Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
   With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
   Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
   Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring. 
   This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
   To waft me from distraction; once I loved
   Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring
   Sounds sweet as if a sister’s voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved.

LXXXVI.

   It is the hush of night, and all between
   Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
   Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen. 
   Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
   Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
   There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
   Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
   Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;

LXXXVII.

   He is an evening reveller, who makes
   His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
   At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
   Starts into voice a moment, then is still. 
   There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
   But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
   All silently their tears of love instil,
   Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature’s breast the spirit of her hues.

LXXXVIII.

   Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,
   If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
   Of men and empires,—­’tis to be forgiven,
   That in our aspirations to be great,
   Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,
   And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
   A beauty and a mystery, and create
   In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

LXXXIX.

   All heaven and earth are still—­though not in sleep,
   But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
   And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:  —
   All heaven and earth are still:  from the high host
   Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
   All is concentered in a life intense,
   Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
   But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

XC.

   Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
   In solitude, where we are least alone;
   A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
   And purifies from self:  it is a tone,
   The soul and source of music, which makes known
   Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,
   Like to the fabled Cytherea’s zone,
   Binding all things with beauty;—­’twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.