What tho' that light, thro' storm and night
So trembled from afar,—

What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day star?

THE LAKE.-TO

IN spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less,-
So lovely was the loveliness

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

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And 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.

THAT TOWERED AROUND.

SONG.

I SAW thee on the bridal day,

When a burning blush came o'er thee, Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame,—
As such it well may pass,-

Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas!

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush would come o'er thee, Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

TO HELEN.

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

ALONE.

FROM childhood's hour I have not been
As others were,-I have not seen
As others saw,-I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then-in my childhood--in the dawn
Of a most stormy life was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold,—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by,-
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.