When reason's judgment vainly strove To blot thee from my memory;

But which might never, never be.
Oh! I appeal to that blest day
When passion's wildest ecstacy
Was coldness to the joys I knew,
When every sorrow sunk away.
Oh! I had never lived before,
But now those blisses are no more.
And now I cease to live again,

I do not blame thee, love; ah no!
The breast that feels this anguished woe
Throbs for thy happiness alone.

Two years of speechless bliss are gone,-
I thank thee, dearest, for the dream.

'Tis night

what faint and distant scream Comes on the wild and fitful blast? It moans for pleasures that are past, It moans for days that are gone by, Oh! lagging hours, how slow you fly! I see a dark and lengthened vale, The black view closes with the tomb; But darker is the lowering gloom That shades the intervening dale. In visioned slumber for awhile I seem again to share thy smile, I seem to hang upon thy tone.

Again you say, "confide in me, For I am thine, and thine alone,

And thine must ever, ever be." But oh! awakening still anew, Athwart my enanguished senses flew A fiercer, deadlier agony !

STANZA

FROM A TRANSLATION OF THE MARSEILLAISE HYMN

TREMBLE Kings despised of man!
Ye traitors to your Country
Tremble! Your parricidal plan

At length shall meet its destiny
We all are soldiers fit to fight
But if we sink in glory's night
Our mother Earth will give ye new
The brilliant pathway to pursue
Which leads to Death or Victory

BIGOTRY'S VICTIM

I

DARES the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind, The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair? When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind Repose trust in his footsteps of air?

No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair, The monster transfixes his prey,

On the sand flows his life-blood away;

Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,
Protracting the horrible harmony.

Stanza from a Translation of the Marseillaise Hymn || Stanza: "Tremble Kings!" Forman, Kings, Rossetti. Published by Forman, 1876, and dated, 1810.

Bigotry's Victim, Rossetti || published without title by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858, dated, 1809-10.

II

Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger en

croaches,

Dares fearless to perish defending her brood, Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches,

Thirsting -ay, thirsting for blood;

And demands, like mankind, his brother for food; Yet more lenient, more gentle than they; For hunger, not glory, the prey

Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead, Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer's

head.

III

Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains,

And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of

air,

Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains, Though a fiercer than tiger is there.

Though more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,

Though its shadow eclipses the day,

And the darkness of deepest dismay

Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around, And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.

IV

They came to the fountain to draw from its stream,

Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see; They bathed for a while in its silvery beam,

Then perished, and perished like me.

For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;
The most tenderly loved of my soul

Are slaves to his hated control.

He pursues me, he blasts me! "Tis in vain that I fly;

What remains, but to curse him, to curse him and die?

ON AN ICICLE THAT CLUNG TO THE GRASS OF A GRAVE

I

OH! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair, In which the warm current of love never freezes, As it rises unmingled with selfishness there, Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care, Might dissolve the dim ice-drop, might bid it arise, Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.

II

Or where the stern warrior, his country defending,

Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour, Or o'er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending, Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore Plants liberty's flag on the slave-peopled shore, With victory's cry, with the shout of the free, Let it fly, taintless spirit, to mingle with thee.

On an Icicle that clung to the Grass of a Grave. Esdaile MS. || The Tear, Rossetti. Published without title by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858, dated 1809-10.

III

For I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning

Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain, When to others the wished-for arrival of morning Brings relief to long visions of soul-racking

pain;

But regret is an insult to grieve is in vain: And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there?

IV

But still 'twas some spirit of kindness descending
To share in the load of mortality's woe,
Who over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending
Bade sympathy's tenderest tear-drop to flow.
Not for thee soft compassion celestials did know,
But if angels can weep, sure man may repine,
May weep in mute grief o'er thy low-laid shrine.

V

And did I then say, for the altar of glory,

That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I'd en

twine,

Though with millions of blood-reeking victims

'twas gory,

Though the tears of the widow polluted its shrine,

Though around it the orphans, the fatherless pine?

O Fame, all thy glories I'd yield for a tear
To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere.