Poems Written in 1822

The Zucca

I.

UMMER was dead and Autumn

was expiring,

And infant Winter laughed upon

the land

All cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring More in this world than any understand,

Wept o'er the beauty, which, like sea retiring, Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand

Of my lorn heart, and o'er the grass and flowers Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.

II.

Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
The instability of all but weeping;

And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep

I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping. Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leap

ing

From unremembered dreams, shalt see

No death divide thy immortality.

I loved

III.

oh no, I mean not one of ye,

Or any earthly one, though ye are dear As human heart to human heart may be ;

I loved, I know not what - but this low

sphere

And all that it contains, contains not thee, Thou, whom seen nowhere, I feel every

where.

From heaven and earth, and all that in them are, Veiled art thou, like a

star.

IV.

By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,

Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden, Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,

When for a moment thou art not forbidden

To live within the life which thou bestowest; And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,

Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight,
Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

V.

In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,

In music and the sweet unconscious tone Of animals, and voices which are human,

Meant to express some feelings of their own; In the soft motions and rare smile of woman, In flowers and leaves, and in the grass freshshown,

Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost.

VI.

And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
A plant upon the river's margin lie,

Like one who loved beyond his Nature's law,
And in despair had cast him down to die;
Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the
thaw

Had blighted; like a heart which hatred's

eye

Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.

VII.

The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast.

VIII.

I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
It in a vase full of the lightest mould;