My youth's chief aims. I ne'er supposed the loss
Of what few I retained, for no resource
Awaits me now behold the change of all.
I cannot chain my soul, it will not rest
In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere:
It has strange powers and feelings and desires,
Which I cannot account for nor explain,

But which I stifle not, being bound to trust
All feelings equally, to hear all sides:
Yet I cannot indulge them, and they live,
Referring to some state or life unknown.

My selfishness is satiated not,

It wears me like a flame; my hunger for
All pleasure, howsoe'er minute, is pain;
I envy how I envy him whose mind
Turns with its energies to some one end,
To elevate a sect or a pursuit

However mean! So, my still baffled hopes
Seek out abstractions; I would have but one
Delight on earth, so it were wholly mine,
One rapture all my soul could fill and this
Wild feeling places me in dream afar
In some wild country where the eye can see
No end to the far hills and dales bestrewn
With shining towers and dwellings: I grow mad
Well-nigh, to know not one abode but holds
Some pleasure, for my soul could grasp them all
But must remain with this vile form. I look
With hope to age at last, which quenching much,
May let me concentrate the sparks it spares.

This restlessness of passion meets in me
A craving after knowledge: the sole proof
Of a commanding will is in that power
Repressed; for I beheld it in its dawn,
That sleepless harpy with its budding wings,
And I considered whether I should yield
All hopes and fears, to live alone with it,
Finding a recompense in its wild eyes;
And when I found that I should perish so,
I bade its wild eyes close from me forever,
And I am left alone with my delights;
So, it lies in me a chained thing, still ready
To serve me if I loose its slightest bond:
I cannot but be proud of my bright slave.

And thus I know this earth is not my sphere,
For I cannot so narrow me but that

I still exceed it: in their elements

My love would pass my reason; but since here
Love must receive its objects from this earth
While reason will be chainless, the few truths
Caught from its wanderings have sufficed to quell
All love below; then what must be that love
Which, with the object it demands, would quell
Reason though it soared with the seraphim?
No, what I feel may pass all human love
Yet fall far short of what my love should be.
And yet I seem more warped in this than aught,
For here myself stands out more hideously:
I can forget myself in friendship, fame,
Or liberty, or love of mighty 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.
All my sad weaknesses, this wavering will,
This selfishness, this still decaying frame
But I must never grieve while I can pass
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 dark 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 face and 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

You doubt not, nor fear for, secure that God
Will come in thunder from the stars to save her.
Let it pass! I will call another change.

I will be gifted with a wondrous soul,
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 straight I fling age, sorrow, sickness off,
And I rise triumphing over my decay.

And thus it is that I supply the chasm
"Twixt what I am and all that I 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 nought remains!

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 I despair? my blood
Rose not at a slave's name proudlier than now,
And sympathy, obscured by sophistries!
Why have not I sought refuge in myself,
But for the woes I saw and could not stay?
And love! do I not love thee, my Pauline?
I cherish prejudice, lest I be left
Utterly loveless - witness this 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, I could do anything 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
Through all conjuncture, I have lived all life
When it is most alive, where strangest fate
New shapes it past surmise
the tales 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,
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-in the morning air

In the misty sun-warm water; or with flowers
And trees 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 inspired: come with me, Pauline!

Night, and one single ridge of narrow path
Between the sullen river and the woods
Waving and muttering, for the moonless night
Has shaped thern into images of life,
Like the upraising 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 golden spray
Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract

Amid the broken rocks!
With the wild hawks?
Dive we down safe!

Shall we stay here

No; ere the hot noon come,

See this our new retreat

Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs,
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 over-arch 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,
And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old gray stones lie making eddies there,
The wild-mice cross them dry-shod: deeper in!
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,

And through their roots long creeping plants stretch out
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 through a cleft-way, through the moss and stone,
It joins its parent-river with a shout.

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
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 rocks, which look o'er the far plains,

And envious climbing shrubs would mount to rest

And peer from their spread boughs; there they wave,

looking

At the muleteers who whistle as they go

To the merry chime of their morning bells, and all

The little smoking cots and fields and banks

And copses bright in the sun. My spirit wanders:
Hedge-rows for me still, living hedge-rows where
The bushes close and clasp above and keep
Thought in - I am concentrated I feel;
But my soul saddens when it looks beyond:

I cannot be immortal nor taste all.