings flow But, Mammon! thou almighty friend of Hell, And land, do bow them to the basest dust A visage wears, and through the trait'rous blood The spirit works, like venom from the soul! What rush and roar unceasing! and how strange I see. A chaos of unnumber'd hearts,- And making Fate, at every pulse, to feel,— ANOTHER LANDSCAPE. Here all that can soft worship claim, or tone The sweet sobriety of tender thought, Is thine: the sky of blue intensity, Or charm'd by sunshine into picture-clouds, That make bright landscapes when they blush abroad,— The dingle grey, and wooded copse, with hut And hamlet, nestling in the bosky vale, And spires brown peeping o'er the ancient elms, And steepled cities, faint and far away, With all that bird and meadow, brook and gale A THIRD LANDSCAPE. Dilated, as with gladness, glows the blue Luxuriant spread, with ripples twinkling-gay As insect-wings that flutter in the sun,— Calm Ocean! A SEA-SHORE SCENE. Some musing wand'rer by the shore I see, Weaving his island-fancies.-Round him, rock And cliff, whose grey trees mutter to the wind, And streams down rushing with a torrent ire: The sky seems craggy, with her cloud-piles hung, Deep-mass'd, as though embodied thunder lay And darken'd in a dream of havoc there!Before him, Ocean, yelling in the blast, Wild as the death-wail of a drowning host: The surges,―be they tempests as they roll, Lashing their fury into living foam, Yon war-ship shall outbrave them all!-her sails Resent the winds, and their remorseless howl; And when she ventures the abyss of waves, Remounts, expands her wings, and then-away! Proud as an eagle dashing through the clouds. A CHURCH-YARD. How meekly piled, how venerably graced This hamlet fane! by mellowing age imbrown'd, And freckled like a rock of sea-worn hue. No marble tombs of agonizing pomp Are here; but turf-graves of unfading green, Where loved, yet lowly, generations sleep: And o'er them many a Sabbath sigh is heaved From hearts that live on sadness from the tomb. And such is thine, lone muser! by yon grave Now ling'ring, with a soul-expressive eye Of sorrow. Corn-fields glowing brown, and bright With promise, sumptuous in the noon-glare seen; The meadows, speckled with a homeward tribe Of village matrons, sons, and holy sires,The hymning birds, all music as they soar, And those twin brooks, so beautifully glad, That whisper happy secrets to the wind,- In green humility :-can Life, the dead The spirit of her thought? True, Nature wears Her sprightly grass-flowers wave: the random breeze To glory, spring from out a minute's gloom! In the following I have ventured to mark with italics the expressions which appear to me new, picturesque, true, or beautiful, in A STORM. But lo! the heavens are ominously gloom'd, Appear'd, while lovingly the azure lay Between them, softer than the lid of sleep.— But now, all pregnant with portentous ire They threaten, muffling up the pomp of night.— A wing-like flutter in the tim'rous boughs, |