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Mine eyes shall see-have ever seen

The brightest glance of pride and power

I feet have been:

V

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offered with the pain

Ev'n then I felt-that brightest hour

I would not live again:

VI

For on its wing was dark alloy

And as it fluttered-fell

An essence-powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

1827.

IMITATION

A dark unfathom'd tide

Of interminable pride—

A mystery, and a dream,

Should my early life seem;

I say that dream was fraught

With a wild, and waking thought

Of beings that have been,

Which my spirit hath not seen,

Had I let them pass me by,

With a dreaming eye!

Let none of earth inherit

That vision on my spirit;

Those thoughts I would control

As a spell upon his soul:

For that bright hope at last

And that light time have past,

And my worldly rest hath gone

With a sigh as it pass'd on

I care not tho' it perish

With a thought I then did cherish.

1827.

HYMN TO ARISTOGEITON AND HARMODIUS

Translation from the Greek

I

WREATHED in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal

Like those champions devoted and brave,

When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,

And to Athens deliverance gave.

II

Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam

In the joy breathing isles of the blest;

Where the mighty of old have their home

Where Achilles and Diomed rest

III

In fresh myrtle my blade I'll entwine,

Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,

When he made at the tutelar shrine

A libation of Tyranny's blood.

IV

Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!

Ye avengers of Liberty's wrongs!

Endless ages shall cherish your fame,

Embalmed in their echoing songs!

1827.

DREAMS

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awak'ning, till the beam

Of an Eternity should bring the morrow:

Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

'Twere better than the dull reality

Of waking life to him whose heart shall be,

And hath been ever, on the chilly earth,

A chaos of deep passion from his birth!

But should it be—that dream eternally

Continuing—as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,

'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven!

For I have revell'd, when the sun was bright

In the summer sky; in dreamy fields of light,

And left unheedingly my very heart

In climes of mine imagining—apart

From mine own home, with beings that have been

Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

'Twas once & only once & the wild hour

From my rememberance shall not pass—some power

Or spell had bound me—'twas the chilly wind

Came o'er me in the night & left behind

Its image on my spirit, or the moon

Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

Too coldly—or the stars—howe'er it was

That dream was as that night wind—let it pass.

I have been happy—tho' but in a dream

I have been happy—& I love the theme—

Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life—

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye more lovely things

Of Paradise & Love—& all our own!

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

{From an earlier MS. Than in the book—ED.}

IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE

OR

STANZAS

How often we forget all time, when lone

Admiring Nature's universal throne;

Her woods—her wilds—her mountains-the intense

Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

Byron

I

IN youth I have known one with whom the Earth

In secret communing held-as he with it,

In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:

Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit

From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

A passionate light such for his spirit was fit

And yet that spirit knew-not in the hour

Of its own fervor-what had o'er it power.

II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

To a fever* by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,

But I will half believe that wild light fraught

With more of sovereignty than ancient lore

Hath ever told-or is it of a thought

The unembodied essence, and no more

That with a quickening spell doth o'er us