MODERN BRITISH POETS.
71
| O’er which clouds are bright’ning, |
| Thou dost float and run |
| Like an unbodied joy, whose race is just begun. |
| The pale purple even |
| Melts around thy flicht; |
| Like a star of heaven, |
| In the broad daylight, |
| Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. |
| Keen as are the arrows |
| Of that silver sphere, |
| Whose intense lamp narrows |
| In the white dawn clear, |
| Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. |
| All the earth and air |
| With thy voice is loud, |
| As, when night is bare, |
| From one lonely cloud |
| The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. |
| What thou art we know not; |
| What is most like thee? |
| From rainbow clouds there flow not |
| Drops so bright to see, |
| As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. |
| Like a poet hidden |
| In the light of thought, |
| Singing hymns unbidden, |
| Till the world is wrought |
| To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. |
| Like a high-born maiden |
| In a palace tower, |
| Soothing her love-laden |
| Soul in secret hour, |
| With music sweet as love which overflows her bower. |
| Like a glow-worm golden |
| In a dell of dew |
