With weak indulgence
Did the just Goddess
Lengthen their happiness,
She lengthen’d also
Distress elsewhere. 60

The hour, whose happy
Unalloy’d moments
I would eternalise,
Ten thousand mourners
Well pleased see end. 65

The bleak, stern hour,
Whose severe moments
I would annihilate,
Is pass’d by others
In warmth, light, joy. 70

Time, so complain’d of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm’d hours. 75

A DREAM

Was it a dream?  We sail’d, I thought we sail’d,
Martin and I, down the green Alpine stream,
Border’d, each bank, with pines; the morning sun,
On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,
On the red pinings of their forest-floor, 5
Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines
The mountain-skirts, with all their sylvan change
Of bright-leaf’d chestnuts and moss’d walnut-trees
And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began. 
Swiss chalets glitter’d on the dewy slopes, 10
And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came
Notes of wild pastoral music—­over all
Ranged, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow. 
Upon the mossy rocks at the stream’s edge,
Back’d by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood, 15
Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant’s leaves
Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof
Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within,
Under the eaves, peer’d rows of Indian corn. 
We shot beneath the cottage with the stream. 20
On the brown, rude-carved balcony, two forms
Came forth—­Olivia’s, Marguerite! and thine. 
Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast;
Straw hats bedeck’d their heads, with ribbons blue,
Which danced, and on their shoulders, fluttering, play’d. 25
They saw us, they conferred; their bosoms heaved,
And more than mortal impulse fill’d their eyes. 
Their lips moved; their white arms, waved eagerly,
Flash’d once, like falling streams; we rose, we gazed. 
One moment, on the rapid’s top, our boat 30
Hung poised—­and then the darting river of Life
(Such now, methought, it was), the river of Life,
Loud thundering, bore us by; swift, swift it foam’d,
Black under cliffs it raced, round headlands shone. 
Soon the plank’d cottage by the sun-warm’d pines 35
Faded—­the moss—­the rocks; us burning plains,
Bristled with cities, us the sea received.

LINES deg.

WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS