Sun-girt city, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne among the waves, Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state; Save where many a palace gate With green sea-flowers overgrown, Like a rock of ocean's own Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters of his path. A LAMENT. O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before, When will return the glory of your prime? No more--O, never more! Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh spring and summer and winter hoar Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more--O, never more! THE POET'S DREAM. [From _Prometheus Unbound_.] On a poet's lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept. Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, But feeds on the aerial kisses Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be; But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality. GEORGE GORDON BYRON. ELEGY ON THYRZA. And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth: And form so soft and charms so rare, Too soon returned to earth: Though earth received them in her bed, And o'er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth, There is an eye which could not brook A moment on that grave to look. I will not ask where thou liest low Nor gaze upon the spot; There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not: It is enough for me to prove That what I loved and long must love Like common earth can rot; To me there needs no stone to tell 'Tis nothing that I loved so well. Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past And canst not alter now. The love where death has set his seal Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.