To ——

What can I do to drive away

Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen

Ay, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!

Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,

What can I do to kill it and be free

In my own liberty?

When every fair one that I saw was fair,

Enough to catch me in but half a snare,

Not keep me there:

When, howe'er poor or particolor'd things,

My muse had wings,

And ever ready was to take her course

Whither I bent her force,

Unintellectual, yet divine to me;—

Divine, I say!—What sea-bird o'er the sea

Is a philosopher the while he goes

Winging along where the great water throes?

How shall I do

To get anew

Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more

Above, above

The reach of fluttering Love,

And make him cower lowly while I soar?

Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,

A heresy and schism,

Foisted into the canon-law of love;—

No,—wine is only sweet to happy men;

More dismal cares

Seize on me unawares,—

Where shall I learn to get my peace again?

To banish thoughts of that most hateful land,

Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand

Where they were wreck'd and live a wrecked life;

That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour,

Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,

Unown'd of any weedy-haired gods;

Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,

Iced in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;

Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,

Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbaged meads

Make lean and lank the starv'd ox while he feeds;

There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,

And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.