Liberty, nay, in love of mightier souls ;
But I begin to know what thing hate is
To sicken and to quiver and grow white
And I myself have furnished its first prey.
Hate of the weak and ever-wavering will,
The selfishness, the still-decaying frame
But I must never grieve whom wing can waft
Far from such thoughts -as now. Andromeda !
And she is with me: years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her not so beautiful
With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair
Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze,
And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,
Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair,
As she awaits the snake on the wet beach
By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking
At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing

I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god
To save will come in thunder from the stars.
Let it pass! Soul requires another change.
I will be gifted with a wondrous mind,
Yet sunk by error to men's sympathy,
And in the wane of life, yet only so

As to call up their fears; and there shall come
A time requiring youth's best energies;
And lo, I fling age, sorrow, sickness off,
And rise triumphant, triumph through decay.

650

660

670

And thus it is that I supply the chasm
'Twixt what I am and all I fain would be:
But then to know nothing, to hope for nothing,
To seize on life's dull joys from a strange fear
Lest, losing them, all 's lost and naught remains! 680
There's some vile juggle with my reason here;

I feel I but explain to my own loss
These impulses they live no less the same.
Liberty! what though Ï despair? my blood
Rose never at a slave's name proud as now.
Oh sympathies, obscured by sophistries!
Why else have I sought refuge in myself,
But from the woes I saw and could not stay?
Love is not this to love thee, my Pauline?
I cherish prejudice, lest I be left

Utterly loveless? witness my belief

In poets, though sad change has come there too;
No more I leave myself to follow them
Unconsciously I measure me by them
Let me forget it: and I cherish most
My love of England

how her name, a word

Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!

Pauline, could I but break the spell! Not now
All's fever but when calm shall come again,
I am prepared: I have made life my own.

I would not be content with all the change
One frame should feel, but I have gone in thought
Thro' all conjuncture, I have lived all life
When it is most alive, where strangest fate
New-shapes it past surmise -

the throes of men

Bit by some curse or in the grasps of doom
Half-visible and still-increasing round,

Or crowning their wide being's general aim.

These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend,
As one breathing his weakness to the ear
Of pitying angel - dear as a winter flower,
A slight flower growing alone, and offering
Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun,

690

700

710

Yet joyous and confiding like the triumph
Of a child: and why am I not worthy thee?
I can live all the life of plants, and gaze
Drowsily on the bees that flit and play,

Or bare my breast for sunbeams which will kill,
Or open in the night of sounds, to look
For the dim stars; I can mount with the bird
Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves

And twisted boughs of some tall mountain tree,
Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens ;
Or like a fish breathe deep the morning air
In the misty sun-warm water; or with flower
And tree can smile in light at the sinking sun
Just as the storm comes, as a girl would look
On a departing lover most serene.

Pauline, come with me, see how I could build
A home for us, out of the world, in thought!
I am uplifted fly with me, Pauline!

720

730

Night, and one single ridge of narrow path
Between the sullen river and the woods
Waving and muttering, for the moonless night
Has shaped them into images of life,
Like the uprising of the giant-ghosts,
Looking on earth to know how their sons fare:
Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell
Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting
Of thy soft breasts. No, we will pass to morning —
Morning, the rocks and valleys and old woods.
How the sun brightens in the mist, and here,
Half in the air, like creatures of the place,
Trusting the element, living on high boughs.
That swing in the wind - look at the silver
Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract

spray

739

Amid the broken rocks!

Shall we stay here

With the wild hawks? No, ere the hot noon come, Dive we down- - safe! See this our new retreat

Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, 750

Dark, tangled, old and green, still sloping down
To a small pool whose waters lie asleep
Amid the trailing boughs turned water-plants:
And tall trees overarch to keep us in,
Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts,
And in the dreamy water one small group
Of two or three strange trees are got together
Wondering at all around, as strange beasts herd
Together far from their own land: all wildness,
No turf nor moss, for boughs and plants pave all, 760
And tongues of bank go shelving in the lymph,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old gray stones lie making eddies there,
The wild-mice cross them dry-shod.
Shut thy soft eyes now look-
still deeper in!
This is the very heart of the woods all round
Mountain-like heaped above us; yet even here
One pond of water gleams; far off the river
Sweeps like a sea, barred out from land; but one —
One thin clear sheet has overleaped and wound
Into this silent depth, which gained, it lies
Still, as but let by sufferance; the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl,

Deeper in !

770

And through their roots long creeping plants out-stretch
Their twined hair, steeped and sparkling; farther on,
Tall rushes and thick flag-knots have combined
To narrow it; so, at length, a silver thread,
It winds, all noiselessly through the deep wood
Till thro' a cleft-way, thro' the moss and stone,
It joins its parent-river with a shout.

780

Up for the glowing day, leave the old woods!
See, they part like a ruined arch: the sky!
Nothing but sky appears, so close the roots
And grass of the hill-top level with the air
Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden
With light, like a dead whale that white birds pick,
Floating away in the sun in some north sea.
Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air,
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us,
Where small birds reel and winds take their delight!
Water is beautiful, but not like air :

See, where the solid azure waters lie

789

Made as of thickened air, and down below,
The fern-ranks like a forest spread themselves
As though each pore could feel the element;
Where the quick glancing serpent winds his way,
Float with me there, Pauline! — but not like air.
Down the hill! Stop- a clump of trees, see, set
On a heap of rock, which look o'er the far plain :
So, envious climbing shrubs would mount to rest 800
And peer from their spread boughs; wide they wave,
looking

At the muleteers who whistle on their way,
To the merry chime of morning bells, past all
The little smoking cots, mid fields and banks
And copses bright in the sun.

Hedgerows for me

My spirit wanders :

those living hedgerows where

The bushes close and clasp above and keep
Thought in I am concentrated

I feel;

810

But my soul saddens when it looks beyond:

I cannot be immortal, taste all joy.

O God, where do they tend these struggling aims? What would I have? What is this "sleep" which seems