The Poetical Works of John Critchley Prince :: :: University of Virginia Library

Creative Pen, destructive Sword—dread powers!
How strongly ye have stirred this world of ours!
By different means, to different ends ye sway,
One with delight, the other with dismay—
Homes, cities, nations, climes, religions, kings,
And all the boundless range of human things.
One, proud of Peace and her great gifts, aspires
To aid progression in its vast desires:
One, prone to waste, disorder, spoil, and pride,
Would turn the course of onward thought aside;
One lifts, enlightens, purifies, and saves;
One smites, degrades, contaminates, enslaves;
One hath a baneful, one a blest employ,—
One labours to create, one leapeth to destroy!

Giant opponents! leagued with peace and strife,—
One blights, one beautifies, the forms of life;
One leads to pleasures, lofty and refined,
One, while it darkens, tortures humankind.

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Stupendous twain! great ministers on earth
Of good and ill, of plenitude and dearth,—
One is the storm, the pestilence, the grief,
One the mind's health, calm solace, and relief;
One is the hope, the majesty, the dower
Of man, still striving for a wiser power;
And one—dark game, which false ambition plays!
A fierce, but fading, error of old days.

The world grows weary of this sad unrest,
This nightmare of its myriad-hearted breast,—
This monster, breathing horror in its path,
This hideous thing of recklessness and wrath:
New thoughts, new deeds, more kindred to the skies,
Pregnant with better destinies, arise,
And 'mong the old iniquities of men,
The mighty Sword shall fall before the mightier Pen!

Ye worshippers of Warfare, can ye tell
Where are the right, the beauty, and the spell,
The glory, the morality, the gain,
Of the disastrous system ye maintain?
When ye have paved the battle-ground with bones,
To the sad music of a people's groans;
Wakened the cries of multitudinous woe,—
Done all ye can to slaughter and o'erthrow;
Brought man's and nature's fairest doings down,—
Bold hearts and bloody hands! how holy your renown!

Holy? Dear God! War in his whole career
Is rife with lawless force and hopeless fear;
And, spite of gorgeous garniture and forms,
With inward agonies and outward storms;
Lust, riot, ruin hang upon his breath,
Tumultuous conflict, and dishonoured death!
Let not the youth whose spirit pants to win
By lofty labours, fame unsoiled with sin,

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Seek it amid those desolating hordes
That gird Ambition with embattled swords;
Nor desecrate his soul—which God has made
For nobler things—in War's unhallowed trade.
But let him serve his country as he can,
With pen, tongue, action, as becomes a man
Bent upon toils that dignify and grace,
And bring some blessing to the human race.

See the poor soldier—no unworthy name
When wielding moral weapons 'gainst the shame
Born of a thousand social ills and wrongs,
Which dash with bitterness the Poet's songs;—
See the poor soldier, from less guilty life
Coaxed or coerced to tread the fields of strife,
Caught in a tavern; in a barrack bred
To things that blight his heart and cloud his head;
Shut up his sympathies, enslave his soul,
Hold natural impulse in a stern control:
Hoodwink his reason, paralyse his speech,
Uproot his virtues—all that's good unteach,—
Till he becomes,—oh! man thrice brave and blest!—
In war a terror, and in peace a pest!
And if he dare—for manhood sometimes will
Break through its bondage, spite of every ill,—
If he but dare by look, word, act, or flaw,
Mark his impatience of the iron law,
The Lash, laid ready for the needful hour,—
That just and gentle instrument of power,
That man-degrading, man-upbraiding thing,
Bearing at every point a scorpion's sting,—
Tears up the quivering flesh, extorts the groan,
Rouses to vengeance, or subdues to stone,
Making the being it pretends to win
A restless, reckless follower of sin;

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Or a machine, now dead to fear and shame,
Whereby the well-born coward climbs to fame!

Fame, did I say? Can that enchanting thing,
For whose great guerdon Genius strains his wing,
Bedim her lustrous records with the tale
Of deeds, whereat the harassed world turns pale?
They write it fame; but Reason, Truth, and Song,
Must find a darker word to designate the wrong!

But, hark! your country calls! up valiant sons!
Gird on your swords, prepare your murderous guns;
Some new aggression, grand in its design,
Strikes the wise rulers of your land and mine:—
Your country calls, and her strong law and voice
Admit no conscience, and allow no choice:
Ye wear War's gaudy badge, ye willing braves,—
Ask not the why and where, go at it, slaves!
Plenty may fail, and Commerce droop the while,
And Peace, for lack of light, refuse to smile;
The Arts may sicken, Science cease his toils,
And a sad people tremble at your broils.
What boots it if a wilderness be won,
Or a pacific nation half undone?
Go forth, nor let the hostile flag be furled
Till ye have cursed and conquered half the world!

But ere ye go, the Servant of the Lord
Must bless the banner, consecrate the sword;
Must pray the God of Battles—impious prayer!
To make your cohorts His especial care;
And, with a mock solemnity of mien,—
Ah! how unworthy of the sacred scene!—
Ask blessings on a bloody crowd that goes
To fetter human wills, and feast on human woes!

Dear Christ! commissioned from the Eternal Throne
To touch our hearts, and claim them for thine own;

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Man of humility and patient pain,
Word without error, life without a stain;
Teacher of truths reflected from above,—
Pure type of Peace, and miracle of Love!
It shocks the soul, it makes the spirit sad,
To hear these men, in robes of meekness clad,
Beside the altars hallowed in thy name,
Sanction a giant sin, should brand their cheeks with shame!

It is the day of battle; morn's sweet light
Comes surging o'er the lingering shades of night,
And Nature, fresh as in her newest hour,
Looks up with calm and renovated power;
But hostile hosts, impatient for the day,
Panting like hungry tigers for the fray:—
For slaughter eager, and for conquest keen,
Crowd and encumber the enchanting scene;
Preparing to pollute, with gloom and glare,
What God has made so holy and so fair;
And with the life-blood of each other's veins,
Curse and incarnadine the peaceful plains.
The mournful bugle sings a startling note;
The cannon opes its fulminating throat;
Gleams the quick sword; upstarts the bristling lance,—
A thousand files with deadly strength advance,
And with a wild tornado-shock of strife,
Each bosom burning with delirious life—
Meet midway; and the tumult rising high
Shakes the ensanguined ground, and troubles all the sky.

Fiercer and fiercer, till the noon is past,
Rages the battle's desolating blast;
Closer and closer, with unbated breath,
The martial multitudes contend with death,
Till the insulted sun, adown the skies,
Sinks in an ocean of resplendent dyes,

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And pensive twilight, clothed in dewy grey,
Drops her dim curtain o'er the fitful fray;
Till baffled, bleeding, filled with pride and spleen,
Foe shrinks from foe, and darkness steals between.

But not in silence reigns the fearful night,
For muffled sounds denote the hurried flight;
And groans, upheaved from ebbing hearts, ascend
And shriek, and prayer, and malediction blend;
And ruffian violence, and frantic fear,
Strike with abrupt alarm the inquiring ear;
And reckless revel in the camp is heard,
And angry cries at victory deferred,—
And the mixed mockery of laugh and song,
From men that glory in gigantic wrong;
Till a new morning, lovely as before,
Smiles on the field that reeks with human gore,—
Wakes the rough soldier from his haunted sleep,
And gilds a scene “that makes the angels weep!”

For many a day the dread Golgotha lies
Hideous and bare to the upbraiding skies;
The gentle flowers, the yet surviving few,
Droop with the burden of unhallowed dew:
The lark, returning thither, soars and sings
With man's last life-blood on his buoyant wings!
The vagrant butterfly drops down to bear
The stains of slaughter through the summer air:
The quiet cattle startle, as they stray,
At ghastly faces festering into clay;
The stream runs red; the bare and blackened trees
Have ceased to wanton with the wayward breeze;
But the gaunt wolf and hungry vulture, led
By tainted gales that blow athwart the dead,
Hold loathsome banquet; till some friendly hand
Digs a great grave, and clears the cumbered land,

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And pleasant winds, and purifying rains,
Sweep out at last the horror of the plains!

Thought sickens o'er the scene:—come back, sweet Muse!
Nor soil thy sunny garments with the hues
Gathered from gory battle-grounds, and graves
Unheaped with warfare's immolated slaves,
Lest gentle bosoms, and disdainful tongues,
Tire of thy truths, and rail against thy songs.

Lo! in that quiet and contracted room,
Where the lone lamp just mitigates the gloom,
Sits a pale student, stirred with high desires,
With lofty principles and gifted fires.
From time to time, with calm inquiring looks,
He culls the ore of wisdom from his books;
Clears it, sublimes it, till it flows refined
From his alchymic crucible of mind;
And as the mighty thoughts spring out complete,
How the quill travels o'er the snowy sheet!
Till signs of glorious import crowd the page,
Destined to raise and rectify the age;
For every drop from that soul-guided pen
Shall fall a blessing on the hearts of men,—
Shall rouse the listless to triumphant toils,
Wean the unruly from their sins and broils:
Teach the grown man, and in the growing child
Transfuse a power to keep it undefiled;
Solace the weary, animate the sad,
Restrain the reckless, make the dullest glad,
Sow in the bosoms of our rising youth
The seed of unadulterated truth;—
Uproot the lingering errors of the throng,

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Break down the barriers of remorseless Wrong;
Direct mind's onward march, and in the van
Send back electric thought from man to man:
This is the Pen's high purpose—Can it fail?
Soul! scorn the shameful doubt! press forward and prevail!

Oh! for a day of that triumphant time,
That universal jubilee sublime;—
When Marlboroughs shall be useless, and the name
Of Miltons travel through a wider fame;
When other Nelsons shall be out of place,
While other Newtons pierce the depths of space;
When other Wellingtons!—proud name!—shall yield
To mightier Watts, in a far mightier field!
When other Shakespeares shall direct the mind
To Hero-worship of a purer kind;
When War's red banner shall, for aye, be furled,
And Peace embrace all climes, all children of the world!

I find that this passage is an unintentional imitation of a beautiful one in “The Battle of Life,” by Charles Dickens.

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THE PRESS AND THE CANNON.

The Cannon and Press! how they ban, how they bless
This beautiful planet of ours;
The first by the length of its terrible strength,
The other by holier powers.
More and more they are foes as the new spirit grows—
Will their struggles bring joy to the free?
For the wrongful and right—for the darkness and light—
Oh, which shall the conqueror be?

With a war-waking note from its sulphurous throat
The Cannon insulteth the day,
And flingeth about, with a flash and a shout,
The death-bolts that deepen the fray:
“Give me slaughter,” it cries, as it booms to the skies,
And men turn to fiends at the sound;
Till the sun droppeth dun, till the battle is won,
And carnage encumbers the ground.

Then the reveller reels, then the plunderer steals
Like a snake, through the horrible gloom;
Then the maid is defiled, then the widow is wild,
As she fathoms the depths of her doom;
Fierce fires glare aloof, till the night's starry roof
Seems to blush at the doings of wrong;
Sounds of terror and woe through the dark come and go,
With fury, and laughter, and song!

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When the morrow's fair face looketh down on the place,
All trodden and sodden with strife,
The grass and the grain are empurpled with rain
From the fountains of desperate life;
The stream runneth red, and the green leaves are shed,
That o'ershadowed its waters so clear—
For the bale-fire hath been on the desolate scene,
And hath cursed it for many a year!

Reeking ruins abound on the war-withered ground,
In whose ashes sit shapes of despair,
And the voices of wail float afar on the gale,
Till the brute is appalled in his lair:
On the broad battle-floor, in their cerements of gore,
Lie thousands whose conflicts are past,
To furnish a feast for the bird and the beast—
To fester and bleach in the blast.

But the tears of the sad, and the cries of the mad,
And the blood that polluteth the sod,
And the prayers of the crowd—solemn, earnest, and loud—
Together go up unto God!
Nor in vain do they rise—for the good and the wise,
And the gifted of spirit and speech,
Are waking the lands to more holy commands,
For peace is the lesson they teach.

Behold the proud Press! how it labours to bless,
By the numberless tones of its voice!
To lofty and low its grand harmonies flow,
And the multitudes hear and rejoice;
Scarce an alley of gloom, scarce an artizan's room,
Scarce a heart in the mill or the mine,

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Scarce a soul that is dark, but receiveth a spark
Of its spirit, so vast and divine!

The Cannon lays waste, but the Press is in haste
To enlighten, uplift, and renew;
And the life of its lore—can we languish for more?—
Is the beautiful, peaceful, and true.
Man bringeth his thought, in calm solitude wrought,
To be multiplied, scattered, and sown;
And the seed that to-day droppeth down by the way,
Is to-morrow fair, fruitful, and grown.

Joy, joy to the world! Press and People have hurled
Their slings 'gainst the errors of old;
One by one, as they fall, the poor children of thrall
Grow dignified, gladsome, and bold.
The Cannon and Sword—cruel, cursed, and abhorred—
Cannot stay the proud march of the free;
They may ban and beguile the rude nations awhile,
But the Press will the conqueror be!

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A WINTER SKETCH FROM OLDERMANN.

Fair are the Springtide features of the hills—
Glorious their Summer aspect of repose—
Calm in Autumnal hues their shadowy forms—
But not less beautiful when Winter fills—
Their wild untrodden solitudes; and throws
Around them all the grandeur of its storms!
Such are my musings on the craggy crown
Of Oldermann, the sterile, stern, and cold,
As days sink sloping to the evening hour;
Round my proud centre mountain regions frown,
Abrupt and lone, wherein my eyes behold
Gigantic proofs of God's unmeasured power,
Which wake mute worship in the eloquent heart,
And lift the aspiring soul from common things apart.

What a religious silence is outspread
O'er all the rude and solitary scene—
So cold, so pure, so solemn, so serene—
From the deep valley to the mountain's head!
Ice-roofed, the stream runs mutely o'er its bed;
The torrent lingers in its mid-way leap;
The firs, in all their branches, are asleep;
The bird is absent, and the bee is fled;
From moss-fringed fountains not a tear is shed;

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Of human life no shape or voice is near;
And the sole sound that greets my passive ear
Is the crisp snow-floor yielding to my tread:
Dumb seems the earth, and rifled of her bloom,
Like breathless beauty shrouded for the tomb.

Dear Heaven! it is a blessed thing to feel
My heart unwithered by the world,—my mind
Wakeful as ever, and as glad to steal
Into the realms of wonder, unconfined,
As round me drops the drapery of night,
With the delicious dimness of a dream,
While the one herald-star, of restless beam,
Climbs, with the quiet moon, the ethereal height.
Winter is Nature's Sabbath-time; and now,
With all her energies within her breast,
She folds her matron garments round her brow,
Sits down in peace, and takes her holy rest:
For wave, wood, mountain, star, moon, cloud and sky,
In deep-adoring stillness, prove that God is nigh!

A bold precipitous hill in the romantic valley of Saddleworth, a few miles from Ashton-under-Lyne.

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HYMN TO THE CREATOR.

Praise unto God! whose single will and might
Upreared the boundless roof of day and night,
With suns, and stars, and glorious cloud-wreaths hung;
The 'blazoned veil that hides the Eternal's throne,
The glorious pavement of a world unknown,
By angels trodden, and by mortals sung.
To God! who fixed old Ocean's utmost bounds,
And bade the Moon, in her harmonious rounds,
Govern its waters with her quiet smiles;
Bade the obedient winds, though seeming free,
Walk the tumultuous surface of the sea,
And place man's daring foot upon a thousand isles!

Praise unto God! who thrust the rifted hills,
With all their golden veins and gushing rills,
Up from the burning centre, long ago;
Who spread the deserts, verdureless and dun,
And those stern realms, forsaken of the sun,
Where Frost hath built his palace-halls of snow!
To God! whose hand hath anchored in the ground
The forest-growth of ages, the profound

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Green hearts of solitude, unsought of men!
God! who suspends the avalanche,—who dips
The Alpine hollows in a cold eclipse,
And hurls the headlong torrent shivering down the glen!

Praise unto God! who speeds the lightning's wing
To fearful flight, making the thunder spring
Abrupt and awful from its sultry lair,
To rouse some latent function of the earth,
To bring some natural blessing into birth,
And sweep disorder from the troubled air!
To God! who bids the hurricane awake,
The firm rock shudder, and the mountain quake
With deep and inextinguishable fires;
Who urges ghastly pestilence to wrath,
Sends withering famine on his silent path,
The holy purpose hid from our profane desires.

Praise unto God! who fills the fruitful soil
With wealth, awaking to the hand of toil,
With germs of beauty, and abundance, too;
Who bends athwart the footstool of the skies
His braided sunbow of resplendent dyes,
Melting in rain-drops from the shadowy blue!
To God! who sends the seasons, “dark or bright,”
Spring's frequent resurrection of delight;
Summer's mature tranquillity of mien;
The generous flush of the Autumnal time,
The ever-changing spectacle sublime
Of purgatorial Winter, savage or serene!

Praise unto God! whose wisdom placed me here,
A lowly dweller on this lovely sphere—

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This temporary home to mortals given;
Which holds its silent and unerring way
Among the innumerable worlds that stray,
Singing and burning through the halls of heaven!
To God! who sent me hither to prepare,
By wordless worship, and by uttered prayer,
By suffering, humility, and love,
By sympathies and deeds, from self apart,
Nursed in the inmost chambers of the heart,
For that transcendent life of purity above.

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THE QUEEN'S QUESTION; OR, THE RIVAL FLOWERS.

Ladies,—who linger o'er this page
With pure and tranquil pleasure,
Moved by the words of Wit and Sage,
Or Bard's romantic measure,—
Deign to receive this random rhyme,
This brief and simple story,
Of Solomon's transcendent time
Of grandeur and of glory.

Fired at the splendour of his fame,
A proud and regal maiden
To Israel's distant kingdom came
With costly presents laden.
She brought bright gold from Ophir's mine,
Rich gems of mighty prices,
Raiment of colours half divine,
With perfumes and with spices.

With mingled majesty and grace,
A gorgeous crowd attending,
She met the monarch face to face,
In silent homage bending.
With dignified, but gentle, tone,
His eyes with kindness beaming,
The good king placed her on his throne,
In posture more beseeming.

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The feast was spread, the hymn was sung,
The dancers bounded lightly;
Rare music through the palace rung,
And scented lamps burnt brightly:
Meanwhile the monarch urged his guest
To pleasure's sweet employment;
And both, by radiant looks, confessed
The depth of their enjoyment.

With questions subtle, deep, refined,
In changing conversation,
The maiden tasked the monarch's mind
With skilful penetration:
But still, like gold thrice tried by fire,
Wit, wisdom, lore, and learning
Came from the king, the sage, the sire,
With richer lustre burning.

The baffled queen was sorely tried,
And dumb with pleasing wonder;
But what can quell a woman's pride,
Or keep her spirit under?
Sheba, with persevering pains,
Assumes a modest meekness,
For one last question still remains
To prove her strength or weakness.

With quick and cunning hand she culled
A mass of seeming flowers,
And one of real sweetness pulled
From lavish Nature's bowers.
In equal parts, with silken tie,
She bound the blushing roses,
Till each appeared, to casual eye,
Twin pyramids of posies.

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Within the spacious palace hall,
A fair and winsome thing;
She stood apart from each and all,
And thus addressed the king:—
“Pray tell me, thou of high command,
To whom great thoughts are given,
Which is the work of human hand—
Which drank the dews of heaven?”

He gazed with earnest look and long—
The question was repeated;
But still he held a silent tongue,
Half angry, half defeated.
The pleased spectators clustered nigh,
And whispered—almost loudly,—
While Sheba, with inquiring eye,
Stood patiently and proudly.

'Twas summer, and some bees had strayed
Away from fields and bowers;
They hovered round the royal maid,
And round the rival flowers:
To one gay group they clung at last,—
Their own strange instinct guiding;
But careless o'er the other passed,
Not one lone wing abiding.

“Fair queen! those floral gems of thine,
Where yet the wild bee lingers,—
Where all the rainbow hues combine,
Were trained by Nature's fingers!”
Thus spoke old Israel's king, aloud,
And every bosom started;—
The vanquished maiden blushed and bowed,
Then gracefully departed.

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Of Solomon's exalted soul,
Of Sheba's mental merit,
A portion of the glorious whole,
'Tis well, if we inherit;
With sight to see, desire to know,
And reason our adviser,
Better and happier we may grow,
And surely something wiser.

Fair female flowers, which breathe and bloom
Where'er our lot hath bound us;
Flinging Affection's dear perfume
Delightfully around us:
Born with a beauty all your own,
In proud and pure completeness,
May well-deserving bees alone
Enjoy your summer sweetness!

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A LAY FOR THE PRINTER.

Who will deny the dignity of that enduring toil
That penetrates earth's treasure-glooms, and ploughs her sunny soil!
That flings the shuttle, plies the hammer, guides the spinning wheel,
Moulds into shape the rugged ore, and bends the stubborn steel?—
That hews the mountain's rocky heart, piles the patrician dome,
Leans to some lone and lowly craft beneath a lowlier home?
And who shall say that my employ hath not the power to bless,
Or scorn the honest hand that wields the wonder-working Press?

With ready finger, skilful eye, and proudly-cheerful heart,
I link those potent signs that make the magic of my art;
Till word by word, and line by line, expands the goodly book,
Wherein a myriad eyes, ere long, with eager souls will look.
The lightning wit, the thunder-truth, the tempest passion there,
The touching tones of poesy, the lesson pure and fair,

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Come forth upon the virgin page, receive their outward dress,
And, to inspire an anxious world, teem glowing from the Press!

What were the Poet's vision-life, his rapture-moods of mind,
His heavenward aspirations, and his yearnings undefined?—
His thoughts that drop like precious balm in many a kindred breast,
His gorgeous fancies, and his feelings gloriously expressed?—
What were his sentiments that make the hopeful spirit strong,
His fervent language for the right, his fearless 'gainst the wrong?—
What were they to the multitudes—a nation's strength—unless
They sprang in thrice ten thousand streams triumphant from the Press?

The star-seer—honour to his name—with art-assisted sight
May travel 'midst the pathless heavens, and trace their founts of light;
May weigh the planet, watch the comet, pierce those realms that be
Of suns that cluster thick as sands by Wonder's boundless sea;
May mark, with mute exalted joy, some nameless orb arise
To shine a lawful denizen of earth's familiar skies;—

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But these sublime and silent toils how few could know or guess,
Save through the tongue that faileth not, the ever-voiceful Press!

The student of the universe, the searcher of its laws,
Whose soul mounts, link by link, the chain that leads to God, the Cause;
Who reads the old world's history in wondrous things that lay
Tombed in the rock-veins and the seas, ere man assumed his sway;
Who grasps the subtile elements and bows them to his will,
Tracks the deep mysteries of Mind, a nobler knowledge still;
Who adds to human peace and power, makes human darkness less,
What warms, applauds, and cheers him on? His own inspiring Press!

A proud preserver of the past, it gives us o'er again
A Tully's golden tide of speech, a Homer's stirring strain;
Reflects the glory of old Greece, Rome's stern heroic state,
And tells us how they sank beneath the shocks of Time and Fate:
Horatian wit, Virgilian grace, it keeps for us in store,
And every classic dream is fresh and lovely as of yore:—
How had these treasures been consigned to “dumb forget-fulness,”
But for the mirror of great things, the re-creating Press!

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The Press! 'tis Freedom's myriad-voice re-echoed loud and long,
The Poet's world-wide utterance of high and hopeful song;
A trump that blows the barriers down where fear and falsehood lie,
A lever lifting yearning hearts still nearer to the sky!
In good men's hands it multiplies God's Oracles of Grace,
And puts them in a hundred tongues to glad the human race:
Oh! Christian truth! oh! Christian love! twin fires that burn to bless,—
What holier spirit than your own to purify the Press?

And yet it is an evil thing when wicked men combine
To use it for some selfish end, some fierce or dark design;
Who through it pour their poison-creeds, their principles of strife,
To cripple, darken, and degrade the social forms of life.
Oh! ye of strong and upright minds, from such unhallowed things
Defend the mighty instrument whence peaceful knowledge springs;
Make it the bulwark of all right, the engine of redress,
The altar of our country's hopes—a chainless, stainless Press!

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A RHYME FOR THE TIME.

On! ye have glorious duties to fulfil,
Nor fear, nor falter on the weary way;
Ye, who with earnest rectitude of will
Marshal the millions for the moral fray:
Ye, who with vollied speech and volant lay,
'Gainst the dark crowd of social ills engage,
Lead us from out the darkness to the day
We languish to behold; exalt the age,
And write your names in fire on Truth's unspotted page!

With hopeful heart and faith-uplifted brow
Press on, Crusaders, for the goal is near;
Desert and danger are behind, and now
Sweet winds and waters murmur in our ear;
And plenteous signs of peaceful life appear,
And songs of solace greet us as we go;
And o'er the horizon's rim, not broad, but clear,
The light of a new morning seems to flow,—
We journey sunwards! on, and hail the uprising glow!

In the sad wilderness we've wandered long,
Thirsting amid the inhospitable sand,
Cheered by that burden of prophetic song,—
“The clime, the time of freedom is at hand!”

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And, lo! upon the threshold of the land
We strive and hope, keep patient watch, and wait;
And few and feeble are the foes that stand
Between us and our guerdon:—back, proud gate,
That opes into the realm of Freedom's high estate!

Not ours, perchance, the destiny to see
The unveiled glories of her inner bower,
But myriads following in our steps shall be
Equal partakers of the coming hour;
The unencumbered heritage, the dower
With its full fruits is theirs, with all its store
Of fine fruition and exalted power:
And Truth shall teach them her transcendent lore—
“Man towards the perfect good advanceth evermore!”

And in our upward progress through the past,
What giant evils have been trodden down!
Dread deeds which struck the shrinking soul aghast,
Branding the doer with unblest renown:
The Inquisitor's harsh face and gloomy gown,
Girt with a thousand torture-tools; the flame
In whose fierce folds the martyr won his crown,—
Are gone into the darkness whence they came,—
There let them rust and rot, in God's insulted name!

Knowledge hath left the hermit's ruined cell,
The narrow convent and the cloister's gloom,
With world-embracing wings to soar and dwell
In ampler ether, and sublimer room;
The vollied lightnings of her Press consume
The tyrant's strength, and smite the bigot blind;
Day after day its thunders sound the doom
Of some old wrong, too hideous for the mind
Which reason hath illumed, which knowledge hath refined.

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Knowledge hath dignified the sons of toil,
And taught where purest pleasures may be won;
The peasant leaves his ploughshare in the soil
For mental pastime when the day is done;
The swart-faced miner, shut from breeze and sun,
While Nature reigns in beauty unsubdued,
Creeps from his caverned workshop, deep and dun,
And in his hovel's fire-lit solitude
Storeth his craving mind with not unwholesome food.

'Mid the harsh clangour of incessant wheels,
Beside the stithy and the furnace blaze,
Some soul, still hungering and enlarging, feels
The silent impulse of her quickening rays;
In the lone loom-cell, where for weary days,
And weary nights, the shuttle flies amain,
With his white web the weaver weaveth lays
To speed his labour, or beguile his pain,
Lays which the world shall hear, and murmur o'er again.

Proud halls re-echo with exalted song,
With calm instruction, or impassioned speech;
And who stands foremost in the listening throng?
The artisan, who learns that he may teach:
Longing, acquiring, holding, like the leech,
He cries, “Give, give!” with unallayed desire;
No point of knowledge seems beyond his reach:
Effort begets success, and higher, higher,
Like eagles towards the sun, his full-fledged thoughts aspire!

Nor is there danger in the liberal gift
Of soul-seed, cast abroad by Genius' hand,
Not weeds, but flowers and fruitful stems shall lift
Their forms of grace and grandeur o'er the land.

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Like that proud tree by eastern breezes fanned,
From kindred roots a mighty forest made—
A brotherhood of branches shall expand
From the great myriad mind, affording shade,
Strength, shelter, and supply, when outer storms invade.

And by this patient gathering of thought—
And by this peaceful exercise of will,
What wonders have been nursed, matured, and wrought!
What other wonders will they not fulfil?
Upheaves the valley, yawns the opposing hill,
Man and his hand-work sweep triumphant through;
Time swells, space narrows, prejudice stands still
And dwindles in the distance; high and new
Are all our dreams and deeds:—but much remains to do.

But War, that tawdry yet terrific thing,
The Ethiop's brand and bondage, the vile show
Of God's frail image from the gallows string
Dangling and heaving with convulsive throe:—
These man-made ministers of death and woe,
Shall we not crush them—Reason, Mercy, say?
Shall we not fling behind us, as we go,
These ancient errors? Reason answers “Yea!
Pure hearts and earnest souls will clear the encumbered way.”

Hail to the lofty minds, the truthful tongues
Linked in an universal cause, as now!
Which break no rights, which advocate no wrongs,
Firm to the loom, and faithful to the plough!
Commerce, send out thy multifarious prow

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Laden with goodly things for every land;
Labour, uplift thy sorrow-shaded brow,
Put forth thy strength of intellect and hand,
And plenty, peace, and joy may round thy homes expand.

Hail! mighty Science, nature's conquering lord!
Thou star-crowned, steam-winged, fiery-footed power!
Hail! gentle Arts, whose hues and forms afford
Refined enchantments for the tranquil hour!
Hail! tolerant teachers of the world, whose dower
Of spirit-wealth outweighs the monarch's might!
Blest be your holy mission, may it shower
Blessings like rain, and bring, by human right,
To all our hearts and hearths, love, liberty, and light!

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POETRY IN COMMON THINGS.

'Twas Saturn's night, dark, silent, chill, and late,
My exhausted fire was dying in the grate;
My taper's wick was waxing large and long,
While I sat musing on the gift of song,
With all its soul-born influences, and power
To soothe or strengthen in the varying hour:
Upon my table, in promiscuous crowd,
Lay the great minds to whom my spirit bowed;—
Shakespeare, the universal, and the bard
Who Gloriana sang without reward,
Save that which Fame accorded him for ever!—
Dryden, the child of change, whose best endeavour
Was aye beset with troubles, though his string
Rang out in praise of Commonwealth and King;
Milton, the mighty, dignified, and pure,
Born with a soul to battle or endure:
Pope, the euphoneous, whose every theme
Is smooth and flowing as the summer stream;
The cold and caustic Swift, whose loveless heart
Knew not the pangs he laboured to impart;
Goldsmith, whose muse is ever undefiled,
“In wit a man—simplicity a child!”
The grave sarcastic Cowper, best of men!
And Crabbe, the moral Hogarth of the pen;

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Calm Campbell, dazzling Moore, to fancy dear;
The erratic Ploughman, and the wayward Peer;
Southey, the sorcerer, whose wizard strain,
Alas! is silent, ne'er to sound again;
Wordsworth, now full of honourable years,
Whose thoughts do often lie “too deep for tears;”
Coleridge, of dreamy lore (who shall excel
His wild and wondrous fragment, “Christabel?”),
Baronial Scott, the heir of deathless glory,
And him who sang Kilmeny's fairy story;
Ideal Shelley, and ethereal Keats,
With their fine gathering of luxurious sweets;
Leigh Hunt, who loves a quaint but cheerful lore,
And Lamb, as gentle as the name he bore;
Elliott the iron-like, but sweetly strong,
And the Montgomery of sacred song;
The fervid Hemans of the magic shell,
And that lorn nightingale, sweet L. E. L.
These are a glorious number, yet not all
Whose words have held me in delicious thrall.

Weary with many thoughts, I went to sleep,
(Mysterious mute existence!), calm and deep
My slumbers came upon me, while my dreams,
Tinged with the beauty of a thousand themes
From childhood cherished, crowded through my brain,—
Bright things a waking eye might seek in vain.—
Freed from its daily struggles with the real,
My spirit sought the infinite ideal,
And revelled in its regions for a time,
Where all is pure, ecstatic, and sublime.
With clear, unbounded intellect, and tongue
To utter at my will undying song,

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My lips dropped poesy, like flakes of light,
As though some wandering angel, in his flight,
Had waved his radiant pinions o'er my head,
And shaken plumage off. Forth from my bed,
When the spring morning shed its lustrous rain,
I leapt in joy, and seized my pen to chain
A thousand splendid visions which had crept
Through my delighted being as I slept;
But like a breath upon a mirror's face,
They lapsed away, nor left a lingering trace.
Finding my muse had crippled both her wings,
And fluttered earthward, back to common things,
I went to breakfast, wrapt in thoughtful gloom,
While Sabbath sunshine, pouring in my room,
Hung brightly upon ceiling, wall, and floor,
And laid a golden bar across my door;
I could not choose but own its silent power,
And feel in calm accordance with the hour.
The scribbling fit was on me, but in lieu
Of soaring into regions high and new
Of perfect Poesy, I strove to climb
The little mole-hill of imperfect Rhyme.

The ample table-cover drooped adown
In graceful folds, white as a bridal gown,
Or childhood's shroud, or vestal-maid's array,
Or blossoms breathing on the lap of May,
Or cygnet's breast, or those fair clouds that lie
Hovering in beauty in a summer sky;
Or snow on Alpine summits;—(thus you see
We get at poesy by simile).
The bread suggested corn-fields broad and yellow,
Touched by the autumn sunbeams mild and mellow;
The rustle of full sheaves, the laugh and song
Of jolly reapers, sickle-armed and strong,

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And all the loud hilarities that come
To swell the triumph of a harvest home.
And then the restless and secluded mill,
Moved by the gushings of a mountain rill,
With its moss-grown and ever-dripping wheel,
Churning the waters till they flash and reel,
Came up distinct before my mental gaze,—
A well-remembered picture of old days.
The unctuous butter and the cooling cream,
Though simple in themselves, inspired a dream
Of quiet granges seated far away
From towns and cities, and of meadows gay
With spring's innumerable flowers: of kine
Feeding in healthful pastures (how I pine
To rush into the fields!), of dairies sweet,
Where buxom damsels, rosy-lipped and neat,
Have pleasant toils; and last, the ingle side,
Scene of the farmer's solacement and pride.
The juicy lettuce and the pungent cress,
At least in fancy's hearing, spoke no less
Of trim-laid gardens, and complaining brooks,
Winding away through green romantic nooks,
To schoolboys and to lovers only known,
Or Poets wandering in their joy alone;
And then the coffee, with its amber shine,
In aromatic richness half divine—
Brought Araby, and Araby the “Nights,”
Which in my boyhood filled me with delights
That linger yet. To memory how dear
The generous Caliph, and the good Vizier:
The silent city with its forms of stone,
Its crowded streets so wonderfully lone:—
Sinbad, of eastern travellers the great;
Aladdin's potent lamp, and splendid state,

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And all that dreamy mystery whose power
Hath kept one wakeful till the morning hour.
Alas! that time's remorseless hand should raze
Those magic mansions of our early days,
Wherein we dwelt in quietude and joy,
As yet unconscious of the world's annoy;
But still, though time, and even truth, be stern,
'Tis well if we can meditate, and learn
To gather solace from the meanest springs,
And see some beauty in the humblest things;
For to the willing heart and thoughtful mind,
To eyes with pride and prejudice unblind,
Germs of enjoyment are for ever rife,
E'en on the waste of unromantic life.

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THE SEASIDE SOJOURN.

TO A POET FRIEND.

My valued Friend! as generous and true
As bard could wish, when steadfast friends are few,—
Friend of the feeling heart and soul of fire,
Restrained and chastened by each just desire:
Whose thoughts are high, exuberant and warm,—
Whose manners win, whose lightest words inform;
Whose deeds are ever on the helpless side
Of all who are oppressed and trouble-tried.
Thou hast not 'scaped the many-headed strife,
Which in the tangled labyrinths of life
Meets us at every turn, and strives to wrest
Peace from the mind, and pleasure from the breast;
But could I, as my wishes urge, extend
A prayer-won blessing unto thee, my friend,
Thy storms should cease, thy clouds should break away,
And leave the experienced evening of thy day
Calm in its joy, and in its brightness bland,
A fleeting foretaste of a happier land.

Sick of the thoughtless revel, and the throng
Of paltry pleasures that have done me wrong,
Of envious malice and of spurious praise
(The bane, the blight of my aspiring days!),
I come, with more than sadness in my breast,
To be with Nature a repentant guest;

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And here, once more by the consoling sea,
Whose constant voice of solemn euphony
Disposes to serene, exalted thought,
I find the tranquil solacement I sought;
Put off my cares, repress regretful tears,
And wake fond memories of departed years.
Many and harmless are the spells that bind
To this calm spot my stricken heart and mind,
The grey and breezy downs, unploughed and bare;
The priceless luxury of healthful air;
The long lone ramble by the sounding shore;
The drip and sparkle of the measured oar;
The white-winged sea-gull's low and laggard flight;
The green wave's fitful and phosphoric light;
The staunch and stately ships that come and go
With the strong tide's unfailing ebb and flow;
The hardy sailor's wild, peculiar cry,
As, with a spirit emulous and high,
His horny hands unfurl the fluttering sail
To catch the fulness of the freshening gale;
The steadfast beacon's red revolving shine,
Far-looking o'er the still or stormy brine
With calm and constant, needful, watchfulness,
To warn from danger, and to cheer distress.
Then the pure pleasantness at eventide,
Our faces brightening by the “ingle side,”—
In social converse, various and new,
Merry or sad, with chosen friends and few,—
Of wit and wisdom, manners, books, and men,
Of the strong sword-plague and the stronger pen;
Of living laws that guard us or degrade;
Of peaceful arts that speed the wings of trade;
Of mild Philosophy's untold delights;
Of fearless Science in his daring flights:

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Of fervid eloquence, whose wondrous tongue
Makes truth and falsehood, rectitude and wrong,—
Play faithless and, withal, fantastic parts
On our deluded ears and doubtful hearts;
Till thou, my Friend, already brimming o'er
With classic story and poetic lore,
Dost lead us gently, by degrees, away
To mental regions of serener day,
Where Genius of a loftier, holier power,
Lives soul-rapt in the quiet of his bower,
Calmly creating and enjoying things
(Born of emotions and imaginings),
So sweet and stainless, truthful and sublime,
And so instinct with life, that even Time,
Who makes material grandeur stern and hoary,
Adds to their strength, their beauty and their glory!
'Tis sweet again, with tranquil heart and limb,
Within my dormitory, small and dim,
To lie and listen to the lengthened roar
Of restless waters rolling on the shore,
And feel o'er all my languid senses creep
The soft and silent witchery of sleep;
With its mysterious crowd of glooms and gleams
Mixed in a wild romance of miscellaneous dreams.

Once more there's pleasure, when my lattice pane
Admits the dewy morning's golden rain,
To hear the merry birds' melodious glee,
And the still sleepless and complaining sea—
Call me to spend another happy day
Of fresh, free thought—too soon to pass away!

But there are other charms that gently hold
My world-sick spirit to thy little fold
Of joyous human lambs, that learn and live
'Mid many pleasures fair but fugitive;

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That wist not wherefore, and that ask not when
Care claims the hearts, and dims the eyes of men.
The first that greets my inquiring eyes at morn
Is the sweet fay, thy loved and latest born:
Her with the ruddy and the rounded cheek,
And flowing elf-locks, amber-hued and sleek,
And ripe lips, like a virgin bud that blows
'Mid summer dews, a stainless infant rose:
Her with the thoughtless brow, and laughing eye,
Clear as the depths of the cerulean sky,
Where storms are brief, where shadows seldom dare
Pollute or trouble the salubrious air.

Well do I know her father hath the power
(A dear, but yet, alas! a dangerous dower!)
To shrine his daughter in a song whose tone
Would be as sweet and lasting as my own;
But since he lays his trembling harp aside,
With a deep sense of not unworthy pride,—
Be mine the privilege, with words sincere,
To please an anxious father's willing ear.

She duly comes—that little sprite of thine,—
A human form, but seeming half divine,
With the young morn, as fresh and free from care
As forest flowers that meet us unaware—
To kiss with ready lips her fond, firm mother,
Her kindly nurse,—her grave and growing brother,
Her yearning father, and her father's friend,
As if she sought her little soul to blend
With souls of sterner mood, and thus impart
Her own spontaneous happiness of heart.
With bright impatient face she rushes out,
Her lips disparted with a gleesome shout,
To make a merry pastime of the hours
In the romantic fields, knee deep in flowers,

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Which with an eager hand she plucks to grace
The unravelled tresses floating round her face.
Else, with her young companions hand in hand,—
Leaving her tiny footprints in the sand,—
Roams the long level of the sloping shore,
Watching the waters—fearless of their roar;
Gathering the stranded shells wherewith to deck
The purer whiteness of her graceful neck;
Till in the full-tide splendours of the noon,
Humming with “vacant joy” some wordless tune,
She comes exulting from her pleasant toils,
And strews the floor with variegated spoils;
Worthless, perchance, to our maturer sight,
But to her own a treasure of delight.
The dinner done, the irksome lesson o'er,
Again she seeks her playmates, to explore
Haunts yet unvisited, or old ones where
All that salutes her earnest eyes is fair;
And every sound to her untutored ears
Is as the fabled music of the spheres.
The shady quiet of some bosky dell,
And the cool sparklings of its little well;
The bustling brooklet hurrying past her feet
With a low murmur, tremulous and sweet;
A fluttering leaf—a waving flower—a tree
Shivering through all its foliage; a bee
Sitting assiduous on the honied bloom
Of clover, blushing in its own perfume:
The song and plumage of some fearless bird—
The cuckoo's shout from dim remoteness heard;
Mysterious Echo's mimic voice, that seems
Like that of spirit from a place of dreams;—
The dauntless pleasure-toils to seek and find
The brown nuts nestling in their rugged rind;

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The feast of bramble-berries black and bright,
Staining the lip that prattles with delight;
The tale of fairy—childhood's cherished creed—
Of wild old thoughts, a treasury indeed!
Yea, all that Nature's outward form imparts
To win the worship of such sinless hearts,
Makes up her waking life, and makes it too
Seem ever gladsome, glorious, and new,—
Sending her home at the calm set of day
Subdued and silent from her joyous play;
Her light limbs weary, and her eyelids prest
By slumber—welcome, though unbidden guest,
Which lays her down, a pure unconscious thing,
In the soft shadow of an angel's wing.

Oh! Childhood is the Paradise of Life,
Long safe from sin, and separate from strife;
And heaven-appointed spirits hover round,
To guard from evil the enchanted ground,
Till the dread thing o'erleaps the hallowed wall,
Basks in our path, and lures us to our fall:
Bright thoughts and pure all stealthily depart,
Leaving a strange vacuity of heart;
Some necessary impulse seems to press
Our footsteps nearer to the wilderness,
Until we learn the knowledge of our doom
From the “small voice” that whispers through the gloom,
While unseen hands, and powerful, compel
Our going from the Eden where we dwell;
And at the boundary, the angel Truth,
With looks of pity on our dawning youth,
Waves the stern flame-sword in our startled eyes,
And turns us to the world where danger lies:
But happy we, if in our hearts we find
Aught holy from the home for ever left behind.

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I may not predicate what grief or glee
Awaits the darling of thy wife and thee,—
Her fate lies folded in the breast benign
Of Him who holds her in His hand divine:
But hope is soothing, and despair is vain,
And gentle precept leadeth with a chain
Stronger than passion's, from the path of wrong,
And firm example doeth more than song.

Thus with the teaching thou alone canst give,
Serene in virtue she may learn to live;
And though some bitter taints the cup of all,
Her's in its sweetness, may subdue the gall.
Oh! may these written thoughts, when after life
Hath merged the maiden in the prouder wife,
Awake sweet memories of departed years,
And call the tribute down of none but happy tears.

I go, heart-strengthened by the little space
Of calm enjoyment in as calm a place,
Enlarged in sympathy, refreshed in mind,
With loftier thoughts, and feelings more refined;
Earnest and hopeful, anxious to explore
A clearer region of poetic lore,
Where I may toil with purer soul, and stand
Among the worthiest of my native land.

In sadness I depart, but not in pain,
Trusting to clasp thy cordial hand again:
Take thou and thine my blessing and farewell,—
Peace to thy house and all therein that dwell!

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COME TO MY HOME.

Come to my calm but lonely home,
With all thy grace, and love, and light,
That I may watch thee day by day,
And be thy guardian through the night;
Be thou my household's happy queen,
The pride and beauty of my bower;
My wayward soul's presiding star,—
My fond heart's sweetest, dearest flower.

Light labours only wait thee here,—
My peerless and my chosen one!
For thou shalt train the nectar-tree
To hang its tresses in the sun.
By thee the honey-fingered bine
Shall mantle round our rural shed;
And the Sultana summer rose
Lift high her proud imperial head.

Through radiant summer's gorgeous time,
When pleasant toils are duly told:
When burn upon the western skies
The sun's rich robes of cloudy gold,—

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We'll tread the green and fragrant sward,
And, leaning by some laggard stream,
Breathe to the sweet and listening air
The words of some immortal dream.

When garish day fades softly out,
Religious twilight gathering o'er,—
We'll read upon the book of heaven
Its God-illuminated lore;
Then filled with quiet thankfulness
While odorous night winds round us creep,
We'll turn with homeward steps, and slow,
To woo the tranquil bliss of sleep.

When moonlight snow is on the roof,
And pictured frost is on the pane;
When clustering stars look keenly forth,
And clouds discharge their solid rain,—
We'll nestle near the chimney side,
Unenvious of the festive throng,
And drown the moaning of the blast
In the united tones of song.

Should sickness bow thy fragile form,
Or sorrow rifle thee of rest,—
Should aught of human ill destroy
The peaceful rapture of thy breast,
My lips shall speak of home and health,
To cheat thee of thy grief and pain,
And all my faculties combine
To bring thee back to peace again.

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When other voices than our own,
And other forms which are not here,
Shall fill these walls with childish glee,
And make existence doubly dear;
What shall estrange us heart from heart,
When such connubial joys are given?
Come, be the angel of my life,
And make my earthly home a heaven!

Originally entitled “The Request,” and contributed to “The Athenæum Souvenir”—a publication associated with the Athenæum Bazaar, held in Manchester Town-Hall in 1843.

A SUMMER'S EVENING SKETCH.

In tranquil thought, last eventide, I went my wonted way,
Along the foldings of a vale where quiet beauty lay,
To breathe the living air, and watch with fancies half divine,
The clouds that gathered near the sun, to grace his grand decline.

The new-mown meadows, smooth and broad, gay in their second green,
The sinuous river gliding on in shadow and in sheen;
The orchard and its little cot, with low and mossy eaves,
And tiny lattice twinkling through its chequered veil of leaves.

The costly mansion, here and there, 'mid solemn groves and still;
The mass of deep and wave-like woods uprolling on the hill;
The grey and Gothic church that looked down on its graveyard lone,
And on the hamlet roofs and walls, coeval with its own;

274

Old farms remote and far apart, with intervening space
Of black'ning rock, and barren down, and pasture's pleasant face;
The white and winding road, that crept through village, vale, and glen,
And o'er the dreary moorlands, far beyond the homes of men.

The changeful glory of the sky, the loveliness below;
The tree-tops tinged with rosy fire, the bright pool's borrowed glow;
The blaze of windows, and the smile of fields so soon to fade,
And when the lingering sun went down, the tenderness of shade;

The throstle's still untiring song, loud as at early morn;
The grasshopper's shrill serenade amid the ripening corn;
The careless schoolboy's gleesome shout; the low of homeward herds;
The voice of mother and of child, let loose in loving words;

The rose that sighed its fragrant soul upon the summer air;
The breath of honeysuckle wild, that met me unaware;
The smell of cribs where oxen lay, of dairies dim and small;
Of herb, and moss, and fruit, that grew within the garden wall;

All pleasant things that wooed the sense in odour, sound, or hue,
Came with as sweet an influence as if they had been new,—

275

And so disposed my mind to love, to gentleness, and trust,
I blessed all seemly forms that God life-kindled from the dust.

The mingled magic of the scene, the season, and the hour,
Fell on my world-sick spirit then with most consoling power;
Old friendships seemed revived again—old enmities forgiven,
Suspended as my feelings were midway 'tween earth and heaven.

I could have sported with a child, myself a child again;
I could have hailed the veriest wretch of penury and pain;
Religion, love, humanity, awoke within my breast,
And filled me with a solemn joy my tears alone expressed.

Thus nature wins her peaceful way, with silent strength and grace,
To souls that love her lineaments, and meet her face to face.
Blest privilege! to leave behind the paths of toil we trod,
And live an hour of purity with Nature and with God!

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THE WANDERER.

In a lonely valley yonder,
Where the Rhenish wine-tree grows,
I sat me down to rest and ponder
On the mystery of woes:
For I was travel-stained and weary,
Sore of foot and faint of limb,
Helpless, hungry, heart-sick, dreary,
My eyes with want and watching dim.

It was a sunny Sabbath morning,
In the briefest days of Spring—
Infant buds the boughs adorning,
Larks upon the skyward wing:
Flowers, in fragrant childhood blowing,
Drank the golden light of day;
Streams, in clearer gladness flowing,
Found a sweeter, greener way.

The peasant poor to worship wending,—
Wrinkled dame and ruddy lass,
With a kind obeisance bending,
Greet the pilgrim as they pass:—

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Welcome, though their homely graces,
Buoyant footstep, aspect free,
Stranger forms and stranger faces
Are not those he yearns to see.

A simple Sabbath-chime was ringing
From a grey and leafy tower,—
A sweet and solemn music flinging
Over vineyard, vale, and bower;
The very woods and hills seemed listening,
In a holy calm profound,
And the lingering dew-drops, glistening,
Seemed to tremble at the sound.

Present sorrow,—baleful shadow!
Slid from off my languid mind,
Like a cloud-shade from a meadow,
Leaving greener spots behind.
Recollections, sad or splendid,
Came with softened smiles and tears,
And the future, hope-attended,
Beckoned unto brighter spheres.

England's temples of devotion,
Unassuming, old, and dim,
Where the deepest heart-emotion
Answers to the holy hymn;
In whose grave-yards, greened with ages,
Eyes the tears of memory shed,
Looking on those solemn pages—
Stony records of the dead.

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I saw a sleeping babe receiving
Baptismal drops upon its face,
A blushing bride the portal leaving
With a proud and modest grace:
I saw a dark assembly gather
Round an open grave and deep,
And a wifeless, childless father
Stricken till he could not weep.

Then my youth rose up before me,
Fresh as in its newest hour,
When that deeper life came o'er me,
Love's pure passion and its power;
When a crowd of different feelings
In my growing heart took birth,
Different thoughts, whose sweet revealings
Uttered more of heaven than earth.

Memory opened out her treasures,
Which had lain unheeded long,—
Trials, triumphs, pains, and pleasures,
A mingled and familiar throng:
Scenes, where I had wandered lonely,
In my boyhood's dreamy days,
When the shapes of Nature only
Soothed and satisfied my gaze.

Wood haunts, where I lay and lingered,
At my stolen, but happy ease,
While the west wind, frolic-fingered,
Stirred the umbrage of my trees;

279

While the fern and fox-glove nigh me
Whispered things, too seldom heard;
And brook and bee that flitted by me
Held light concert with the bird.

England's soft and slumbering valleys,
With happy homesteads scattered o'er,
Where the honeysuckle dallies
With the rose, about the door:
England's ancient halls and granges,
In some woodland nestled low,
Through whose shades the river ranges
With a dark and devious flow.

Then I saw new things, and fairer,
In the stars, clouds, fields, and flowers;
Then I heard new sounds, and rarer,
In the ever-voiceful bowers:
Then with stronger life came laden
Every breeze that wandered wide,
Because one loved, one loving maiden,
Smiled, looked, listened, by my side.

Every spot of blissful meeting
Rose before my inner sight;
Every fond and joyous greeting
Thrilled me with an old delight.
Precious hours of speedy pinion—
Ye with purest passion rife,
Alas! to feel your dear dominion
Once only in the lapse of life!

280

Still that Sabbath-chime was ringing,
Where the Rhenish wine-tree grows,
Sterner recollections bringing,
Tinctured with a thousand woes:—
Poverty's resistless terrors,
Careless words, and careless deeds,
Rash resolves, and thoughtless errors,
For which the wiser spirit bleeds.

Absent voices, absent faces,
Which I longed to hear and see;
Hearts, which yearned for my embraces,
And beat with faithful pulse for me.
Thoughts like these, with strong appealings,
Tinged with hopes, and touched with fears,
Only asked for human feelings,
And I answered with my tears.

Thus that Sabbath-chime, though simple,
Stirred me with its hallowed sound,
As a still lake's smallest dimple
Moves the whole bright surface round.
That sweet music, and the brightness
Of the young and buoyant day,
Gave to my soul new strength, new lightness,
As I journeyed on my way.

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WAR.

Scourge of the nations, and the bane of freedom, hope, and life!
Stern reveller in gory fields, exulting in the strife!
Thou terror of ten thousand homes, thou sword-plague of the world!
When shall we see thy balefires quenched, thy bloodstained banners furled?

Ambition-born, and power-begot, with passions dark and vile,
And fostered by the cruel arts of avarice and guile,
Thou goest forth with reckless hosts to slaughter and enslave,
Thou trampler upon human hearts, thou gorger of the grave!

Thy oriflamme floats wantonly in the pure unconscious air;
The chorus of thy drums gives out the warning note “Prepare;”
Thy cymbals ring, thy trumpets sing with shrill and vaunting breath,
Alas! that such vain pageantry should grace the feast of death!

Growing in peaceful splendour stands some proud and prosperous town,
Till thy dread footsteps pass her gates, and tread her glories down;
While panic sweeps her wildering streets, and all thy hounds of prey,
Make riot in her homes, and leave dishonour and dismay.

282

Some village, nestling tranquilly amid its happy shades,
Girt with the calm amenities of corn-fields, streams, and glades,
Beholds thee pause upon thy march, and in thy fierce employ
Despoil its blooming paradise of quietude and joy.

A province withers at thy frown, a kingdom mourns to see
Her desecrated temples torn, her towers o'erthrown by thee;
Bewails her commerce paralysed, her fields unploughed and wild,
And all her household sanctities invaded and defiled.

And yet the land that sends thee forth, what land soe'er it be,
Leaps at thy lawless victories, and lifts the voice of glee,
And songs are sung, and bells are rung, and merry bonfires blaze,
While false, or foolish pens, distil the poison of their praise.

And at the crowded banquet board quick tongues diffuse thy fame,
And columns lift proud capitals in honour of thy name.
And virgins, pure and beautiful, give their fond hearts away
To men who trod out human life in the carnage yesterday.

Thy trophies, brought in triumph home, attest what thou hast done,
What valour lavished on the foe, what fields of glory won;
But men who scorn thy painful pomp, survey with blushing face
Such signs of sanguinary power, such symbols of disgrace.

283

Ay, strip thee of thy dainty garb, thy tinsel robe of pride,
Lay glistering helm, and flaunting plume, and specious names aside,—
And what remains of that gay thing that dazzled us before?
A monster, hideous to behold—an idol smeared with gore!

The widow's curse is on thee, War; the orphan's suppliant cries,
Mixed with the mother's malison, ascend the placid skies;
And bones that bleach upon the shore, and welter in the sea,
Appeal,—and shall it be in vain? against thy deeds and thee.

The green earth fain would fling thee off from her polluted breast:
The multitudes are yearning, too, for knowledge and for rest,
And lips inspired by Christian love all deprecate thy wrongs,
And poets fired with purer themes, disdain thee in their songs.

“The embattled corn” is lovelier far than thy embattled hordes;
One plough in Labour's honest hand is worth ten thousand swords;
The engine's steam pulse, fitly plied, hath nobler conquests made
Than all the congregated serfs of thy abhorrent trade.

More courage in the miner's heart than captain ever knew;
More promise in the peasant's frock than coats of scarlet hue;

284

More honour in the craftsman's cap, and in the student's gown;
More glory in the pastor's robe than all thy vain renown.

England, my own, my mother land, as fair as thou art free!
Thou Island queen! whose wide domains o'ersprinkle earth and sea,
What need that thou should'st yearn again to conquer and subdue?
Thy power has long been known to all, shall not thy mercy too?

Forbear to use the cruel sword, or, if thou wilt invade,
Be it with palm or olive branch, that maketh none afraid;
Be it with Bible in thy hand, with justice in thy breast,
Give peaceful arts; give Gospel light; give rectitude and rest.

If strong ambition dares to doom his weaker foe to bleed,
Raise high the trumpet-voice of truth against the ruthless deed;
With magnanimity of heart, with calm and fearless brow,
Be thou the umpire and the friend—the mediator thou.

So shall the nations look to thee, as one ordained to keep
The balance of the social world, the portals of the deep;
And history shall write thee down, with proud and willing hand,
A realm of mind and majesty, a wise and Christian land!

285

WINTER MUSINGS.

Stern Winter time! thy shrouded skies oppress me,
And fling funereal shadows o'er my brain:
Sad thoughts and visions, spectre-like, distress me,
And waken all my sympathies to pain;
Sad thoughts of yonder multitudinous city,
Where care too often festers into crime:
Where hearts heave out their life for lack of pity,
Or, living, dread thy coming, Winter time!

Sad thoughts of sinful and pestiferous places,
Where love, hope, joy, breeze, sunlight, never comes;
Where pen and pencil never lend their graces,
Nor common comforts quiet, to their homes—
Oh! no, not homes, but dens—where God's own creatures
Creep through the roughest ways of lowest life;
Where untaught minds make savage forms and features,
And hold perpetual fellowship with strife.

Sad thoughts! that virtue and that vice together
Stir the thick air with curses and with groans,
Pine through the day, and in the fiercest weather
Herd nightly on the cold and cruel stones;
Or desperate men put off their fear and starkness,
To wreak their vengeance on some guiltless head;
Or women, roaming through the storm and darkness,
Barter their beauty for dishonoured bread.

286

Even where royalty, oppressed with splendour,
Free as the humblest from repulsive pride,
While ready hands and willing hearts attend her,
Walks in her gardens beautiful and wide—
There, even there, with gorgeous wealth surrounded,
The lost, the scorned, the outcasts of their kind,
Lie down a heap of indigence confounded,
Fellows in misery, if not in mind.

Sad thoughts! that in yon town's bewildering mazes,
Dark veins far stretching from its giant heart,
Man in his saddest moods and sternest phases
Lives from all healthy influence apart:
Souls that have missed their way lie there benighted,
With all their sensual instincts wild and bare;
And hearts, once prone to love, are warped and blighted
For lack of genial sustenance and care.

Fathers sit brooding on the threatening morrow,
With looks of anger kindling into hate;
And mothers, with a mute, but deeper sorrow,
Cease to resist the thraldom of their fate:
Children, grown prematurely old, are pining
In apathetic squalor, day by day;
Round their young natures vicious weeds are twining,
Which thrust the flowers of purity away.

Perchance, within those lazar-dens of riot
Insidious sickness saps the shattered frame:
Where is the yielding couch, the room of quiet?
The pensive taper-light's unfailing flame?
Where is the cleanly hearthstone, blithely glowing?
The cordial offered ere the lips request?
Where are affection's eyes, with grief o'erflowing?
The forms that wait, yet fear, the final rest?

287

Where is the skilful leech, man's health-director,
With words of honey all unmixed with gall?
The pastor praying to the great Protector,
Without whose will a sparrow cannot fall!
Alas! not there! no love, no skill, no teaching,
Touches with hopeful light the hour of gloom,
The lorn wretch thinks high heaven beyond his reaching,
And, dying, braves the horrors of his doom!

Strange contrast! lo! yon lofty windows brighten
From chambers as an eastern vision fair,
Where lips and eyes with pleasure smile and lighten,
While song and music thrill the throbbing air;
Where Art hath brought her triumphs and her graces,
The glowing canvas, and the breathing stone;
Where rich refinements from a thousand places
Are tributes from the lands of every zone.

There lusty lacqueys round the banquet gliding
With costly dainties court the pampered taste,
While Joy and Plenty o'er the board presiding
See southern nectars run to wanton waste;
There Fortune's idol learns to love and languish,
Swathed in the splendour and the pride of birth,
Uncaring, or unconscious, of the anguish
That bows her lowly sisters of the earth.

And yet there are, beside the hall or palace,
Shapes of humanity, unhoused, unfed,
Untaught, unsought, unheeded, fierce or callous,
The sky their curtain, and the earth their bed:
Shapes which are all of one Almighty's making,
Imploring, threatening, near the rich man's feet,
With sin grown savage, or with sorrow quaking,
Frenzied for food his dogs refuse to eat.

288

“The poor shall cease not,” God's blest word declareth;
But are they less of human mould than kings?
Must they grow faint for what kind Nature beareth,
For what she gives to all her meaner things?
Must they exist in darkness and distraction,
Doubting if Heaven be merciful and just?
Shut out from joy, unnerved for glorious action,
And scarce uplifted from the grovelling dust?

Formed for all fitting faculties and feelings
By Him who gives the tiniest worm a law,
Who fills His humblest work with high revealings,
Sustains the skies, and keeps the stars in awe,—
Shall they, oppressed with famine and wrong doing,
With crowded cares, and unassuasive pain,
Obey, toil, falter, rush to deeper ruin,
Reason, implore, grow mad, and all in vain?

Forbid it, God! who deigns to guide and gift us!
Ye mild and moral principles of right—
Ye liberal souls that labour to uplift us—
Rise up against it with resistless light:
And all ye holy sympathies that slumber
Unstirred, unfruitful in the human breast,
Spring into active phalanx without number,
And give the poor hope, help, and happier rest.

Forbid it, Pen—for thou canst vanquish error;
Forbid it, Press—proud ally of the Pen!
Forbid it, Speech, that carries truth or terror
To the hard bosoms of unthinking men.
Pen, Press, and Speech, creators of opinion—
Opinion armed 'gainst ignorance and wrong—
League all the lands beneath your blest dominion,
Till the glad poet sings a calmer song.

289

THE PARTITION OF THE EARTH.

PARAPHRASED FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER.

“Take the Earth!” uttered God, from the height of His throne,
As He looked on the children He made, from above:
“Take the Earth, with its treasures, and call it your own,
But divide it with justice and brotherly love!”

By myriads men came when they heard the decree,—
Age, manhood, and youth hurried on in the race;
The husbandman ruled o'er the corn-covered lea,—
The forest was given to the sons of the chase.

The merchant took all that his stores would contain,
While the priest—holy man! took the choicest of wine;
The king took the highways and byways for gain,
By a law which the people believed was divine.

At length, when each mortal rejoiced in his lot,
Came the poet, who loved not the boisterous throng;
But, alas! when he came he beheld not a spot,
Save the breadth of a grave, for the pilgrim of song.

Then he threw himself down at the throne of his Sire,
And cried to the Being who gave him his birth,—
“Oh! grant a poor outcast his only desire,
Let the child of Thy wrath be forgotten on earth.”

290

God said, “If thou liv'st in the empire of thought,
The cause of thy sorrow pertains not to me:—
Where, where hast thou stayed while My bidding was wrought?”
Said the Poet, “Oh, God! I was near unto Thee!

“If my eyes were entranced by Thy glory and might,
And my ears by the music that breathes in Thy skies;
If my soul was absorbed in Thy love and Thy light,
Forgive that the Earth disappeared from mine eyes.”

“Content thee,” God said, “for Earth's riches are given,—
As such was My pleasure, and hence My decree,
Thou shalt live with thy Lord in His own blessed heaven,
For whenever thou comest 'tis open to thee!”

THE PATRIOT'S BATTLE PRAYER.

PARAPHRASED FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER.

Father of Life! to Thee, to Thee I call—
The cannon sends its thunders to the sky;
The wingèd fires of slaughter round me fall;
Great God of Battles! let Thy watchful eye
Look o'er and guard me in this perilous hour,
And if my cause be just, oh! arm me with Thy power!

Oh! lead me, Father, to a glorious end,
To well-won freedom, or a martyr's death;
I bow submissive to Thy will, and send
A soul-felt prayer to Thee in every breath:
Do with me as beseems Thy wisdom, Lord,
But let not guiltless blood defile my maiden sword!

291

God, I acknowledge Thee, and hear Thy tongue
In the soft whisper of the falling leaves,
As well as in the tumult of the throng
Arrayed for fight—this human mass that heaves
Like the vexed ocean. I adore Thy name,
Oh, bless me, God of grace, and lead me unto fame.

Oh! bless me, Father! in Thy mighty hand
I place what Thou hast lent—my mortal life;
I know it will depart at Thy command,
Yet will I praise Thee, God, in peace or strife;
Living or dying, God, my voice shall raise
To Thee, Eternal Power, the words of prayer and praise!

I glorify thee, God, I come not here
To fight for false ambition, vainly brave;
I wield my patriot sword for things more dear,—
Home and my fatherland; the name of slave
My sons shall not inherit. God of Heaven!
For Thee and Freedom's cause my sacred vow is given!

God, I am dedicate to Thee for ever;
Death, which is legion here, may hem me round;
Within my heart the invader's steel may quiver,
And spill my life-blood on the crimson ground:
Still am I Thine, and unto Thee I call,—
Father, I seek the foe—forgive me if I fall!

292

ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, LATE POET LAUREATE.

From the bright coronal of living minds,
The grace and glory of these later days,
A gem is shaken to the dust; a star
Which rose in thought's wide hemisphere, and grew
Resplendent with the calm, sweet light of Song
Hath faded into darkness, while our eyes
Gaze with sad yearning after it—in vain!
The fitful winds, which sweep with varying voice
O'er the broad breast of Keswick's wrinkled lake,
Sing dirges o'er the mountain-girdled grave
Where Southey sleeps. A fitting tomb for him
Whose heart did feed itself amid a scene
So strangely beautiful; for many a sound,
And silence—which is sound made awful—will
Breathe about his resting place, from glens,
From green hill tops, from old time-twisted trees,
From wave-worn caverns in the rifted rock,
From waters, sleepless as the listening stars
On which they gaze, from breezes touched and tuned
To storms or zephyrs; for in them he heard
What unto him was Poesy, and she
Peopled his solitude with things of joy!
Sad to remember that that laurelled brow,
Which held such wild imaginings, such powers

293

To clothe in lofty language lofty truths,
And sentiments which humanised and stirred,
Wears the cold hues of death. That cunning hand,
Which traced upon the page the living line,
Is paralysed; and that once piercing eye,
Lit with the reflex of an ardent soul,
Is veiled and quenched. That spark of deathless fire,
Which filled its shrine with glory, hath returned
To the pure fountain of immortal light
From whence it sprang, leaving its “darkened dust”
To mingle with its elements for ever!

Men lightly say—“This is the common lot;”
But when the gifted and the good depart,
We stand aghast, as if some well-touched string,
Breathing divinest music in our ears,
Was snapped asunder, even while our hearts
Were throbbing to its tones. But have we not,
Within a few brief moons, been called to weep
O'er the sad loss of many an eloquent mind
Of strength and beauty? For a voice hath said,
That he who fixed his soul in marble lives
In fame alone; that Wilkie's magic hand,
Which threw upon the canvas genuine life,
Hath lost its power in the remorseless grave;
That honest Allan, of the hardy north,
Hath hung his harp upon the cypress bough,
And joined a nobler choir; and Southey, last,
But far from least of these, hath rent away
The gyves of earth, and soared to happier spheres.

Yet let us not despair,—for Southey lives,—
Lives in the labours of a quiet life,
Well spent and richly fruitful. Few may claim
The laurel crown which he hath laid aside,
And wear the wreath so nobly and so long.

294

The lustrous diamond in profoundest gloom
Retains the light it gathered from the sun
From age to age; so hath the world received
And treasured up the lustre of the mind
Of him we mourn, which shall not melt away.
Let us imbibe his spirit, like old wine
Long caverned in the earth, and mellowed down
To strength and purity; but let us not,
Because some lees remain within the cup,
Reject as worthless the inspiring draught.

Those first brief bursts of his unsullied muse—
Those earlier flights of her rejoicing wing,
Light as the lark and buoyant as his lay,
Are ours to think upon and love. How well
He sang the sorrows of his race, and cried
Aloud against its wrongs! How sweetly breathed
His harp-strings, when the charms of Nature wooed
Their eloquent voices out! For these alone,—
For these few flashes of a feeling soul,
His laurel leaves shall keep for ever green!

Wordsworth!
Thou priest and patriarch of Nature!—thou,
Who wast a brother of the buried bard
In mind and fame! awake thine ancient lyre
To one last mournful melody, and mine
Shall shrink to silence at thy loftier song!

295

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO MY FRIEND JOHN BALL.

December 1843.

Dear Friend,

Free for an interval of time
To sleep or think, to read or rhyme,—
I hear yon steeple's measured chime,
With solemn weight,
Fling to the silent night sublime
The hour of eight.

Snug-seated by the chimney-cheek,
Too calmly indolent to speak,—
An evening custom through the week,
My tube of clay
Sends forth a light and odorous reek,
Like ocean spray.

The spiral cloud soars to the ceiling,
To Fancy's eye strange forms revealing,
Until I find around me stealing
So sweet a rest
That every kind and gentle feeling
Stirs in my breast.

296

(Thou tiny censer, burning slow,
Whose fire and fragrance soothe my woe,
I would not willingly forego
Thy quiet power
For all the dainty dazzling show
Of Fashion's hour.)

The flickering fire is dancing bright,
Dispensing genial warmth and light,
While beings pleasant to my sight
Are seated round;
And one doth read, and one doth write,
With scarce a sound.

Meanwhile, within the glowing grate
I see things wild and desolate,—
Rocks, mountains, towers, in gloomy state,
With other traces
Of monsters savagely sedate,
With gorgon faces.

But as I gaze they slowly change
To regions beautiful and strange,
Where lovely creatures seem to range
The red realm through;
Or English temple, cot, and grange
Start into view.

Outside, the myriad-fingered rain
Is drumming on the window pane,
And the strong night-winds wail in vain
To enter here:—
Alas! they move upon the main
With wrath and fear!

297

And now my thoughts are sent afar
To where the peril-seeking tar,
Without the light of moon or star,
Battles aghast,
And hears his proud ship's sail and spar
Rent in the blast.

Poor souls! who tempt the dangerous wave,
Your home, your empire, and your grave,
When winds and waters round you rave
In mighty madness,
Who shall extend the hand to save,
And give ye gladness?

Upbuoyed on Ocean's heaving flood,
A thousand breathing beings stood,
The brave, the gifted, and the good,
But yesterday,
Till the storm came in maddest mood,—
And where are they?

God of the tempest-ridden sea!
The solemn secret rests with Thee,—
With finite sense we are not free
To scan thy law;
'Tis ours alone to bow the knee
In silent awe!

Thus the sad chiding of the wind
Wakes memories of a mournful kind,
Which pour upon the restless mind
A tranquil balm,
As thoughtful here I sit reclined,
Secure and calm.

298

And thinking on the sleepless sea,
“Hungering for peace,” I think of thee,
And how with friendly souls and free
We strayed together,
To talk and dream of Poesy,
In summer weather.

I see that little rustic place
Where our “blithe friend,” with pleasant face,
Displayed with hospitable grace
Those goodly things,
Which quicken Time's lame, laggard pace,
And speed his wings.

The full o'erflowing of the breast,
The frank and unoffending jest,
The bright idea well expressed,—
The laugh and song;
The talk of Spenser, and the rest
Of Fancy's throng;

The antique chamber, warm and small,
The firelight flashing on the wall,
The social cup unmixed with gall,—
The whole delight
Passed like a vision to enthral
My memory quite.

Deferred too long, I seize my pen
(My wand of fancy now and then),
To tell you why, and where, and when
I scrawled this letter;
For in these courtesies, ye ken,
I am your debtor.

299

Yon crowded town, where stunned and tossed
I lingered long, and to my cost,
Caressed to-day—to-morrow crossed,
I've left at last;
And as I count the moments lost
I stand aghast.

And here I am, three leagues away,
Earning my dinner every day
As I was wont, before my lay
Found willing ears—
Without a single friend to say
“Put off thy fears.”

But yet I am not friendless—No!
My wife, fond sharer of my woe,
And Hope, that spirit-joy below,
Are with me still;
And God has blessings to bestow,—
I wait His will.

I have a corner in my heart
For thee, all generous as thou art;
For thou, like me, hast felt the smart
Of the world's wrong;
And thou art loth to live apart
From darling song.

And, therefore, do I wish to learn
If fortune's features grow less stern,
And if thou dost as yet discern
A brighter real,
Or if thy hidden thoughts still yearn
For the ideal.

300

Does Myra's cheek with gladness glow,
And her sweet mouth with laughter flow
As wont? Do all thy children grow
In sense and duty?
And does thy wife put off the woe
That veils her beauty?

With us the wretched rains and damps
Have turned the level fields to swamps,
And through the mist the drowsy lamps
Look dim and dreary;
But, save some fitful aches and cramps,
I'm well and cheery.

I've fallen in love, but not with Flora,
Nor Cynthia chaste, nor young Aurora,
Nor dark Gulnare, nor sweet Medora,
But with the shade
Of fair, fond, faithful fervent Zora,
A Syrian Maid!

Simply, I mean to weave a lay
Of love, to cheer me on my way;
And in my silent hours I pray
“God speed my pen,”
To which, methinks I hear you say
“Amen! Amen!”

Night wears, and, therefore, 'gainst my will,
I use the last drop in my quill
To tell thee I esteem thee still
In shade or shine;
And be our lot or good or ill,
I'm ever thine.

301

THE POWER OF PLEASANT MEMORIES.

Low drooping o'er my toil this afternoon,
With downward aspect, sombre as the air
Which slept around me, echoes of despair
Passed through my thoughts and put them out of tune.
Strong hope, of man the blessing and the dower,
With the calm will to fashion dreams, which rose
Instinct with mental splendour and repose,
Seemed shorn of their consolatory power.
Thus as I sat with melancholy face,
Resisting sadness with a faint endeavour,
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,”—
That verse of truthful melody and grace
Flashed through my darkened spirit, like the smile
Of sudden sunlight on a solemn pile.

As from her trance upleaps the joyous spring,
Like a young virgin on her bridal morn—
Flushed with expanding glories newly born,
While earth and air with merry greeting ring;
And Nature, strengthened by her rest, is rife
With fascinating purity and gladness,
So did my spirit, from its sleep of sadness
Start into active and delighting life.
Straightway I stood amid the classic glooms
Flung from the lavish pencil of young Keats,
Realms of immortal shapes, of mingled sweets,

302

Uncloying music, and unfading blooms;
The shadows of creations, which the boy
Nursed in his soul, and watched with silent joy.

Not one, but Legion, were the forms and places,
Laughing and lovely, solemn, and serene,
Which came with all their wonders and their graces
From Memory's treasure-halls, where they had been
Hoarded with miser passion. Spenser's sheen
And grandeur of romance; great Shakespeare's Muse,
Which holds all human sympathies between
The foldings of her pinions; Milton's hues
Stolen from the deathless amaranths of Heaven,
And woven in his own seraphic song;
These to my wakened faculties were given,
An ever moving, ever pleasing throng,
Until I stood, enraptured and alone,
In a strange world of beauty, boundless, and my own!

NEW YEAR'S DAY ASPIRATIONS.

Great God! a mighty multitude of years,
Unnumbered as the Heaven-adorning spheres,
Lit, living, moving, and upheld by Thee—
Are gone to that interminable sea
Which is unknown, unfathomed, and sublime,
The everlasting grave of all the things of Time.

The first faint dawning of another still,
Born of the sleepless goodness of Thy will,

303

Breaks newly, sweetly, through the kindling skies,
To which are turned our simultaneous eyes,
Filled with the heart's unbidden tears, which spring
A lowly, but a grateful offering
To Thee, our strength and hope from first to last
For blessings dropped beside our pathway of the past.

God of the world, and of the human soul
Held in the mystic bonds of Thy control,—
Maker of Virtue, Loveliness, and Truth,
The sister triad of eternal youth—
I glorify Thee, wander though I may,
Blindly or weakly, from Thy peaceful way;
Else why this restless longing to inquire
Into Thy hidden wonders—this desire
To read Thy book of stars, and see Thy power
Of silent working in the Summer flower?
Do I not worship when Thy lightnings break
Through the mid cloud-realm; when Thy thunders speak
With a tremendous eloquence, that thrills
The stony hearts of all the stalwart hills?
And in Thy other voices, which are heard,
From tiny organ of rejoicing bird;
From lapse of waters, twinkling as they run;
From bees assiduous in the sultry sun;
From leaves made tremulous by every breeze,
And the grand choir of stormy winds and seas,
Do I not hear in every sound a tone
Which speaks of Thy transcendent touch alone?

Thy grandeur, scattered with a goodly hand
O'er the upheaving breast of every land,
Hung in the boundless palace of the skies,
Fleeting or fixed to my enamoured eyes;
Holding an ancient solitary reign
O'er the mysterious empire of the main;

304

Clothing Thy change of seasons, ever rife
With mute and passive, loud and stirring life—
All glad my eye, and purify my heart
With joy and glory, of Thyself a part,
Till filled and blended with the things I see
I deem them symbols of Thy love and Thee!

Soul-searcher, Heart-sustainer! humbly now,
With the young year's first breathings on my brow,
With a fresh dawn expanding on my sight,
Melting the morning star's concentred light—
I ask Thy holy benison, and pray
That Thou wilt watch me from this very day,
As Wisdom watches o'er a wayward child,
Bidding me stand erect and undefiled!
Gird me with high resolves, and such desires
As fill the spirit with serener fires—
Which shine upon and warm, but not destroy
The seeds of virtue, and the flowers of joy.
Let not the worldling with insidious power,
Beguile me from Thee for a single hour;
Nor dim the “magic mirror” of my mind,
Hoodwink my judgment, smite my reason blind;
Nor freeze the well of charity, that flows
Freighted with feelings for all human woes;
Nor stir my meaner passions, till I rise
A strange anomaly to good men's eyes.
But let the lamp, which Thou hast lit within
This frail receptacle of grief and sin,
Fed by the life of Thine enduring love,
Burn on, aspiring to its source above—
A pure and steady guiding light to fame,
A sacred altar-fire in honour of Thy name.
And as Thou spar'st me for a little while,
Lend me Thy heart-regenerating smile;

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Expunge my countless errors of the past,
Till my life's record, stainless at the last,—
The good acknowledged, and the ill forgiven,
Stand as my passport to Thy blessed Heaven!

TO A YOUNG POETESS.

I know thou hast within thee, child of dreams,
Songs which have not been uttered—veins of thought
As rich and rare as ever genius wrought,
Brightening thine inmost soul with golden gleams.
Enthusiast of the Muse! thy dark eye beams
Light intellectual; thy youthful cheek
Looks tinged with fancies which thou wilt not speak,
And through thy heart affection's current streams.
Vanish thy maiden fears! it well beseems
A gifted one of Poesy to sing:
Reanimate thy harp and bid it ring
Loudly, but sweetly, to a thousand themes—
Express the yearnings of thy soul, till fame
Yield thee a wreath of light to crown thy after name.

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THE WOODLAND WELL.

I shall ever remember that morning of May
When I wandered to watch the first footsteps of day;
When I made a green path through the silvery dew,
And trampled the feather-like fern where it grew.
Untutored, but thoughtful, I then was a child,
In love with the silence that reigned in the wild,
And thus by the power of invisible spell,
I was led to the brink of the bright Woodland Well!

Sweet shadowy place of my musing, thy spring
Seemed ever a buoyant and beautiful thing,
As its waters leapt up from the depths of the ground
With a flash and a sparkle, a bubble and bound:
They sang in the shade, and they laughed in the light,
As blithe as the birds in their first summer flight,—
Then onward they went with a low pleasant voice,
Like bees in the sunshine let loose to rejoice,
Through banks sloping down from the green twilight bowers,
On—on was their march through a legion of flowers,
Which, shaking their bells as the waters passed by,
Paid homage in many an odorous sigh;
Let fancy pursue them for many a mile,
Through forests that frown, and through meadows that smile,
Through many a valley, and corn-field, and lea,
Till they mingle with rivers that rush to the sea.

Come back to the woodland, come back to the well,
That musical mirror of Barley-wood dell,—

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That treasure of crystal, to memory dear,
Exhaustless and restless for many a year.
When the rose folded up at the close of the day,
And the rich hues of sunset waned slowly away,
The light-footed maiden would step o'er the stile,
To replenish her pitcher, and tarry awhile,
Till her lover would steal through the shadowy bower
To snatch from existence one rapturous hour;
They would talk and caress, they would laugh, they would sing,
Till the bird in the bough, with a tremulous wing,
Would start from its slumber, and wheel round its nest,
Till silence restored brought it back to its rest.
Could that fountain have told all the secrets that fell
From the lips of the loving that met in the dell,
What a story of truthfulness, sorrow, or gladness,
Of moments of ecstasy, followed by sadness,
Of vows that were uttered too soon to be broken,
Of hearts that were won by the words that were spoken.
Some lovely and lost one might thither repair,
And drop in its waters the tears of despair;
Perchance e'en the faithful, the tender, the true,
Might return to the spot former joys to renew,
And allude to the past, with no wish to forget
The enchantment that hung round the place where they met.
In gloomy December, or glorious June,

That fountain unceasingly mirror'd the skies;
The meteor, the sun, and the silver-bowed moon,

The stars, with their numberless magical eyes;
The vapour-built cloud, with its protean form,
Whether pausing in calm, or pursued by the storm.
All—all in their turn o'er its surface would pass,
Like dreams over Fancy's mysterious glass;
Those visions of splendour and darkness that creep
Through the brain of the Bard in the season of sleep.

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Such—such was the well that I knew as a child,
In its green nook of quietness never defiled;
But, alas! after twenty long winters of strife
In the crowded arena of many-hued life,
I flew to revisit with feelings of joy
The scene which had made my romance when a boy,
And found it, not what I had left it, a spot
Where quiet, and beauty, and pleasure were not;
For the bold foot of Mammon had dared to intrude
On the sylvan recesses of Barley-brook Wood.
The trees were uprooted, the fern and the flowers
No longer grew gay in the sunlight and showers;
The well was laid bare, and its waters conveyed
To be tortured and tossed in the uses of Trade;
And the scene which was once my retreat and delight
Lay withered, and blackened, and bleak to my sight.
No longer the voice of the maiden was heard,
Nor the lisp of the leaf, nor the song of the bird,
Nor the lapse of the rill, nor the musical moan
Of the stream, as it danced over pebble and stone;
But sounds of rude clangour invaded the ear,
Which changed into discord the wild echoes near;
Like a pilgrim returned to the home of his birth,
When all that he loved has departed from earth,
I lingered awhile in the thraldom of thought,
To mourn o'er the ruin that Mammon had brought,
Then turned me away from the desolate scene,
As though, save in fancy, it never had been.

But still in my moments of grief and of gloom,
It comes, like a picture, in beauty and bloom,
As green and as silent, as fresh and as bright,
As when I first found it by May's morning light,
And though I look back with a sigh of regret,
The Well and the Woodland remain with me yet.

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JANUARY.

A FRAGMENT.

He cometh!—the elder-born child of the year,
With a turbulent voice, and a visage austere;
But his cold callous hand, and his boreal breath,
Prepare for new life the lorn relics of death!
To-day he is sullen, and solemn, and wild,—
To-morrow, as calm as a slumbering child.
To-day he is weeping a black, chilly dew,—
To-morrow, he smileth the weary waste through.
To-day he enrobes him in hues of the night,—
To-morrow in garments resplendently white.
A changeling in temper, but ever sublime,
Is this moody, mad offspring of stern winter time.

'Tis eventide. Roofed and shut in from the storm,
How dear is the hearthstone, so laughing and warm!
Where my cat sits composing her puritan face,
And my dog at my feet has his privileged place;
While a friend I have tried, and a wife that is true,
And a sweet child of promise, all smile in my view!
With the blessing of books, and a spirit to feel
The glory and goodness their pages reveal,

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I cling to the gods of my household—and hark—
Like a sorrowful outcast, that roams in the dark,—
The wind waileth by, and the fierce falling rain
Knocketh loud at my window, but knocketh in vain.
With the time-cherished legend, the heart-waking song,
With the prattle of childhood that never seems wrong;
With the voice of my friend in good-humoured debate,
And the smile of my wife, as she listens sedate,—
I feel the infusion of Heavenly things
As the hours hurry past on invisible wings:
Then a shake of the hand, and a look at the sky
Where the stars through a cloud-rift are winking on high;—
And I turn with a satisfied calmness of breast
Unto sleep, and the dream-life that covers my rest.

We sleep! But the Giver of sleep is awake,
For the snow, with its frost-fashioned, feathery flake,
Floats earthward, and falls on the bosom of night
With as silent a touch as the pulses of light.
Behold! through the mist of the dubious morn,—
His round, ruddy face of its bright tresses shorn,
The sun, like a reveller stealing to bed,
Affords but a glimpse of his comfortless head;
But he freshens, and lo! like a fame-eaten scroll,
Back—back from its beamings the fog-billows roll,
And we mark with delight on our dim lattice pane,
But yesterday dulled with a deluge of rain—
Quaint pictures of wavelet, and tendril, and curl,
Arrayed in the moon-coloured tints of the pearl;
And woodland and waterfall, temple and tree,
And shapes of the coralline depths of the sea,
In dainty confusion most cunningly tossed
By the fanciful pencil of frolicsome Frost.

I am out. (Who would prison his senses by walls,
When health-holy nature so lovingly calls?)

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I am out—and my veins and my vision are rife
With a positive feeling of glorious life:
For my step is a triumph, my breathing a joy,
My thoughts a sweet madness unmixed with alloy.
I am out in the country, and who will gainsay
That pleasure and profit await me to-day?

I am pacing the fields, where a rabble-rout crew
With foot-ball and snow-ball their pastime pursue.
I have passed the rude hamlet, all lonely and still,
Overtopp'd by the fir-feathered crest of the hill;
I am walking the woodlands, whose tribe of old trees,
Erect in adversity, baffle the breeze;
Where the many-armed, weather-warped, long-honoured oak
Seemeth bent with the weight of his white winter cloak;
Where berries, like ruby drops, nestle between
The leaves of the holly bough, glossy and green;
Where the pool hath no ripple, the river no sound,
And the petrified rill hangs aloof from the ground;
Where the sociable robin, alone on the spray,
Saluteth my ear with his querulous lay,
And shaketh to earth by the stir of his wings
Such jewels as deck not the ermine of kings!
Where the scene hath a beauty no words can disclose,
As it lies in a solemn, but splendid repose,
And the whole realm of majesty, silence, and light,
In the trance of mid-winter, appears to my sight
Like the worship of mute and inanimate things,
Overshadowed and hushed by Omnipotent wings:
And my soul, in accordance with nature lies bare,
Overburthened with wordless, but eloquent prayer!

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APRIL.

Sighing, storming, singing, smiling,
With her many moods beguiling,
April walks the wakening earth;
Wheresoe'er she looks and lingers,
Wheresoe'er she lays her fingers,
Some new charm starts into birth.

Fitful clouds about her sweeping—
Coming, going, frowning, weeping—
Melt in fertile blessings round;
Frequent rainbows that embrace her,
And with gorgeous girdles grace her,
Drop in flowers upon the ground.

Gay and green the fields beneath her,
Blue the broad unfathomed ether
Bending o'er her bright domain;
Full the buds her hands are wreathing,
Fresh the breezes round her breathing,
Fair her footprints on the plain.

Daisies sprinkle mead and mountain,
Violets by the mossy fountain
Ope their velvet vesture wide;
Cowslips bloom in open splendour,
But the primrose, pale and tender,
In lone places doth abide.

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Nature now hath many voices—
Every living thing rejoices
In the spirit of the time;
Winds with leaves in whispers dally,
Streams run singing down the valley,
In the gladness of the prime.

Larks have long been up and chanting,
And the woodland is not wanting
In the sounds we love to hear;
For the thrush calls long and loudly,
And quaint echo answers proudly
From romantic hollows near.

Now the cuckoo, “blithe new-comer,”
Faithful seeker of the summer
Wheresoe'er its footsteps be,
Sits in places calm and lonely
And, in measured cadence only,
Sends wild music o'er the lea.

Who doth not delight to hear her?
Children's careless eyes grow clearer
As they look and listen long;
Manhood pauses on his travel,
Age endeavours to unravel
Old thoughts waking at her song.

Unbeliever, wan and wasted,
If the cup which thou hast tasted
Turns to poison as it flows,
Come, while gentler spirits call thee,
Let her summons disenthral thee
Of thy weakness and thy woes.

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With the world if thou art weary,
If with doubt thy soul be dreary—
Crushed thy generous heart with care—
There is hope and there is healing,
Purer fancy, nobler feeling,
In this free, untainted air.

Mark this floweret, sweetly peeping
From the sod, where safe and sleeping
It hath lain the winter through—
How it opens with soft seeming,
To the breeze, and to the beaming
Of the sun-shower and the dew.

God hath made it, fed it, trained it
Into beauty, and maintained it
For thy use and solace, man;
Can such Guardian be forgetful
Of the selfish, sinful, fretful
Human portion of His plan?

All is gladness, all is beauty—
Nature with instinctive duty
Lifts her joyous homage high;—
Why should'st thou, with gloom ungrateful,
Turn on goodly things a hateful
Thankless heart, a scornful eye?

Wayward, wilful though thou seemest,
Dark and doubtful though thou deemest
The Eternal's glory, power, and name;
Nature, true to her designing,
Goeth on without repining,
Ever changing, yet the same.

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All thy thoughts are full of error;
Disappointment, strife, and terror
Make thy journey sad and rough;
Nature never can deceive thee,
But of half thy cares relieve thee,
If thou hast but faith enough:

Faith to feel that all her wonders,
Stars, flowers, seasons, calms, and thunders,
Seas that rave, and streams that roll,
Are God's every day revealings—
Mute and many-toned appealings
To thine apathetic soul.

Come and woo her—she will bless thee;
Let her fresh free winds caress thee—
Let her smiles thy love repay:
Come while she is proudly wearing
Bridal garments, and preparing
For the festival of May.

JULY.

Proudly, lovely, and serenely,
Power and passion in her eye,
With an aspect calm and queenly,
Comes the summer nymph, July—
Crowned with azure, clothed with splendour,
Gorgeous as an eastern bride,
While the glowing hours attend her
O'er the languid landscape wide.

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Now the mantle of Aurora
Streams along the morning skies,
But the bridal wreath of Flora
Loses half its sweets and dyes.
Fierce the noontide glory gushes
From the fountains of the sun,
And a thousand stains and flushes
Strew the heavens when day is done.

Then the heavy dew-pearls glisten
In the twilight pure and pale,
And the drooping roses listen
To the love-lorn nightingale:
While the stars come out and cluster
With a dim and dreary light,
And the moon's pervading lustre
Takes all sternness from the night.

Scarce the weary lark betakes him
To his ground-nest on the plain,
Than returning day-spring wakes him
Into gladsome voice again;
Scarce the dew hath wet the grasses,
Or the wild-flower's curvèd cup,
Than the thirsty sunbeam passes,
Drinking all its nectar up.

Now the lurid lightning breaketh
Through the dull and lingering rack,
And the solemn thunder speaketh
From its cloud-throne bronzed and black.
Gleaming in the fitful flashes,
Swathing all the welkin round,
Rain, smit earthward, dances, dashes,
With a quick, tumultuous sound.

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As the lightning, rain, and thunder,
Vanish with the cloven gloom,
All the breadth of nature under
Wakes to beauty and perfume.
Birds again essay their voices;
Bees renew their devious toil;
Man with grateful heart rejoices
O'er the promise of the soil.

Now the harvest-gathered meadows
With a second green are gay;
Now the wood's enwoven shadows
Lure us from the dusty way;
More than wont the streams delight us,
As they run their pleasant race—
And the lucid pools invite us
To their calm and cool embrace.

Shall I not, as here I wander,
Soul, and sense, and footstep free,
Where the fretful streams meander,
With a music dear to me—
Shall I not remember sadly
Those who have nor hope nor rest,—
Those who cannot know how gladly
Nature welcomes every guest?

Would the dwellers of the alleys,
In the city's stony heart,
Could behold these blithesome valleys,
From their wants and cares apart!
Would the pale and patient maiden,
Martyred at the shrine of Wealth,
Could but feel these breezes, laden
With the priceless blessing, health!

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Would the tiny toiling creatures
In the noisome mine and mill,
On whose withered hearts and features
Moral mischief works its will;
Would that they might lift their faces
In this liberal light and air,
And perceive the nameless graces
Of a scene so passing fair!

Let me homeward by the river,
As the golden sunset glows,
Where the corn-fields swell and shiver
To the blandest wind that blows:
By the woodland brooks that darkle
Through the tangles of the glade;
By the mossy wells that sparkle
In the hawthorn's chequered shade.

Through the dingle deep and bowery,
Up the pasture paths above,
Through the silent lane and flowery,
Sacred to the vows of love.
Homeward, yet I pause, exploring
All thy burning breadth of sky,
While my spirit sings, adoring
Him, thy God and mine, July.

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OCTOBER.

October a blithe and benevolent fellow,
Is here with his tresses enwreathed with the vine;
His broad visage glowing with purple and yellow,
As if he had quaffed of his own barley-wine.

His cloud-car of shifting and shadowy whiteness,
Up caught in mid air through the welkin careers;
His shield is the harvest moon, blest in her brightness,
His sword a light sickle, untarnished with tears.

His crown is a corn-sheaf—magnificent, truly!
Which whispers of peace as it waves to and fro;
His mantle of forest leaves, shaken down newly,
Is clasped with a belt of ripe apple and sloe.

'Tis a time for thanksgiving, oh let us be grateful
For beauties and bounties the season hath brought!
The heart of that being is woeful or hateful
Who can not, or will not, rejoice as he ought.

The grain in the garner, the grape in the presses,
Give earnest of plenty, and promise of joy;
And the soul, in the language of silence, confesses
His goodness, whose mandate can make or destroy.

Come, walk me the landscape, and cheerfully follow
The beck of our free-footed fancies to-day,—
By wild-wood and river-path, hill-side and hollow,
From shadows and sounds of the city away;

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For children are out on their devious ramble
(Sweet childhood! I cling to thy memories yet),
Who rifle the hazel-bough, halt by the bramble,
And stain laughing lips with its fruitage of jet.

How golden the garment of sunlight that covers
Earth's manifold features of glory and grace!
How teeming with silver the cloud-fleece that hovers
Above, in the measureless marvel of space!

The solemn old woods how they sadden! and slumber
In gorgeous tranquillity, fading though fair,
As if some rich sunset of hues, without number,
Had fallen, and rested in permanence there.

The cuckoo is gone, and the swallow prepareth
To wing his broad passage to far distant bowers;
Some region of splendours and spices, that weareth
The freshly-born beauties of bright summer hours.

Now turn we our steps, for the lusty sun lieth,
O'erhung with his banners of flame, in the west;
The rook to his cloud-gazing citadel flieth,
The hind to his homestead, the steer to his rest.

Let us feast upon nature, for silence and sadness
Will fling their stern fetters about her, ere long;
But the heart that is wont to partake of her gladness
Will find her, still living and blooming, in song.

High thought! that the soul of our mould is immortal!
Unwithered, unwasted, by season or time;
That a springtide eternal may open its portal,
And beckon us in to a happier clime!

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AUTUMN.

“Sweet is the quiet prime of Autumn time!”
A voice, like happy boyhood's, seemed to sing,
As half unconscious of the idle rhyme,
He carolled gaily, like a thoughtless thing.
“Sweet Autumn time! though jocund Spring be gone,
And Summer's fuller glories, one by one,—
Spring, with her lavish wealth of early flowers,
And early music in her festal bowers;
Her brief, resplendent rainbows, and her breeze
Rich with the breath of blossom-bearing trees,
Which drink the genial sunlight, as 'twere wine
Poured from a golden chalice half divine!
Summer, with languishing yet ardent looks
That stilled the fretful brawling of the brooks,
Till lightnings, born of many a labouring cloud,
Elanced their fires, and thunders, low or loud,—
Shook to the grateful earth the loosened rain,
And woke the waters into voice again.
When unmown meadow-lands were full and fair,
When slumbrous sounds were in the stirless air
Of bee that wavered on its sunny way,
Or weary song-birds' half forgotten lay;
When pleasure dimpled on the shadowy pool,
And tangled wood-haunts, still, remote, and cool,
Seemed full of sylvan visions, quaint and wild,
The dainty dream-life of the poet child,—

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Though these are gone, Autumnal season, thou
Wilt be my teacher and companion now.
Thy fields all golden with the ‘embattled’ grain;
Thy woods that glow with many a gorgeous stain;
Thy homestead orchards with fair fruit that blush;
Thy jet-bright berries on the bramble bush;
Thy rough, ripe, clustering nuts, that hang between
The lowly umbrage of the hazel green;
Thy shifting shadows on the silent waste;
Thy lightsome, lonely, lofty clouds that haste
Athwart the ethereal wilderness, and stray
Like wild flocks scattered on a trackless way!
These, and thy buoyant winds that come and go
While corn, fruit, foliage, waver to and fro;—
These, while the sturdy swain with skilful ease
Reaps the proud produce of the fertile leas,
Flinging his merry harvest songs around
With the unstinted tribute of the ground,—
These can delight, can thrill with nameless joy
The restless spirit of the roving boy.”

“A generous, joyous prime hath Autumn time,”
A voice, like hardy manhood's, seemed to cry,
Breathing a loud, heart-uttered, earnest rhyme,
Which rang beneath the mellow morning sky!

“Glad Autumn time! how leaps the expectant heart
At thy blithe coming, laden as thou art
With wine to cheer, with bread to feed the frame,—
Autumn, there's hope and promise in thy name!
Mothers and maids, young men and elders, see
What blest abundance clothes the quiet lea,
Bring forth the sickle,—bare the encumbered brow,
And nerve the lusty arm to labour now!

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Behold how droops the heavy harvest down,
A graceful plume for Plenty's golden crown!
There, let us bind the prostrate sheaves, the while
The noontide sun looks on with kindly smile,
And leave the poor man's progeny to glean
The scattered wheat-ears that we drop between!
'Tis done: and now the strong and ample wain
Receives its load of life-sustaining grain.
Uppiled, a trembling pyramid of gold,
It moves through stubble, pasture-field, and fold,—
Through woodland shades, by old romantic ways,
Beneath the low broad moon's unclouded gaze,
Until we store it, warm and weather proof,
Beneath the granary's capacious roof;
And anxious neighbours, unforbidden, come,
To share the triumph of our harvest home.

The cup is filled, the liberal board is set,
But ere we banquet, let us not forget
To lift the heart's best homage unto God
Who breathed His blessing on the pregnant sod!
Nor let us slight the unexampled few,
True to themselves, to natural justice true,
Who crushed the mighty error, and the power
That crippled commerce and withheld her dower;
That laid its selfish hands upon the soil,
Nor sought, nor soothed the home—the heart of toil.
That wrong is swept away, and other wrongs,
Scared by the eloquence of truthful tongues,—
Awed by the press, and perilled by the pen,
Shall cease to lord it o'er enlightened men!
Drink we in temperate draughts of generous ale—
God speed the plough, the sickle, and the flail!
Ye vintage gatherers, a lowly band,
Ye tillers of the ground in every land;

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Men at the spindle, women at the loom,—
Poor sempstress, pining in the sunless room,
Workers that weary in the perilous mine,
Ye toilers, tossed upon the stormy brine;
Smith at the anvil, grinder at the wheel,
Lone fisher leaning on thy venturous keel;
Hewers of stone, and builders of the wall,
Craftsmen that labour at the bench and stall;
May health, hope, freedom, plenty, peace, prepare
To bless your toils, and make your future fair!
Help is at hand, the darkness breaks away
From the quick dawning of serener day,
When ye shall sing in many a grateful rhyme
The gifts and glories of the Autumn time.”

“A sweet, yet solemn prime hath Autumn time!”
A pensive voice, like Age's, seemed to say,—
“Each of its warnings hath a tone sublime,
Each feature tells of splendour in decay!”
Sad Autumn time! sweet symbol of repose,
Can I behold thy rich harmonious close,—
All duties done, all promises fulfilled,
As an unerring Providence hath willed,
Nor feel, as Christian ought, a calm desire
Like thee in finished glory to expire?
I hear thy sere leaves, reft by every breeze
From the forsaken branches of the trees,
Shiver in air, and fall upon the ground
With a mysterious eloquence of sound!
I hear thy winds with mournful music sing
O'er naked fields that wait another spring;
Through woods that answer with a fitful moan
That make their solitudes seem doubly lone;

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But there's a language in thy tone, a power
That arms my spirit for the final hour;—
A language of high teaching, rich and rife
With happy promise of immortal life.
These trees shall bud again—these shades rejoice
With a full concert of melodious voice;
These fields shall smile, these sombre waters play
In the glad light of renovated day;
These skies shall put a gayer garment on
When needful Winter and his storms are gone:
But I must lay me in the quiet sod,
My faith unshaken in the love of God,
To re-awake in that celestial clime
Where perfect beauty reigns and knows no fading time.

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NORTH WALES.

ADDRESSED TO A POET-FRIEND.

These records of thy wanderings awake
Dear memories of that bold romantic land,
That mingling of the beautiful and grand
By God in nature moulded; where the lake
Sleeps in gigantic shadows, and the tower
(Which, crumbling, yet outlives the human power
That raised it) of the past records a troublous hour.

Make holiday once more; thou hast not seen
Cloud-girdled Snowdon's majesty of mien,
With all his rock-realm, wonderful and wide,
Where stern Llanberris lifts on either side
Twin lakes, his storm-rent citadels of stone,
Dark, splintered, inaccessible, and lone!

Thou hast not travelled up the sinuous length
Of pastoral Conway; nor beheld the strength
And beauty of its waters, as they boom
And flash, down leaping, in their glens of gloom.

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Thou hast not fettered Fancy with a spell
In grey Carnarvon, stalwart in decay,
Which calmly looks upon the busy bay
With all its chambers desolate and cold,—
A gaunt “romance in stone,” which seems to tell
A wild, strange story of the days of old.

Thou hast not trod with pilgrim foot the ground
Where sleeps the canine martyr of distrust,
Poor Gelert, famed in song, as brave a hound
As ever guarded homestead, hut, or hall,
Or leapt exulting at the hunter's call;
As ever grateful man consigned to dust.

Enthusiast as thou art, thou hast not heard,
In fair Llangollen's wilderness of charms
(Aloof from city vices and alarms),
The bleat of many flocks; the voice of bird
Sweet issuing from the sylvan depths of green
Which clothe the quiet slopes of that secluded scene.

Thou hast not passed the threshold of those homes,
Peaceful and far apart, o'er vale and hill—
Where those of ancient tongue, a simple race,
Cherish such virtues as in lordly halls
Die of neglect, and with glad heart and face
Perform harsh duties with a strenuous will.

Thou hast not listened by their evening fires
To lore, descended unto sons from sires,
Of ghastly legend and of oral song
By Cadwallador and Taleisen made,
Recording deeds of struggle, storm, and wrong,
When from the Roman's red resistless blade

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They fled amazed, in peril's bloodiest hour,
And in their mountain land withstood the invader's power.

Would we could go together, and explore,
With ready means, and minds of kindred mood,
Each quiet place that slumbers by the shore,
And all the inner haunts of solitude;
The cloud-crowned mountain, and the cloven glen,
Through which the fretful river leaps and flows;
Swart moors far stretching from the homes of men
In sullen silence, savage in repose;
Remnants of feudal pride and monkish power,
By the tenacious ivy clothed and graced,
And shepherd-peopled hamlets, grey and wild,
By circling hills and crowding woods embraced,
Where clustering graves, and consecrated tower,
Mementoes of a hopeful creed and mild,
Stand solemnly apart, for feelings undefiled.

Lakes gathered in stern hollows of the land,
Swept by the winds in their sublimest might—
Our eyes should gaze upon, and we should stand
Wrapt in tumultuous, but mute delight,
In presence of fierce waters, drinking in,
Till sense and soul were filled, their grandeur and their din.

And we would wander pensively along
The yellow beach, communing with the ocean,
Or sit and listen to the fisher's song,
Our hearts expanding with a sweet emotion,
Till sunset's magical and mingling hues
Had burned and faded, one by one, away,
Leaving the tender twilight to diffuse
A silent softness, a transparent grey

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O'er sky and wave; till o'er the mountain's rim
The moon and her one vassal-star should swim,
In the deep ether, with a dreamy light,
And call forth other stars to beautify the night.
Then for an hour or two we would abide
By the snug hostel's ample chimney-side;
Exult o'er toils o'ercome, recount our pleasures,
And linger fondly over memory's treasures;
Old times, old rhymes, old bards, old books, old places,
New dreams, new hopes, new knowledge, and new faces.

And we would visit (curious to behold
The moods, the manners, and the homely life
Of Cambria's hardy children, fair and bold,
The sire, the son, the husband, and the wife)
Quaint towns on festival and market days,
See bargains made, see purse and pannier laden;
Admire the lusty dance, and in its maze
Take hands ourselves, with some blithe pleasant maiden;
Exchange the courteous cup, and join the song
(Well as we could in so uncouth a tongue),
Snatch joy from the occasion, and increase
Our love of social unity and peace;
Or, when the Sabbath bell with morning chime
Broke on the holy stillness of the time—
To village churches quietly repair,
And offer up the heart's best homage there,
Rejoicing to behold good seed take birth
In such remote recesses of the earth;
And we would linger by the graves to know
How lived, how died, the occupant below,
Learn how the living sorrowed at the loss,
Yet leaned for strength and comfort on the Cross.

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So would we move and meditate awhile
In this, the loveliest corner of our isle;
Deep in its glooms and glories would we roam,
Till duty and affection called us home.
Here to admiring listeners we would tell
Of mountain cleft, rough cataract, and dell,
That stayed us on our pilgrimage; of nooks
Peopled and peaceful—all untold in books;
Or, left to silence and our thoughts, recall
From out the dimness of our cottage wall,
Shapes of stern grandeur, looming into light
And spots of beauty, soothing to the sight,
Transmissions of the memory to drown
The commonplaces of our crowded town:
From such warm solace what warm soul can sever?
“A thing of Beauty is a Joy for ever!”

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THE MERCHANT AND THE MOURNER.

I lingered at a lordly gate, before a lordly hall
With grove and garden girt around with low and mossy wall,
And from the gate a gravelled path swept gracefully and wide,
Up to the stately steps beneath the pillared door of pride.

Within that princely dwelling-place the Painter's master hand
Had hung the walls with Poesy from many a lovely land:
There soft Italia's sunny vales in quiet semblance smiled,
With mountain, lake, and waterfall, from Switzerland the wild.

And there were books of mental life, in student-like array,
More for the solace of the soul than splendour and display;
And goodly instruments of sound were placed in order there,
And woke to pleasant voice beneath the fingers of the fair.

And mirrors, set in massy gold, shed lustre on the sight,
And lamps of cunning workmanship diffused a mellow light,
And costly carpets clothed the floor, and couches offered ease,
And every fireside comfort met the child of wealth to please.

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And in the far-extended grounds triumphant Art had been,
To bring within her proper bounds the wild luxuriant scene;
There built the rook, there sang the bird of homely English dyes;
There flowers and fruitage blushed and bloomed, in spite of angry skies.

There bowers of shady solitude allured the musing mind,
Sweet spots of sylvan loveliness secure from sun and wind;
And there, reflecting cloud and star, transparent waters lay,
Scarce ruffled by the swan that moved along her silent way.

And he who owned that paradise, the Merchant of renown,
The honoured of the hamlet, and the flattered of the town,
Who duly went to Church and 'Change, and sought the shades of woe,
Was, in the spring-tide of his years, among the lowest low.

But kindness entered in his soul, even in his boyish days;
Give him the means of giving peace, he did not wish for praise;
The best of human sympathies awoke within his breast,
His words, his deeds, his secret tears, the gentle power confessed.

More kindly grew his honest heart to all the human race,
The language of benevolence was written on his face;
With self-denying prudence he, without or fear or guile,
Wooed Fortune in her mazy haunts until she deigned to smile.

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Wealth came, but did not bring the mien of insolence and pride,
Respectful to the powerful, he loved all else beside:
Thus, with his gold and gentleness he blessed the needy throng,
A constant guardian to the weak, a pattern to the strong.

At length, to please a polished taste, he bought him house and land,
And paid for household luxuries with large and liberal hand;
Sat down in peace and plentitude, with mind unwarped and free,
“Like wisdom,” so the poet sings, “with children round his knee.”

I lingered at his lordly gate the while my feelings rose
In silent homage to the man, and prayed for his repose;
And o'er my mental vision passed a scene remembered well,
Linked with a little history, which I essay to tell.

One evening in my wanderings near to our noisy town,
When Autumn breathed upon the woods, and turned their foliage brown,
I paused beside a lowly cot that looked upon the road,
Lifted the latch, and stood within the comfortless abode.

I saw beside the fireless earth a woman's well-known form,
Whose haggard features bore the marks of many a bitter storm;
The fire of joy, the bloom of health, from eye and cheek were fled,
And grief had sown its early grey upon that drooping head.

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Her sombre garments hung around her, labour-stained and wild,
And on her milkless bosom lay a weak and wailing child;
The cleanly cap of widowhood around her visage pale,
With her decayed and dreary weeds, disclosed too sad a tale.

I knew it all:—six months before, in the very prime of spring,
When bird, and bee, and butterfly, were roving on the wing;
When every hue was loveliness, when every sound was mirth,
A sudden cloud and silence fell upon the joyous earth.

Her loving husband, ailing long, with his departing breath
Muttered a blessing on her cheek, and slept the sleep of death;
Gone was the father, firm, though fond, the husband true and kind,
But woe, despair, and poverty, alas! remained behind.

His violin hung on the wall, the hat he used to wear,
There in the corner leaned his staff, there stood his vacant chair;
His favourite bird yet sang aloft at its capricious will,
And the old Bible that he loved lay in the window still.

But nearly all beside had gone for scanty means of life,
But not without a parting pang of deep and inward strife;
Then, even then, her eldest born dead on the pallet lay;—
Calmly the mother-mourner said, “She died but yesterday.”

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Dear God! what could that woman do, and all her helpless brood,
Within the wide and thoughtless world for shelter and for food?
Who would bestow upon her child a coffin and a grave?—
I prayed within my inmost soul that Heaven would stoop to save!

Startling my thoughts, some gentle hand smote the rude cottage door,
And one well known in sorrow's haunts stepped o'er the sanded floor;
The merchant's daughter fair and young, by many a heart beloved,
Her father's graceful almoner where'er her footsteps moved.

She gazed around the sad abode with quick and mute surprise,
While precious drops of sympathy suffused her earnest eyes;
She sat her down all pensively, with joy-abandoned air,
And for a moment seemed to breathe her soul in secret prayer.

With unobtrusive questions she drew forth the widow's woe,
While the rich blood upon her cheek went flitting to and fro;
With patient ear, and parted lips, the dark account she heard,
Till the deep fountains of her heart with kindred grief were stirred.

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She laid a purse of tinkling gold within the widow's palm,
Rose to depart, and spake again with voice subdued and calm:
“Mourner, the God who gave us wealth has sent his servant here,
Remember, in thy after need, my father's house is near.”

She went with blessings on her head, with beauty in her face,
A sister of sweet Charity, a messenger of Grace,
She went in virgin holiness, bent on her pure employ,
Leaving within the mourner's heart peace, thankfulness, and joy.

Like dew and showers in summer hours, shed from the wings of night,
Felt as a blessing on the earth when wakes the morning light,
The merchant's bounty fell abroad spontaneous and the same,
Refreshing many a languid soul that wist not whence it came.

When Heaven exalteth such as he, what hand would bring them down?
What heart would fret when Worth succeeds, what face at Virtue frown?
As well the fields might curse the clouds because they ride so high,
Or envious flowers upbraid the stars that burn along the sky.

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It is a rare and pleasant task to sing of generous power,
Oh! for a theme so beautiful for every passing hour!
When shall our mournful harps forget that sad, unheeded song
Of wants and woes, of toils and tears, too truthful and too long?

VINDICATORY STANZAS.

Whate'er I am, whatever sign I wear upon my sleeve,
Whatever creed my inmost heart may prompt me to believe,
Whatever right I recognise, whatever wrong endure,
I ne'er can yield my honest love for freedom and the poor.

The lowly and the suffering, the life-blood of the earth,
I'm one of them, to one of them I owe my children's birth;
And in my after years of life, however high my state,
I never can forget to plead for their unhappy fate.

For freedom did I say? ah, yes! for freedom just and true,
But not the lawless monster of the rancour-breathing few,
Who glide, like serpents, into hearts by toil and sorrow torn;
On them and their unholy deeds I fling my proudest scorn.

Freedom, whose law is Order, and whose action, wide and strong,
Can raise the wretched from the dust, and quell the rebel throng;

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Can weigh, adjust, withhold, bestow, with calm and steady hand,
And work in beauty, peace, and truth, for all within the land!

The poetry of England, in all its forms and hues;
The glowing words, the living thoughts of her transcendent muse;
The poetry that clings around her temples, halls, and towers,
And nestles in the sylvan depths of all her vales and bowers;

The poetry that clothes alike the cottage and the throne,
And speaks from every classic haunt, with high, majestic tone;
These have my deepest reverence, in these my thoughts rejoice;
“But the poetry of poverty should have a fitting voice.”

It has a voice, a stirring voice, sent from a thousand tongues,
From hearts that wish for all its rights, and feel for all its wrongs;
'Tis not the voice of fierce complaint, loud insolence and threat,
But that of calm, persuasive power,—the best and surest yet.

And mine, too, feeble though it be, and of a fitful sound,
But still the echo of a soul of sympathies profound,
Shall sometimes mingle with the rest, in pain's or peril's hour,
To warn, cheer, teach, and elevate,—if such may be its power.

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Perchance my lay hath ever been unsuited to the ear
Of those who feast on fiery thought, on bitter taunt and jeer;
But I am not of those who deem that words unwise and wild,
Can win one blessing for the poor, and make men reconciled.

A little song of cheerfulness to make their labours light;
A strain to open out their souls, and make them think aright;
A lesson which may lead them on to mend their common weal,
But not the stern anathema of false and factious zeal.

There are who with a puny pride my outward errors scan,
Alas! what little power is theirs to judge the inner man!
They think that my poor yielding heart, that impulse still controls,
Is narrow as their sympathies, and niggard as their souls.

Could they but read the hidden book, the life-book in my breast,
With sorrows, which they never knew, a thousand fold impressed,—
Could they but see its sentiments, its yearning, love, and trust,
And weigh its good against the ill, they could not but be just.

But that is not for them, and I dare not presume to claim
More virtues than the lowliest who bear a human name,
But in this world where men applaud, mistake, misjudge, condemn,
I only ask that charity which I would yield to them.

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There's good in all things, and 'tis well to seek it everywhere,
And when 'tis found, to honour it, and cherish it with care;
There's good in all the various forms of still and stirring life,
For all the boundless universe with excellence is rife.

And man hath always something good, or be he high or low
In intellect or circumstance, in happiness or woe;
His errors pity and remove, with mild and manly will,
And be his higher gifts your care and admiration still.

My badge is that which singles me from out the lower clay;
My motto, hope and thankfulness for blessings day by day;
My creed, that holy creed of love which Christ Himself hath given;
My party, all who walk the earth anticipating Heaven!

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CONTRITION.

Lord! in a weary labyrinth,
A wilderness of ways,
I've passed the freshness of my youth,—
The summer of my days;
Playing with Fancy's bubble thoughts,
Which as they glittered brake,
Snatching at flowers to feel the thorn,
Or venom of the snake.

But now I lay me at Thy feet,
With sad and trembling heart,
Or ere my better feelings fail,
My higher hopes depart,
I come—so late a sinful slave
In folly's low employ,—
To ask those better means of life
Which lead to holier joy.

In the calm hour of solitude
I lift my pensive eye
To read the burning language writ
Upon the silent sky;
And feel that He who lit the stars
And bade the planets roll,
Can chase the shadow and the strife
That linger in my soul.

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With sweet and simultaneous voice
All universal things
Speak of Thy watchful care, and feel
The shadow of Thy wings;
The placid and prolific earth,
The ever-wakeful sea,
And heaven's serene and starry depths,
Declare Thy love and Thee.

And wilt Thou not console me, Lord,
Admonish me and guide,
In tribulation's troublous time,
And in the hour of pride?
And wilt Thou not vouchsafe, at last,
By Thine own means, to win
Back to Thy fold an erring child
Of frailty, grief, and sin?

Thou canst, and when it seemeth good,
Thou wilt afford the clue
Whereby to leave the tangled path
My faltering feet pursue;—
Oh! bring me from the chilling gloom,
The cavern of despair,
That I may see the open day,
And breathe a purer air!

Oh! help me in my deepest need,
My Father, Friend, and Lord!
And make me drink with eager lip
The waters of Thy word!

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So I may rise refreshed and glad,
Unbowed by earthly ill,
My business and my pleasure both
To do Thy holy will.

For His dear sake who left Thy side
A fallen race to save,
To take all agony from death,
All terror from the grave,
Receive me 'mong the chosen ones
Who journey towards the sky,
And fit me for that Perfect Home
Where bliss can never die.

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LEONORE.

Oh! for a day of that departed time
When thou and I, lost Leonore, were young!
That dawn of feeling, that delicious prime
When Hope sang for us an unceasing song!
When life was love, and love was joy unworn,
And clouds turned all their silver to our gaze;
When each sweet night brought forth a sweeter morn—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

Oh! what a world of poesy was ours,
And poesy with passion undefiled!
Heaven with its stars, and earth with all her flowers,
Seemed made for us, for us alone they smiled;
Fused in each other's dreams, a constant spring,
One, yet apart, we trod all pleasant ways,
Sat down with Nature, heard her teach and sing,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

With thee all beauty wore a lovelier face;
With thee all grandeur a sublimer mien;
With thee all music was a holier grace;
With thee all motion ecstasy unseen;
Without thee life was colourless and vain,
And common pleasure a bewildering maze,
All thought was languor, and all effort vain,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

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I loved, how well let this worn cheek attest,
And these sad eyes with fresh tears streaming o'er;
Deep in the hidden chambers of my breast
The fire burns on, but ne'er to bless me more:—
Oh! Nevermore! a dreary word that falls
Like a dread knell that sets the brain acraze,
A word of doom that withers and appals,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

We loved, but one with unrelenting power,
With selfish soul intent on cruel schemes—
Stepped in between us one disastrous hour,
And swept to ruin all our hopes and dreams;
And we were parted, thou to share the life
Of the gay crowd that dazzles and betrays,
I to contend with penury and strife,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

I see thee as I saw thee “long ago”
(A fond, yet fatal time for thee and me),
When with the eloquence of love and woe
We blessed each other 'neath the alder tree;—
The aged alder, whose umbrageous boughs
Sigh where our native river sings and plays;
Which heard our earliest and our latest vows,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

I see thee as I saw, when, one sweet eve,
I dared to pour my passion in thine ear,
And thou didst lean to listen and believe,
With mixed emotions of delight and fear;
I see the quick blush flitting o'er thy cheek,
And the soft fire of thy confiding gaze,
I feel thy heart in throbbing language speak,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

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I see thee as I saw thee everywhere,
In the calm household graceful, quiet, kind,
In the broad sunshine and the breezy air
Bright as the beam, and buoyant as the wind;
I see thee flushed, and floating like a cloud
In the gay festival's enchanting maze,
And, lovelier still, in prayer serenely bowed,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

Thou wast my earliest Muse: from thee I drew
My inspiration, which hath found a tongue,
The feeling quickened, germinated, grew,
Till I was shadowed with a bower of song;
And now men hail and syllable my name,—
Would thou couldst share the glory and the praise,
Thy love would lift me to a loftier fame,—
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

Art thou of earth, sweet spirit of the past?
The lost and mourned, the adored and unforgot!
Hast thou been beaten by Misfortune's blast?
Or dost thou revel in a brighter lot?
Is there another whom thine eyes approve?
Is there another whom thy heart obeys?—
Or dost thou sorrow o'er thy blighted love?
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

Art thou of Heaven? and dost thou now behold,
Stooping, in pity, from thy sainted sphere—
Thy poor, forsaken worshipper of old,
Despairing, desolate, and darkling here?
I look for thee, I long for thee, I languish
To press thee, bless thee, ere my life decays;
Still my lorn soul cries after thee with anguish,
Where art thou, dearest of my early days?

347

THE POET'S WELCOME.

EXTEMPORE LINES READ AT A LITERARY MEETING IN 1842.

Welcome! ye worshippers of that sweet power,
The sweet mysterious power of Poesy,
That echo of the beautiful in shape,
Sound, hue, and fragrance; that calm voice
Of man's affections, aspirations, dreams;
That strange, impalpable, and blessed thing
Whose home is narrow as the human heart,
And wide as is the universe; that shade
Of God which passes through the mind of man,
And wakes within him thoughts which, wed to words,
Become the thoughts of millions; that pure ray
Sent down from the eternal fount of glory,
A sign and earnest of immortal life
Beyond the dim, dread barriers of Death!

Welcome! ye lovers of that spellful art
Which few possess, yet thousands can enjoy:
Welcome to this our festival of soul
And heart, where we may interchange the things
Which lie enshrined within us,—mental flowers
Which soon might languish, perish, pass away
Unnoticed of the world, did we not seek
To bring them from their solitudes, and throw

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The light of friendship round them, in the hope
That Fame will stoop to gather them ere long,
And weave them into wreaths for her eternal shrines.

The Poet's soul, bless Heaven, is rife with means
To multiply the pleasures of his race:
His warm heart thrills in sympathy with all
The suffering of the earth. The great and good
To him are ever glorious, and he yearns
“To throw those feelings out which bear him up”
Against the storms and sorrows of the world!
The scattered sons of humanising song,
Like twilight stars, ought not to reign apart,
As jealous of each other's light; but come
Clustering in one most glorious galaxy
Of mental splendour, as I see ye now!

Welcome again to this our old retreat,
This corner of antiquity! This group
Of wilding flowers which open to the night,
Breathing the holy incense of high thought,
May one day send its odours through the world!

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“THE TEMPTATION” AND “THE EXPULSION.”

EXTEMPORE LINES SUGGESTED BY DUBUFFE'S PICTURES.

Stranger! wouldst thou be charmed, here stand thee still
And scan that canvas, where the Poet's pen,
The Painter's pencil, and the hues of heaven,
Have made a mimic Paradise. How fair!
How femininely fair that perfect form
Of gentle Eve!—who, leaning on the ground
In sidelong loveliness, bribes Adam's hand
With the rich fruit of the forbidden tree!
That seraph-face, sweet, yearning, full of love,
With passionate appeal upturned to his,
Might almost tempt an angel form to sin,
Though kindred forms stood by. Observe thee, too,
The troubled aspect of our human sire:—
Full of a natural dignity and grace—
Is sad with doubts, perplexities, and fears,
As trembling 'twixt the evil and the good,
He sits in mute uncertainty. “Beware!”
For so our busy fancies seem to say—
Timely beware! nor touch the fatal fruit;
Seal up thine ear against the insidious words
Of her thou lovest, for a pitiless Fiend,
God's enemy and thine, inspires her tongue
With more than mortal eloquence and power.
Gird up thy spirit to resist her plea—
Think on the tenure of thy happy state,
Lest thy infraction of Divine command
Bring sin, tears, ruin, on thy after race!”

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Stranger! thy steps depart not, for behold
The great, dread deed at which the infant earth
Shuddered through all her veins; while angels wept
In unavailing pity—hath drawn down
The long and awful curse. Oh! what a change
Hath come upon that Eden, which, but now,
Smiled, the abode of purity and joy,
And peaceful compact 'tween all living things.
The elements are up in warfare; clouds
Hang hot and heavy in the troubled air,
Save where a lurid and mysterious light
Streams through the cloven darkness, and reveals
All other horrors of that fearful scene!
Look on our guilty parents, what dismay
And terror in the wild uplifted look
Of our primeval mother, as she lies
Prone, and encircled by the eager arms
Of him who shares the peril and the pain!
Half kneeling, with a face of strange distress,
Mixed with compassion, wonder, and despair,
He bends above the bringer of his fate,
As if to shield her from the dread effect
Of God's most just displeasure; while the Fiend,
Exulting in the havoc he hath made,
Askant surveys his victims, breathing flame,—
The fire of that interminable hate
Which shut him out eternally from Heaven!

Thus man's conception and designing hand,
With the sweet aid of many-coloured light,
Have boldly given to our admiring eyes
Twin pictures, vivid, truthful, and sublime;
And as we ponder on the solemn theme
Which gave them birth, involuntary thought
Pays silent tribute to the Painter's power!

351

TO THE MEMORY OF A DECEASED FRIEND.

'Mid the harsh Babel of the busy crowd
A sudden voice my inward spirit bowed,
A friendly voice, that told me of thy doom;—
That years, and sorrows, and the world's rude strife,
Had pushed thee from the battle-ground of life
To the oblivious calm that dwelleth in the tomb.

Shade of my friend! although my languid lyre
Withheld the mournful tribute of its fire,
Not the less dear thy memory to me;
Deep in my heart the solemn feeling lay,
Till the renewed remembrance of to-day
Came forth in feeble language, all unworthy thee!

Warm was thy soul, without or pride or guile;
Thy liberal hand, thy sympathising smile,
Were prompt the suffering wretch to cheer and raise:
To God devoted, and to nature true,
Gentle and genial as the summer dew
Thy silent bounty fell, nor asked for human praise.

And I have marked thy countenance and mien,
Quiet, but kindly—watchful, but serene,
Govern thy household more by love than fear;
And I have seen thy manly features glow,
And heard thy lips with eloquent speech o'erflow,
When souls of kindred mood around thy board drew near.

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Scorning vain show, thy not untutored mind
Cherished a lofty sense of things refined,—
Things that adorn, and dignify, and bless;
And loving Truth for her sweet sake divine,
That best religion of the heart was thine,
A yearning evermore to make man's sorrows less.

And thou did'st glory in the poet's song,—
Poet thyself, though nameless 'mid the throng
That cheer, charm, elevate the human race;
But now thou hear'st the everlasting hymn,
The harps and voices of the seraphim
That kneel in radiant ranks before the throne of grace.

If e'er again my vagrant footsteps stray
Along each pleasant and romantic way
We trod together in the summer glow,
Each form and feature of the varied scene
Will wake sad memories of what hath been,
And lift my chastened thoughts from transient things below.

In lofty Marsden's cultivated glades,
In lordly Gisborne's proud, patrician shades,
By gentle Calder's ever-tuneful stream,
On cloud-communing Pendle's barren side,
'Mid Whalley's ruins of monastic pride,
Fancy will raise thee up, to stir me like a dream.

In grassy Craven's long-withdrawing dales,
In gloomy Gordale, where the storm prevails,
By Malham's giant cliff and secret wave,

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And by that lonely tarn where once we sang,
Till the rough rocks with startled echoes rang,
Some thought of thee will come and whisper of the grave.

Friend of my later days! thou sleepest well;
And many a grateful tongue is left to tell
What gentle thoughts, what generous deeds, were thine;
And in that calm and consecrated spot,
Where thou, forgetting, wilt not be forgot,—
With thy dear children's tears I fain would mingle mine.

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ON THE DEATH OF TWO INFANT CHILDREN.

Alas for me!
Two bonny buds but newly-blown,
But into winning beauty grown,
From my domestic garden torn,
Have left me feeble and forlorn;
I miss them from my household tree,—
Alas for me!

Alas for me!
Two lambs, a blessing to behold,
Are taken from their earthly fold,
'Mid fairer pasture-fields to roam,
Round the great Shepherd's happier home;
And though I bow submissive knee,
Alas for me!

Alas for me!
Two jewels rarest of the treasure
Set in my crown of human pleasure,
Are shaken earthward, and each gem
Recalled to God's own diadem,
To shine where sinless seraphs be,—
Alas for me!

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Alas for me!
Two love-beams, sent from heaven to cheer
My lot of storm and darkness here,
Are gathered to the central light
Of climes unknown to death or night;
Would that my own sad soul were free—
Alas for me!

Alas for thee!
My own, my true, my patient wife,
Dear antidote of care and strife;
Fond mother of my babes that rest
In the mute earth's maternal breast!
What must thy double sorrow be?
Alas for thee!

But why repine?
Though the cold earth enshrines my dears;
Though moments scarcely count our tears,
A little hope, a little trust,
A little thought beyond the dust,
May fit us for that home of joy
Where they can never feel annoy,
Where they, perchance, keep watch, and wait
Our coming to that radiant gate
That opens into life divine,—
Then why repine?

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SABBATH EVENING THOUGHTS.

In the calm shadow of this Sabbath night,
Restraining vicious thought and vain desire,
I sit with sober, but unseen delight,
In the blither presence of my flickering fire;—
Recall my struggles with the stormy past,
And wonder how my heart withstood the trying blast.

And yet it beats within my quiet breast
As warmly, not as wildly, as of old;
Perchance a little better for the test
Of human sorrows, mixed and manifold:
Perchance more fitted to repel or bear
The now familiar stings of poverty and care.

Books are about me, full of glorious things,
Left by the good and gifted of the earth,—
Pearls shaken, like the dews, from Fancy's wings,
Burnings of pathos, scintillings of mirth;
And, what is nearer unto Heaven allied,
The Christian's treasure-page, and comforter, and guide!

Beings, how dearly loved! are circled round,
Talking together in an undertone
Of pleasant voices, lest too rude a sound
Should wake the dreamer from his musings lone:

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While the old cricket in his corner dim,
Pours on my passive ear his undisturbing hymn.

My street-bound home is unadorned and small,
With an accessible and ready door;—
No picture smiling on the plaster wall,
No carpet sleeping on the stony floor;
No graceful garniture, no couch of down,
No rich array of robes to make the envious frown.

But there is food prepared from day to day,
Won by the energies of hand and brain;
A hard, but grateful bed, whereon to lay
The limb of labour, and the head of pain:
And peace is with my household morn and night,
While through life's passing clouds love looks with purer light.

Beholding others sinking deeper still
On the rough road of our uncertain life,
Feeble, indeed, though resolute in will,
Waging with fortune a perpetual strife;
Partly forgetful of my darker days,
My silent soul sends up involuntary praise.

Originally entitled “Moments of Meditation; an extempore fragment,” and dated 10th February 1844.

358

LINES

WRITTEN IN RHUDDLAN CASTLE, NORTH WALES.

Retreat of our fathers, who battled and bled
Against the unhallowed invasion of Rome,
Who, vanquished by numbers, were scattered and fled
To find 'mid these solitudes freedom and home,
Preserving through sorrows and changes untold,
The firmness, the feelings, the language of old.

I come, in the light of the blue summer skies,
To visit thy beauties, wild Cambrian land!
Already thy mountains rise dark on my eyes,
And blooming before me thy valleys expand;
Thy rude rocks invite me, thy floods, as they flow,
Allure me to follow wherever they go.

I will muse in thy castles, I'll look from thy hills,
I'll plunge in the depths of thy forests and vales;
I will climb to thy cataracts, drink at thy rills,
And list to thy songs and thy stories, old Wales!
I will dream by thy rivers, and proudly explore
Every path which Tradition hath trodden before.

A pilgrim I am, and a pilgrim I've been,
And a pilgrim I would be while vigour remains,
My fond feet have wandered o'er many a scene,
But none which surpasses thy mountains and plains;

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And I marvel that e'er I could linger to see
A land less enchanting, less glorious than thee.

There are beings I love without coldness or guile,
There are friends I would cling to whatever betide,
My absence from these may be borne for awhile,
But the others will mourn me away from their side;
Yet a season will come when my manhood is past,
That will bind me to one little circle at last.

With a feeling of wonder I pause on my way,
In a ruin where monarchs held splendour and place,
But pleasures await me for many a day,
In a region of poesy, grandeur, and grace;
For a time I will linger by hill, stream, and glen,
Then back to the common existence of men.