The earth was all in tune, and you a note
Of Nature's happy chorus.

'Twas like a vernal morn, yet overhead
The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting:
The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said,
O'er Winter's world comes flitting.

Or was it Spring herself, that, gone astray,
Beyond the alien frontier chose to tarry?
Or but some bold outrider of the May,
Some April-emissary?

The apparition faded on the air,
Capricious and incalculable comer.--
Wilt thou too pass, and leave my chill days bare,
And fall'n my phantom Summer?



AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB, IN EDMONTON

Not here, O teeming City, was it meet
Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose,
But where the multitudinous life-tide flows
Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet
Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat
Of flocks in Spring-time, _there_ should Earth enclose
His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes,
There, 'neath the music of thy million feet.