How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?

Placidly fading, and sinking and shading
At last to that shadow, the latest desert;

Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,

The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
All--all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;

The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;

No last loving token of wedded love broken,
No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;

Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,
Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS
Take thy lute and sing

By the ruined castle walls,
Where the torrent-foam falls,

And long weeds wave:
Take thy lute and sing,

O'er the grey ancestral grave!
Daughter of a King,

Tune thy string.
Sing of happy hours,

In the roar of rushing time;
Till all the echoes chime

To the days gone by;
Sing of passing hours

To the ever-present sky; -
Weep--and let the showers

Wake thy flowers.
Sing of glories gone:-

No more the blazoned fold
From the banner is unrolled;

The gold sun is set.
Sing his glory gone,

For thy voice may charm him yet;
Daughter of the dawn,

He is gone!
Pour forth all thy grief!

Passionately sweep the chords,
Wed them quivering to thy words;

Wild words of wail!
Shed thy withered grief -

But hold not Autumn to thy bale;
The eddy of the leaf

Must be brief!
Sing up to the night:

Hard it is for streaming tears
To read the calmness of the spheres;

Coldly they shine;
Sing up to their light;

They have views thou may'st divine -
Gain prophetic sight

From their light!
On the windy hills

Lo, the little harebell leans
On the spire-grass that it queens,

With bonnet blue;
Trusting love instils

Love and subject reverence true;
Learn what love instils

On the hills!
By the bare wayside

Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks,
Softly touch'd with pale green streaks,

Soon, soon, to die;
On the clothed hedgeside

Bands of rosy beauties vie,
In their prophesied

Summer pride.
From the snowdrop learn;

Not in her pale life lives she,
But in her blushing prophecy.

Thus be thy hopes,
Living but to yearn

Upwards to the hidden scopes; -
Even within the urn

Let them burn!
Heroes of thy race -

Warriors with golden crowns,
Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns

Stare thee to stone;
Matrons of thy race

Pass before thee making moan;
Full of solemn grace

Is their pace.
Piteous their despair!

Piteous their looks forlorn!
Terrible their ghostly scorn!

Still hold thou fast; -
Heed not their despair! -

Thou art thy future, not thy past;
Let them glance and glare

Thro' the air.
Thou the ruin's bud,

Be not that moist rich-smelling weed
With its arras-sembled brede,

And ruin-haunting stalk;
Thou the ruin's bud,

Be still the rose that lights the walk,
Mix thy fragrant blood

With the flood!
THE RAPE OF AURORA

Never, O never,
Since dewy sweet Flora

Was ravished by Zephyr,
Was such a thing heard

In the valleys so hollow!
Till rosy Aurora,

Uprising as ever,
Bright Phosphor to follow,

Pale Phoebe to sever,
Was caught like a bird

To the breast of Apollo!
Wildly she flutters,

And flushes all over
With passionate mutters

Of shame to the hush
Of his amorous whispers:

But O such a lover
Must win when he utters,

Thro' rosy red lispers,
The pains that discover

The wishes that gush
From the torches of Hesperus.

One finger just touching
The Orient chamber,

Unflooded the gushing
Of light that illumed

All her lustrous unveiling.
On clouds of glow amber,

Her limbs richly blushing,
She lay sweetly wailing,

In odours that gloomed
On the God as he bloomed

O'er her loveliness paling.
Great Pan in his covert

Beheld the rare glistening,
The cry of the love-hurt,

The sigh and the kiss
Of the latest close mingling;

But love, thought he, listening,
Will not do a dove hurt,

I know,--and a tingling,
Latent with bliss,

Prickt thro' him, I wis,
For the Nymph he was singling.

SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND
The silence of preluded song -

AEolian silence charms the woods;
Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings

Are waiting for the master's touch
To sweep them into storms of joy,

Stands mute and whispers not; the birds
Brood dumb in their foreboding nests,

Save here and there a chirp or tweet,
That utters fear or anxious love,

Or when the ouzel sends a swift
Half warble, shrinking back again

His golden bill, or when aloud
The storm-cock warns the dusking hills

And villages and valleys round:
For lo, beneath those ragged clouds

That skirt the opening west, a stream
Of yellow light and windy flame

Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky
Begins to gloom, and o'er the ground

A moan of coming blasts creeps low
And rustles in the crisping grass;

Till suddenly with mighty arms
Outspread, that reach the horizon round,

The great South-West drives o'er the earth,
And loosens all his roaring robes

Behind him, over heath and moor.
He comes upon the neck of night,

Like one that leaps a fiery steed
Whose keen black haunches quivering shine

With eagerness and haste, that needs
No spur to make the dark leagues fly!

Whose eyes are meteors of speed;
Whose mane is as a flashing foam;

Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks; -
He comes, and while his growing gusts,

Wild couriers of his reckless course,
Are whistling from the daggered gorse,

And hurrying over fern and broom,
Midway, far off, he feigns to halt

And gather in his streaming train.
Now, whirring like an eagle's wing

Preparing for a wide blue flight;
Now, flapping like a sail that tacks

And chides the wet bewildered mast;
Now, screaming like an anguish'd thing

Chased close by some down-breathing beak;
Now, wailing like a breaking heart,

That will not wholly break, but hopes
With hope that knows itself in vain;

• otherwise [´ʌðəwaiz] ad.另外 conj.否则 (初中英语单词)
• creation [kri´eiʃən] n.创作；作品；创造 (初中英语单词)
• banner [´bænə] n.旗(帜)；头号标题 (初中英语单词)
• divine [di´vain] a.神圣的 v.预言 (初中英语单词)
• hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
• waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
• anxious [´æŋkʃəs] a.担忧的；渴望的 (初中英语单词)
• opening [´əupəniŋ] n.开放；开端 a.开始的 (初中英语单词)
• horizon [hə´raizən] n.地平线；范围；视野 (初中英语单词)
• wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
• loving [´lʌviŋ] a.爱的，有爱情的 (高中英语单词)
• sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
• bonnet [´bɔnit] n.无边女帽；童帽 (高中英语单词)
• reverence [´revərəns] n.尊敬；敬畏；尊严 (高中英语单词)
• fragrant [´freigrənt] a.芳香的，芬芳的 (高中英语单词)
• phoebe [´fi:bi] n.月亮女神 (高中英语单词)
• passionate [´pæʃənit] a.易动情的；易怒的 (高中英语单词)
• orient [´ɔ:riənt] n.东方 a.东方的 (高中英语单词)
• sweetly [´swi:tli] ad.甜蜜地；美妙地 (高中英语单词)
• ragged [´rægid] a.衣服破烂的 (高中英语单词)
• southward [´sauθwəd] a.&n.向南方向(的) (高中英语单词)
• mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
• eagerness [´i:gənis] n.渴望；热忱 (高中英语单词)
• reckless [´rekləs] a.不注意的；鲁莽的 (高中英语单词)
• wedded [´wedid] a.(已)结婚的；献身的 (英语四级单词)
• ancestral [æn´sestrəl] a.祖先的；祖传的 (英语四级单词)
• richly [´ritʃli] ad.富裕地；浓厚地 (英语四级单词)
• loveliness [´lʌvlinis] n.美丽，可爱 (英语四级单词)
• calmness [´kɑ:mnis] n.平静；安静 (英语六级单词)
• prophetic [prə´fetik] a.预言(家)的；预示的 (英语六级单词)
• ghostly [´gəustli] a.鬼的；朦胧的 (英语六级单词)
• warble [´wɔ:bəl] v.&n.(鸟)鸣；颤声 (英语六级单词)