That she might deem it nought beside The moment's converse; in her eyes I read, perhaps too carelessly

A mingled feeling with my ownThe flush on her bright cheek, to me Seem'd to become a queenly throne Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapp'd myself in grandeur then
And donn'd a visionary crown-
Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me→

But that, among the rabble--men,

Lion ambition is chain'd down-
And crouches to a keeper's hand—
Not so in deserts where the grand-
The wild-the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand!Is she not queen of Earth? her pride Above all cities? in her hand

Their destinies ? in all beside Of glory which the world hath known Stands she not nobly and alone? Falling-her veriest stepping-stone Shall form the pedestal of a throneAnd who her sovereign? Timour-he Whom the astonished people saw Striding o'er enpires haughtily A diadem'd outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-wither'd plain,

And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth-
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly-
And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye.
'Twas sunset: when the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev'ning mist

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits harken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly
But cannot from a danger nigh.

What tho' the moon-the white moor
Shed all the splendor of her noon,
Her smile is chilly-and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.

TAMERLANE.

And boyhood is a summer sun

Whose waning is the dreariest one-
For all we live to know is known
And all we seek to keep hath flown-
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty-which is all.'

I reach'd my home-my home no more—
For all had flown who made it so.
I pass'd from out its mossy door,

And, tho' my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known-
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
An humbler heart-a deeper wo.

No mote may shun-no tiniest fly-
The light'ning of his eagle eye-
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love's very hair?

ΤΟ

THE bowers whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds,

Are lips and all thy melody.

Of lip-begotten words

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined

Then desolately fall,

O God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall—

Thy heart-thy heart!-I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day

Of the truth that gold can never buy---
Of the baubles that it may.

A DREAM.

IN visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed— But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream-that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,

So trembled from afar

What could there be more purely bright

In Truth's day-star?