IV.  Ye deliverers of Athens from shame! 
Ye avengers of Liberty’s wrongs! 
Endless ages shall cherish your fame,
Embalmed in their echoing songs!

1827

* * * * *

DREAMS.

  Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! 
  My spirit not awakening, till the beam
  Of an Eternity should bring the morrow. 
  Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
  ’Twere better than the cold reality
  Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
  And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
  A chaos of deep passion, from his birth. 
  But should it be—­that dream eternally
  Continuing—­as dreams have been to me
  In my young boyhood—­should it thus be given,
  ’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven. 
  For I have revelled when the sun was bright
  I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light
  And loveliness,—­have left my very heart
  Inclines of my imaginary apart [1]
  From mine own home, with beings that have been
  Of mine own thought—­what more could I have seen? 
  ’Twas once—­and only once—­and the wild hour
  From my remembrance shall not pass—­some power
  Or spell had bound me—­’twas the chilly wind
  Came o’er me in the night, and left behind
  Its image on my spirit—­or the moon
  Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
  Too coldly—­or the stars—­howe’er it was
  That dream was that that night-wind—­let it pass.
  I have been happy, though in a dream. 
  I have been happy—­and I love the theme: 
  Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life
  As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
  Of semblance with reality which brings
  To the delirious eye, more lovely things
  Of Paradise and Love—­and all my own!—­
  Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

[Footnote 1:  In climes of mine imagining apart?—­Ed.]

* * * * *

“IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE.”

How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature’s universal throne; Her woods—­her wilds—­her mountains—­the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

I. In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
            In secret communing held—­as he with it,
          In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: 
            Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
          From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
            A passionate light such for his spirit was fit—­
          And yet that spirit knew—­not in the hour
            Of its own fervor—­what had o’er it power.