'Silence!' cried the frowning master,
'Mind the helm, the breeze is fair:
Coward! cease to bode disaster:
Leave to men the captive's care.'
While he speaks, and fiercely tightens
In the full free breeze the sail,
From the deck wine bubbling lightens,
Winy fragrance fills the gale.

Gurgling in ambrosial lustre

Flows the purple-eddying wine:

O'er the yard-arms trail and cluster

Tendrils of the mantling vine:

Grapes, beneath the broad leaves springing,

Blushing as in vintage-hours,

Droop, while round the tall mast clinging
Ivy twines its buds and flowers,

Fast with graceful berries blackening :-
Garlands hang on every oar:

Then in fear the cordage slackening,

One and all, they cry, 'To shore!'
Bacchus changed his shape, and glaring
With a lion's eye-balls wide,

Roared the pirate-crew, despairing,

:

Plunged amid the foaming tide.

Through the azure depths they flitted
Dolphins by transforming fate :
But the god the pilot pitied,

Saved, and made him rich and great.

THE WAR-SONG OF DINAS VAWR.

[From The Misfortunes of Elphin.]

The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.

We made an expedition;

We met an host and quelled it;
We forced a strong position,
And killed the men who held it.

On Dyfed's richest valley,

Where herds of kine were browsing,
We made a mighty sally,

To furnish our carousing.

Fierce warriors rushed to meet us;
We met them, and o'erthrew them:
They struggled hard to beat us;
But we conquered them, and slew them.

As we drove our prize at leisure,

The king marched forth to catch us:

His rage surpassed all measure,

But his people could not match us.

He fled to his hall-pillars;

And, ere our force we led off,

Some sacked his house and cellars,
While others cut his head off.

We there, in strife bewildering,
Spilt blood enough to swim in:
We orphaned many children,
And widowed many women.
The eagles and the ravens
We glutted with our foemen:
The heroes and the cravens,
The spearmen and the bowmen.

We brought away from battle,

And much their land bemoaned them,

Two thousand head of cattle,

And the head of him who owned them:

Ednyfed, King of Dyfed,

His head was borne before us;

His wine and beasts supplied our feasts,

And his overthrow, our chorus.

THE MEN OF GOTHAM.

[From Nightmare Abbey.]

Seamen three! What men be ye?
Gotham's three wise men we be.
Whither in your bowl so free?

To rake the moon from out the sea.

The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine.

And our ballast is old wine;

And your ballast is old wine.

Who art thou, so fast adrift?
I am he they call Old Care.
Here on board we will thee lift.
No: I may not enter there.
Wherefore so? 'Tis Jove's decree,
In a bowl Care may not be ;

In a bowl Care may not be.

Fear ye not the waves that roll?

No: in charmed bowl we swim.

What the charm that floats the bowl?

Water may not pass the brim.

The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine.

And our ballast is old wine;

And your ballast is old wine.

[From Melincourt.]

THE FLOWER OF LOVE.

'Tis said the rose is Love's own flower,
Its blush so bright, its thorns so many;
And winter on its bloom has power,
But has not on its sweetness any.
For though young Love's ethereal rose
Will droop on Age's wintry bosom,
Yet still its faded leaves disclose
The fragrance of their earliest blossom.

But ah! the fragrance lingering there
Is like the sweets that mournful duty
Bestows with sadly-soothing care,
To deck the grave of bloom and beauty.
For when its leaves are shrunk and dry,
Its blush extinct, to kindle never,
That fragrance is but Memory's sigh,
That breathes of pleasures past for ever.

Why did not Love the amaranth choose,
That bears no thorns, and cannot perish?
Alas! no sweets its flowers diffuse,
And only sweets Love's life can cherish.
But be the rose and amaranth twined,
And Love, their mingled powers assuming,
Shall round his brows a chaplet bind,
For ever sweet, for ever blooming.

THE GRAVE OF LOVE.

I dug, beneath the cypress shade,
What well might seem an elfin's grave;
And every pledge in earth I laid,
That erst thy false affection gave.

I pressed them down the sod beneath;
I placed one mossy stone above;
And twined the rose's fading wreath
Around the sepulchre of love.

Frail as thy love, the flowers were dead,
Ere yet the evening sun was set:
But years shall see the cypress spread,
Immutable as my regret.

MR. CYPRESS'S SONG IN RIDICULE OF LORD BYRON.

[From Nightmare Abbey.]

There is a fever of the spirit,

The brand of Cain's unresting doom,

Which in the lone dark souls that bear it
Glows like the lamp in Tullia's tomb :

Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire

Burns, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart,

Till, one by one, hope, joy, desire,

Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart.

When hope, love, like itself, are only
Dust-spectral memories-dead and cold-
The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,
Like that undying lamp of old :

And by that drear illumination,

Till time its clay-built home has rent, Thought broods on feeling's desolation— The soul is its own monument.