That makes the barren branches loud;

And but for fear it is not so,

The wild unrest that lives in woe

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher,

And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

XVI.

HAT words are these have fall'n from

me?

Can calm despair and wild unrest

Be tenants of a single breast,

Or sorrow such a changeling be?

Or doth she only seem to take

The touch of change in calm or storm;

But knows no more of transient form In her deep self, than some dead lake

That holds the shadow of a lark

Hung in the shadow of a heaven?

Or has the shock, so harshly given, Confused me like the unhappy bark

That strikes by night a craggy shelf,

And staggers blindly ere she sink? And stunn'd me from my power to think And all my knowledge of myself;

And made me that delirious man

Whose fancy fuses old and new, And flashes into false and true, And mingles all without a plan?

XVII.

HOU comest, much wept for: such a

breeze

Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer

Was as the whisper of an air To breathe thee over lonely seas.

For I in spirit saw thee move

Thro' circles of the bounding sky,

Week after week: the days go by:

Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam,
My blessing, like a line of light,

Is on the waters day and night,

And like a beacon guards thee home.

So may whatever tempest mars

Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;

And balmy drops in summer dark

Slide from the bosom of the stars.

So kind an office hath been done,

Such precious relics brought by thee;

The dust of him I shall not see

Till all my widow'd race be run.