In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wild world a spot,
The which I could not love the less,
So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

II.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,

And the mystic wind went by,
Murmuring in melody;

Then, ah, then, I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

III.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight;

A feeling not the jewelled mine

Could teach or bribe me to define,

Nor love-although the love were thine.

IV.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.

ROMANCE.

ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet

Hath been-a most familiar bird-
Taught me my alphabet to say,
To lisp my very earliest word,
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal condor years
So shake the very heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky;

And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings,
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away-forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

FAIRY-LAND.

DIM vales, and shadowy floods,
And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over;

Huge moons there wax and wane--
Again, again, again—

Every moment of the night,

For ever changing places;

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces,

About twelve by the moon-dial.

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down-still down-and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence;

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be―

O'er the strange woods, o'er the sea.