Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

In his _Essay on Love_, speaking of the irresistible longing for
sympathy, he says:

In solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by
human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the
flowers, the grass, and the water and the sky. In the motion of
the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a
secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the
tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the
rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable
relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a
dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious
tenderness to the eyes, like the voice of one beloved singing to
you alone.

As Brandes says: 'His pulses beat in secret sympathy with Nature's.
He called plants and animals his dear sisters and brothers, and the
words which his wife inscribed upon his tombstone in Rome, "cor
cordium," are true of his relation to Nature also.'

_The Cloud_, with its marvellously vivid personification, is a
perfect example of his genius.

It gives the measure of his unlikeness to the more homekeeping
imaginations of his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, and
Moore; and at the same time to Byron, for here there are no morbid
reflections; the poem is pervaded by a naive, childlike tone, such as
one hears in the old mythologies.

_The Cloud_:

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast,
And all the night 'tis my pillow white
While I sleep in the arms of the Blast....
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The Sphere-fire above