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      *****

      Look round thee now on Samarcand,

       Is she not queen of earth? her pride

       Above all cities? in her hand

       Their destinies? with all beside

       Of glory, which the world hath known?

       Stands she not proudly and alone?

       And who her sovereign? Timur, he

       Whom the astonish'd earth hath seen,

       With victory, on victory,

       Redoubling age! and more, I ween,

       The Zinghis' yet re-echoing fame.

       And now what has he? what! a name.

       The sound of revelry by night

       Comes o'er me, with the mingled voice

       Of many with a breast as light,

       As if 'twere not the dying hour

       Of one, in whom they did rejoice—

       As in a leader, haply—Power

       Its venom secretly imparts;

       Nothing have I with human hearts.

       XVI.

      When Fortune mark'd me for her own,

       And my proud hopes had reach'd a throne

       (It boots me not, good friar, to tell

       A tale the world but knows too well,

       How by what hidden deeds of might,

       I clamber'd to the tottering height,)

       I still was young; and well I ween

       My spirit what it e'er had been.

       My eyes were still on pomp and power,

       My wilder'd heart was far away

       In valleys of the wild Taglay,

       In mine own Ada's matted bower.

       I dwelt not long in Samarcand

       Ere, in a peasant's lowly guise,

       I sought my long-abandon'd land;

       By sunset did its mountains rise

       In dusky grandeur to my eyes:

       But as I wander'd on the way

       My heart sunk with the sun's ray.

       To him, who still would gaze upon

       The glory of the summer sun,

       There comes, when that sun will from him part,

       A sullen hopelessness of heart.

       That soul will hate the evening mist

       So often lovely, and will list

       To the sound of the coming darkness (known

       To those whose spirits hearken) as one

       Who in a dream of night would fly, But cannot, from a danger nigh. What though the moon—the silvery moon— Shine on his path, in her high noon; Her smile is chilly, and her beam In that time of dreariness will seem As the portrait of one after death; A likeness taken when the breath Of young life, and the fire o' the eye, Had lately been, but had pass'd by. 'Tis thus when the lovely summer sun Of our boyhood, his course hath run: For all we live to know—is known; And all we seek to keep—hath flown; With the noon-day beauty, which is all. Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall— The transient, passionate day-flower, Withering at the evening hour.

       XVII.

      I reach'd my home—my home no more—

       For all was flown that made it so—

       I pass'd from out its mossy door,

       In vacant idleness of woe.

       There met me on its threshold stone

       A mountain hunter, I had known

       In childhood, but he knew me not.

       Something he spoke of the old cot:

       It had seen better days, he said;

       There rose a fountain once, and there Full many a fair flower raised its head: But she who rear'd them was long dead, And in such follies had no part, What was there left me now? despair— A kingdom for a broken—heart.

      To ——

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      Sleep on, sleep on, another hour —

       I would not break so calm a sleep,

       To wake to sunshine and to show'r,

       To smile and weep.

      Sleep on, sleep on, like sculptured thing,

       Majestic, beautiful art thou;

       Sure seraph shields thee with his wing

       And fans thy brow —

      We would not deem thee child of earth,

       For, O, angelic, is thy form!

       But, that in heav'n thou had'st thy birth,

       Where comes no storm

      To mar the bright, the perfect flow'r,

       But all is beautiful and still —

       And golden sands proclaim the hour

       Which brings no ill.

      Sleep on, sleep on, some fairy dream

       Perchance is woven in thy sleep —

       But, O, thy spirit, calm, serene,

       Must wake to weep.

      Tamerlane

      To Isaac Lea

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      It was my choice or chance or curse

       To adopt the cause for better or worse

       And with my worldly goods & wit

       And soul & body worship it ----

      To Margaret

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Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt From the pure well of Beauty undefiled? So banish from true wisdom to prefer Such squalid wit to honourable rhyme? To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more? I will not write upon this argument To write is human -- not to write divine.

Milton Par. Lost Bk. I Somebody Cowper's Task, Book I Shakespeare do. Trolius & Cressida Pope Essay on Man

      To Miss Louise Olivia Hunter

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      Though I turn, I fly not —

       I cannot depart;

       I would try, but try not

       To release my heart.

       And my hopes are dying

       While, on dreams relying,

       I am spelled by art.

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