Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
       Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
     Flash through her pure immortal frame,
       When she forsook the starry height
     To hang over Endymion’s sleep
     Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.

     Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
       How vain a thing is mortal love,
     Wandering in Heaven, far removed;
       But thou hast long had place to prove
     This truth—­to prove, and make thine own: 
     “Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.”

     Or, if not quite alone, yet they
       Which touch thee are unmating things—­
     Ocean and clouds and night and day;
       Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
     And life, and others’ joy and pain,
     And love, if love, of happier men.

     Of happier men—­for they, at least,
       Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
     In one, and were through faith released
       From isolation without end
     Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
     Alone than thou, their loneliness.

     Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
       With echoing straits between us thrown,
     Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
       We mortal millions live alone. 
     The islands feel the enclasping flow,
     And then their endless bounds they know.

     But when the moon their hollow lights,
       And they are swept by balms of spring,
     And in their glens, on starry nights,
       The nightingales divinely sing;
     And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
     Across the sounds and channels pour—­

     Oh! then a longing like despair
       Is to their farthest caverns sent;
     For surely once, they feel, we were
       Parts of a single continent! 
     Now round us spreads the watery plain—­
     Oh, might our marges meet again!

     Who ordered that their longing’s fire
       Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled? 
     Who renders vain their deep desire?—­
       A God, a God their severance ruled! 
     And bade betwixt their shores to be
     The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF ‘OBERMANN’ (1849)

     In front the awful Alpine track
       Crawls up its rocky stair;
     The autumn storm-winds drive the rack,
       Close o’er it, in the air.

     Behind are the abandoned baths
       Mute in their meadows lone;
     The leaves are on the valley-paths,
       The mists are on the Rhone—­

     The white mists rolling like a sea! 
       I hear the torrents roar. 
     —­Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee;
       I feel thee near once more.

     I turn thy leaves!  I feel their breath
       Once more upon me roll;
     That air of languor, cold, and death,
       Which brooded o’er thy soul.