Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/864

 Calm and deep peace in this wide air, These leaves that redden to the fall; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

IV

To-night the winds begin to rise And roar from yonder dropping day: The last red leaf is whirl'd away, The rooks are blown about the skies;

The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,   The cattle huddled on the lea; And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world:

And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud; And but for fear it is not so, The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.