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WORLD! O Life! O Time!

On whose last steps I climb,

Trembling at that where I had stood before, When will return the glory of your prime?

No more-oh, never more!

144

THE POPLAR FIELD.

Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight:

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight

No more-oh, never more!

SHELLEY.

THE POPLAR FIELD.

THE poplars are felled; farewell to the shade,
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer, nor sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

The blackbird has fled to another retreat,

Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat;
And the scene where his melody charmed me before,
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head,

Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

STANZAS.

"Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,

To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;

Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,

Have a being less durable even than he.

Cowrer.

STANZAS.

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright;
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent light;

The breath of the moist air is light

Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight

The winds, the birds, the ocean-floods,

The city's voice itself is soft like solitude's.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor,
With green and purple sea-weeds strewn ;
I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown;

I sit upon the sands alone;

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within, nor calm around;

145

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Nor that Content surpassing wealth

The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned;

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure ;-
Others I see whom these surround-

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;

To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care,
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death, like sleep, might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

SHELLEY.

VERSES.

'NTHINKING, idle, wild, and young,

I laughed, and talked, and danced, and sung;
And, proud of health, of freedom vain,
Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain;

Concluding, in those hours of glee,

That all the world was made for me!

But when the days of trial came,

When sickness shook this trembling frame,

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