The poetical works of James Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

A Wanderer of Switzerland and his Family, consisting of his Wife, his Daughter, and her young Children, emigrating from their Country, in consequence of its Subjugation by the French, in 1798, arrive at the Cottage of a Shepherd, beyond the Frontiers, where they are hospitably entertained.

Shep.
“Wanderer, whither dost thou roam?
Weary wanderer, old and grey;
Wherefore hast thou left thine home
In the sunset of thy day?”

Wanderer.

“In the sunset of my day,
Stranger, I have lost my home:
Weary, wandering, old and grey,
Therefore, therefore do I roam.

Here mine arms a wife enfold,
Fainting in their weak embrace;
There my daughter's charms behold,
Withering in that widow'd face.

These her infants—O their Sire,
Worthy of the race of TELL,
In the battle's fiercest fire,
—In his country's battle fell!”

Shep.
“Switzerland then gave thee birth?”

Wand.
“Ay—'twas Switzerland of yore;
But, degraded spot of earth!
Thou art Switzerland no more:

O'er thy mountains, sunk in blood,
Are the waves of ruin hurl'd;
Like the waters of the flood
Rolling round a buried world.”

Shep.
“Yet will Time the deluge stop:
Then may Switzerland be blest:
On St. Gothard's hoary top
Shall the Ark of Freedom rest.”

Wand.
“No!—Irreparably lost,
On the day that made us slaves,
Freedom's Ark, by tempest tost,
Founder'd in the swallowing waves.”

Shep.

“Welcome, Wanderer as thou art,
All my blessings to partake;
Yet thrice welcome to my heart,
For thine injured country's sake.

On the western hills afar
Evening lingers with delight,
While she views her favourite star
Brightening on the brow of night.

Here, though lowly be my lot,
Enter freely, freely share
All the comforts of my cot,
Humble shelter, homely fare.

Spouse! I bring a suffering guest,
With his family of grief;
Give the weary pilgrims rest,
Yield the Exiles sweet relief.”

Shep.'s Wife.
“I will yield them sweet relief:
Weary pilgrims! welcome here;
Welcome, family of grief!
Welcome to my warmest cheer.”

Wand.
“When in prayer the broken heart
Asks a blessing from above,
Heaven shall take the Wanderer's part.
Heaven reward the stranger's love.”

Shep.

“Haste, recruit the failing fire,
High the winter-faggots raise:
See the crackling flames aspire;
O how cheerfully they blaze!

Mourners! now forget your cares,
And, till supper-board be crown'd,
Closely draw your fireside chairs;
Form the dear domestic round.”

Wand.
“Host! thy smiling daughters bring,
Bring those rosy lads of thine:
Let them mingle in the ring
With these poor lost babes of mine.”

Shep.
“Join the ring, my girls and boys;
This enchanting circle, this
Binds the social loves and joys;
'Tis the fairy ring of bliss!”

Wand.

“O ye loves and joys! that sport
In the fairy ring of bliss,
Oft with me ye held your court;
I had once a home like this!

Bountiful my former lot
As my native country's rills;
The foundations of my cot
Were her everlasting hills.

But those streams no longer pour
Rich abundance round my lands;
And my father's cot no more
On my father's mountain stands.

By an hundred winters piled,
When the Glaciers, dark with death,
Hang o'er precipices wild,
Hang—suspended by a breath:

If a pulse but throb alarm,
Headlong down the steeps they fall;
—For a pulse will break the charm,—
Bounding, bursting, burying all.

Struck with horror, stiff and pale,
When the chaos breaks on high,
All that view it from the vale,
All that hear it coming, die:—

In a day and hour accurst,
O'er the wretched land of TELL,
Thus the Gallic ruin burst,
Thus the Gallic glacier fell!”

Shep.
“Hush that melancholy strain;
Wipe those unavailing tears:”

Wand.
“Nay—I must, I will complain;
'Tis the privilege of years:

'Tis the privilege of Woe,
Thus her anguish to impart:
And the tears that freely flow
Ease the agonising heart.”

Shep.

“Yet suspend thy griefs awhile:
See the plenteous table crown'd;
And my wife's endearing smile
Beams a rosy welcome round.

Cheese from mountain-dairies prest,
Wholesome herbs, nutritious roots,
Honey from the wild-bee's nest,
Cheering wine and ripen'd fruits:

These, with soul-sustaining bread,
My paternal fields afford:—
On such fare our fathers fed;
Hoary pilgrim! bless the board.”

II. PART II.

After supper, the Wanderer, at the desire of his host, relates the sorrows and sufferings of his Country, during the Invasion and Conquest of it by the French, in connection with his own Story.

Shep.
“Wanderer! bow'd with griefs and years,
Wanderer, with the cheek so pale,
O give language to those tears!
Tell their melancholy tale.”

Wand.

“Stranger-friend, the tears that flow
Down the channels of this cheek
Tell a mystery of woe
Which no human tongue can speak.

Not the pangs of ‘Hope deferr'd’
My tormented bosom tear:—
On the tomb of hope interr'd
Scowls the spectre of Despair.

Where the Alpine summits rise,
Height o'er height stupendous hurl'd;
Like the pillars of the skies,
Like the ramparts of the world:

Born in Freedom's eagle nest,
Rock'd by whirlwinds in their rage,
Nursed at Freedom's stormy breast,
Lived my sires from age to age.

High o'er Underwalden's vale,
Where the forest fronts the morn;
Whence the boundless eye might sail
O'er a sea of mountains borne;

There my little native cot
Peep'd upon my father's farm:—
Oh! it was a happy spot,
Rich in every rural charm!

There my life, a silent stream,
Glid along, yet seem'd at rest;
Lovely as an infant's dream
On the waking mother's breast.

Till the storm that wreck'd the world,
In its horrible career,
Into hopeless ruin hurl'd
All this aching heart held dear.

On the princely towers of Berne
Fell the Gallic thunder-stroke:
To the Lake of poor Lucerne,
All submitted to the yoke.

Reding then his standard raised,
Drew his sword on Brunnen's plain;
But in vain his banner blazed,
Reding drew his sword in vain.

Where our conquering fathers died;
Where their awful bones repose;

Thrice the battle's fate he tried,
Thrice o'erthrew his country's foes.

Happy then were those who fell
Fighting on their fathers' graves!
Wretched those who lived to tell,
Treason made the victors slaves!

Thus my country's life retired,
Slowly driven from part to part,
Underwalden last expired,
Underwalden was the heart.

In the valley of their birth,
Where our guardian mountains stand;
In the eye of heaven and earth,
Met the warriors of our land.

Like their Sires in olden time,
Arm'd they met in stern debate;
While in every breast sublime
Glow'd the Spirit of the State.

Gallia's menace fired their blood;
With one heart and voice they rose:
Hand in hand the heroes stood,
And defied their faithless foes.

Then to heaven, in calm despair,
As they turn'd the tearless eye,
By their country's wrongs they sware
With their country's rights to die.

Albert from the council came:
(My poor daughter was his wife;
All the valley lov'd his name;
Albert was my staff of life.)

From the council-field he came;
All his noble visage burn'd;
At his look I caught the flame,
At his voice my youth return'd.

Fire from heaven my heart renew'd;
Vigour beat through every vein;
All the powers that age had hew'd,
Started into strength again.

Sudden from my couch I sprang,
Every limb to life restored;
With the bound my cottage rang,
As I snatch'd my father's sword.

This the weapon they did wield,
On Morgarthen's dreadful day;
And through Sempach's iron field
This the ploughshare of their way.

Then, my Spouse! in vain thy fears
Strove my fury to restrain;
O my daughter! all thy tears,
All thy children's, were in vain.

Quickly from our hastening foes,
Albert's active care removed,
Far amidst the eternal snows,
These who loved us,—these beloved.

Then our cottage we forsook;
Yet, as down the steeps we pass'd,
Many an agonising look
Homeward o'er the hills we cast.

Now we reach'd the nether glen,
Where in arms our brethren lay;

Thrice five hundred fearless men,
Men of adamant were they!

Nature's bulwarks, built by Time,
'Gainst Eternity to stand,
Mountains terribly sublime,
Girt the camp on either hand.

Dim, behind, the valley brake
Into rocks that fled from view;
Fair in front the gleaming Lake
Roll'd its waters bright and blue.

'Midst the hamlets of the dale,
Stantz, with simple grandeur crown'd,
Seem'd the Mother of the vale,
With her children scatter'd round.

'Midst the ruins of the dale,
Now she bows her hoary head,
Like the Widow of the vale
Weeping o'er her offspring dead.

Happier then had been her fate,
Ere she fell by such a foe,
Had an earthquake sunk her state,
Or the lightning laid her low!”

Shep.
“By the lightning's deadly flash
Would her foes had been consumed!
Or amidst the earthquake's crash
Suddenly, alive, entomb'd!

Why did justice not prevail?”

Wand.
“Ah! it was not thus to be!”

Shep.
—“Man of grief, pursue thy tale
To the death of Liberty.”

III. PART III.

The Wanderer continues his Narrative, and describes the Battle and Massacre of Underwalden.

Wand.

“From the valley we descried,
As the Gauls approach'd our shores,
Keels that darken'd all the tide,
Tempesting the Lake with oars.

Then the mountain-echoes rang
With the clangour of alarms:
Shrill the signal-trumpet sang;
All our warriors leap'd to arms.

On the margin of the flood,
While the frantic foe drew nigh;
Grim as watching wolves we stood,
Prompt as eagles stretch'd to fly.

In a deluge upon land
Burst their overwhelming might;
Back we hurl'd them from the strand,
Oft returning to the fight.

Fierce and long the combat held;
—Till the waves were warm with blood,
Till the booming waters swell'd
As they sank beneath the flood.

For, on that triumphant day,
Underwalden's arms once more
Broke Oppression's black array,
Dash'd invasion from her shore.

Gaul's surviving barks retired,
Muttering vengeance as they fled:
Hope in us, by Conquest fired,
Raised our spirits from the dead.

From the dead our spirits rose,
To the dead they soon return'd;
Bright, on its eternal close,
Underwalden's glory burn'd.

Star of Switzerland! whose rays
Shed such sweet expiring light,
Ere the Gallic comet's blaze
Swept thy beauty into night:—

Star of Switzerland! thy fame
No recording Bard hath sung;
Yet be thine immortal name
Inspiration to my tongue!

While the lingering moon delay'd
In the wilderness of night,

Ere the morn awoke the shade
Into loveliness and light;—

Gallia's tigers, wild for blood,
Darted on our sleeping fold;
Down the mountains, o'er the flood,
Dark as thunder-clouds they roll'd.

By the trumpet's voice alarm'd,
All the valley burst awake;
All were in a moment arm'd,
From the barriers to the lake.

—In that valley, on that shore,
When the graves give up their dead,
At the trumpet's voice once more
Shall those slumberers quit their bed.

For the glen that gave them birth
Hides their ashes in its womb:
O! 'tis venerable earth,
Freedom's cradle, Freedom's tomb.

Then on every side begun
That unutterable fight;
Never rose the astonish'd sun
On so horrible a sight.

Once an eagle of the rock
('Twas an omen of our fate)
Stoop'd, and from my scatter'd flock
Bore a lambkin to his mate.

While the Parents fed their young,
Lo! a cloud of vultures lean,
By voracious famine stung,
Wildly screaming rush'd between.

Fiercely fought the eagle-twain,
Though by multitudes opprest,
Till their little ones were slain,
Till they perish'd on their nest.

More unequal was the fray
Which our band of brethren waged;
More insatiate o'er their prey
Gaul's remorseless vultures raged.

In innumerable waves,
Swoln with fury, grim with blood,
Headlong roll'd the hordes of slaves,
And ingulph'd us with a flood.

In the whirlpool of that flood,
Firm in fortitude divine,
Like the eternal rocks we stood
In the cataract of the Rhine.

Till by tenfold force assail'd,
In a hurricane of fire,
When at length our phalanx fail'd,
Then our courage blazed the higher.

Broken into feeble bands,
Fighting in dissever'd parts,
Weak and weaker grew our hands,
Strong and stronger still our hearts.

Fierce amid the loud alarms,
Shouting in the foremost fray,
Children raised their little arms
In their country's evil day.

On their country's dying bed,
Wives and husbands pour'd their breath;
Many a Youth and Maiden bled,
Married at thine altar, Death.

Wildly scatter'd o'er the plain,
Bloodier still the battle grew:—
O ye Spirits of the slain,
Slain on those your prowess slew!

Who shall now your deeds relate?
Ye that fell unwept, unknown;
Mourning for your country's fate,
But rejoicing in your own!

Virtue, valour, nought avail'd
With so merciless a foe;
When the nerves of heroes fail'd,
Cowards then could strike a blow.

Cold and keen the assassin's blade
Smote the Father to the ground;

Through the infant's breast convey'd
To the mother's heart a wound.

Underwalden thus expired;
But at her expiring flame,
With fraternal feeling fired,
Lo! a band of Switzers came.

From the steeps beyond the lake,
Like a Winter's weight of snow,
When the huge Lavanges break,
Devastating all below;

Down they rush'd with headlong might,
Swifter than the panting wind;
All before them fear and flight;
Death and silence all behind.

How the forest of the foe
Bow'd before their thunder strokes,
When they laid the cedars low,
When they overwhelm'd the oaks!

Thus they hew'd their dreadful way;
Till, by numbers forced to yield,
Terrible in death they lay,
The Avengers of the Field.”

IV. PART IV.

The Wanderer relates the Circumstances attending the Death of Albert.

Shep.

“Pledge the memory of the Brave,
And the Spirits of the dead;
Pledge the venerable Grave,
Valour's consecrated bed.

Wanderer! cheer thy drooping soul;
This inspiring goblet take;
Drain the deep delicious bowl,
For thy martyr'd brethren's sake.”

Wand.

“Hail!—all hail! the Patriot's grave,
Valour's venerable bed:
Hail! the memory of the Brave;
Hail! the Spirits of the dead.

Time their triumphs shall proclaim,
And their rich reward be this,—
Immortality of fame,
Immortality of bliss.”

Shep.
“On that melancholy plain,
In that conflict of despair,
How was noble Albert slain?
How didst thou, old Warrior, fare?”

Wand.

“In the agony of strife,
Where the heart of battle bled,
Where his country lost her life,
Glorious Albert bow'd his head.

When our phalanx broke away,
And our stoutest soldiers fell,
—Where the dark rocks dimm'd the day,
Scowling o'er the deepest dell;

There, like lions old in blood,
Lions rallying round their den,
Albert and his warriors stood:
We were few, but we were men.

Breast to breast we fought the ground,
Arm to arm repell'd the foe:
Every motion was a wound,
And a death was every blow.

Thus the clouds of sunset beam
Warmer with expiring light;
Thus autumnal meteors stream
Redder through the darkening night.

Miracles our champions wrought—
Who their dying deeds shall tell?
O, how gloriously they fought!
How triumphantly they fell!

One by one gave up the ghost,
Slain, not conquer'd,—they died free.
Albert stood,—himself an host:
Last of all the Swiss was he.

So, when night, with rising shade,
Climbs the Alps from steep to steep,

Till in hoary gloom array'd
All the giant-mountains sleep—

High in heaven their monarch stands
Bright and beauteous from afar,
Shining into distant lands
Like a new-created star.

While I struggled through the fight,
Albert was my sword and shield;
Till strange horror quench'd my sight,
And I fainted on the field.

Slow awakening from that trance,
When my soul return'd to day,
Vanish'd were the fiends of France,
—But in Albert's blood I lay.

Slain for me, his dearest breath
On my lips he did resign;
Slain for me, he snatch'd his death
From the blow that menaced mine.

He had raised his dying head,
And was gazing on my face;
As I woke,—the spirit fled,
But I felt his last embrace.”

Shep.
“Man of suffering! such a tale
Would wring tears from marble eyes!”

Wand.
“Ha! my daughter's cheek grows pale!”

W.'s Wife.
“Help, O help! my daughter dies!”

Wand.
“Calm thy transports, O my wife!
Peace for these dear orphans' sake!”

W.'s Wife.
“O my joy, my hope, my life,
O my child, my child awake!”

Wand.
“God! O God, whose goodness gives;
God! whose wisdom takes away;
Spare my child!”

Shep.
—‘She lives, she lives!”

Wand.
“Lives?—my daughter, didst thou say?

God Almighty, on my knees,
In the dust will I adore
Thine unsearchable decrees;
—She was dead:—she lives once more!”

W.'s Dtr.
“When poor Albert died, no prayer
Call'd him back to hated life:
O that I had perish'd there,
Not his widow, but his wife!”

Wand.
“Dare my daughter thus repine?
Albert! answer from above;
Tell me,—are these infants thine,
Whom their mother does not love?”

W.'s Dtr.

“Does not love!—my father, hear!
Hear me, or my heart will break:
Dear is life, but only dear
For my parents', children's sake.

Bow'd to Heaven's mysterious will,
I am worthy yet of you;
Yes!—I am a mother still,
Though I feel a widow too.”

Wand.
“Mother, Widow, Mourner, all,
All kind names in one,—my child;
On thy faithful neck I fall;
Kiss me,—are we reconciled?”

W.'s Dtr.
“Yes, to Albert I appeal:—
Albert, answer from above,
That my father's breast may feel
All his daughter's heart of love.”

Shep.'s Wife.
“Faint and way-worn as they be
With the day's long journey, Sire,
Let thy pilgrim family
Now with me to rest retire.”

Wand.

“Yes, the hour invites to sleep;
Till the morrow we must part:
—Nay, my daughter, do not weep,
Do not weep and break my heart.

Sorrow-soothing sweet repose
On your peaceful pillows light;
Angel-hands your eyelids close;
Dream of Paradise to-night.”

V. PART V.

The Wanderer, being left alone with the Shepherd, relates his Adventures after the Battle of Underwalden.

Shep.

“When the good man yields his breath
(For the good man never dies),
Bright beyond the gulf of death,
Lo! the land of promise lies.

Peace to Albert's awful shade,
In that land where sorrows cease;
And to Albert's ashes, laid
In the earth's cold bosom, peace.”

Wand.

“On the fatal field I lay
Till the hour when twilight pale,
Like the ghost of dying day,
Wander'd down the darkening vale.

Then in agony I rose,
And with horror look'd around,
Where embracing, friends and foes,
Dead and dying, strew'd the ground.

Many a widow fix'd her eye,
Weeping where her husband bled,
Heedless though her babe was by,
Prattling to his father dead.

Many a mother, in despair
Turning up the ghastly slain,
Sought her son, her hero, there,
Whom she long'd to seek in vain.

Dark the evening-shadows roll'd
On the eye that gleam'd in death;
And the evening-dews fell cold
On the lip that gasp'd for breath.

As I gazed, an ancient dame,
—She was childless by her look,—
With refreshing cordials came;
Of her bounty I partook.

Then, with desperation bold,
Albert's precious corpse I bore
On these shoulders weak and old,
Bow'd with misery before.

Albert's angel gave me strength,
As I stagger'd down the glen;
And I hid my charge at length
In its wildest, deepest den.

Then returning through the shade
To the battle-scene, I sought,
'Mongst the slain, an axe and spade;—
With such weapons Freemen fought.

Scythes for swords our youth did wield
In that execrable strife;
Ploughshares in that horrid field
Bled with slaughter, breathed with life.

In a dark and lonely cave,
While the glimmering moon arose,
Thus I dug my Albert's grave;
There his hallow'd limbs repose.

Tears then, tears too long represt,
Gush'd:—they fell like healing balm,
Till the whirlwind in my breast
Died into a dreary calm.

On the fresh earth's humid bed,
Where my martyr lay enshrined,
This forlorn, unhappy head,
Crazed with anguish, I reclined.

But while o'er my weary eyes
Soothing slumbers seem'd to creep,
Forth I sprang, with strange surprise,
From the clasping arms of sleep.

For the bones of Albert dead
Heaved the turf with horrid throes,
And his grave beneath my head
Burst asunder;—Albert rose!

‘Ha! my Son—my Son,’ I cried,
‘Wherefore hast thou left thy grave?’
—‘Fly, my father,’—he replied;
‘Save my wife—my children save.’—

In the passing of a breath
This tremendous scene was o'er.
Darkness shut the gates of Death,
Silence seal'd them as before.

One pale moment fix'd I stood
In astonishment severe;
Horror petrified my blood,—
I was wither'd up with fear.

Then a sudden trembling came
O'er my limbs; I felt on fire,
Burning, quivering like a flame
In the instant to expire.”

Shep.
“Rather like the mountain-oak,
Tempest-shaken, rooted fast,
Grasping strength from every stroke,
While it wrestles with the blast.”

Wand.

“Ay!—my heart, unwont to yield,
Quickly quell'd the strange affright,
And undaunted o'er the field
I began my lonely flight.

Loud the gusty night-wind blew;—
Many an awful pause between,
Fits of light and darkness flew,
Wild and sudden o'er the scene.

For the moon's resplendent eye
Gleams of transient glory shed;
And the clouds, athwart the sky,
Like a routed army fled.

Sounds and voices fill'd the vale,
Heard alternate loud and low;
Shouts of victory swell'd the gale,
But the breezes murmur'd woe.

As I climb'd the mountain's side,
Where the Lake and Valley meet,
All my country's power and pride
Lay in ruins at my feet.

On that grim and ghastly plain,
Underwalden's heart-strings broke.
When she saw her heroes slain,
And her rocks receive the yoke.

On that plain, in childhood's hours,
From their mothers' arms set free,
Oft those heroes gather'd flowers,
Often chased the wandering bee.

On that plain, in rosy youth,
They had fed their fathers' flocks,
Told their love, and pledged their truth,
In the shadow of those rocks.

There, with shepherd's pipe and song,
In the merry mingling dance,
Once they led their brides along,
Now!—Perdition seize thee, France!”

Shep.
“Heard not Heaven the accusing cries
Of the blood that smoked around,
While the life-warm sacrifice
Palpitated on the ground?”

Wand.

“Wrath in silence heaps his store,
To confound the guilty foe;
But the thunder will not roar
Till the flash has struck the blow.

Vengeance, Vengeance will not stay;
It shall burst on Gallia's head,
Sudden as the judgment-day
To the unexpecting dead.

From the Revolution's flood
Shall a fiery dragon start;
He shall drink his mother's blood,
He shall eat his father's heart.

Nurst by Anarchy and Crime,
He—but distance mocks my sight,
O thou great avenger, TIME!
Bring thy strangest birth to light.”

Shep.
“Prophet, thou hast spoken well,
And I deem thy words divine:
Now the mournful sequel tell
Of thy country's woes and thine.”

Wand.

“Though the moon's bewilder'd bark,
By the midnight tempest tost,
In a sea of vapours dark,
In a gulf of clouds was lost;

Still my journey I pursued,
Climbing many a weary steep,
Whence the closing scene I view'd
With an eye that would not weep.

Stantz—a melancholy pyre—
And her hamlets blazed behind,
With ten thousand tongues of fire,
Writhing, raging in the wind.

Flaming piles, where'er I turn'd,
Cast a grim and dreadful light;
Like funereal lamps they burn'd
In the sepulchre of night;

While the red illumined flood,
With a hoarse and hollow roar,
Seem'd a lake of living blood,
Wildly weltering on the shore.

'Midst the mountains far away,
Soon I spied the sacred spot,
Whence a slow consuming ray
Glimmer'd from my native cot.

At the sight my brain was fired,
And afresh my heart's wounds bled;
Still I gazed:—the spark expired—
Nature seem'd extinct:—I fled.—

Fled; and, ere the noon of day,
Reach'd the lonely goat-herd's nest,
Where my wife, my children, lay—
Husband—Father—think the rest.”

VI. PART VI.

The Wanderer informs the Shepherd, that, after the example of many of his Countrymen flying from the Tyranny of France, it is his intention to settle in some remote province of America.

Shep.
“Wanderer, whiter wouldst thou roam;
To what region far away
Bend thy steps to find a home,
In the twilight of thy day?”

Wand.

“In the twilight of my day
I am hastening to the West;
There my weary limbs to lay
Where the sun retires to rest.

Far beyond the Atlantic floods,
Stretch'd beneath the evening sky,
Realms of mountains, dark with woods,
In Columbia's bosom lie.

There, in glens and caverns rude,
Silent since the world began,
Dwells the virgin Solitude,
Unbetray'd by faithless man;

Where a tyrant never trod,
Where a slave was never known,
But where Nature worships God
In the wilderness alone;

—Thither, thither would I roam;
There my children may be free:
I for them will find a home,
They shall find a grave for me.

Though my fathers' bones afar
In their native land repose,
Yet beneath the twilight star
Soft on mine the turf shall close.

Though the mould that wraps my clay
When this storm of life is o'er,
Never since creation lay
On a human breast before;—

Yet in sweet communion there,
When she follows to the dead,
Shall my bosom's partner share
Her poor husband's lowly bed.

Albert's babes shall deck our grave,
And my daughter's duteous tears
Bid the flowery verdure wave
Through the winter-waste of years.”

Shep.

“Long before thy sun descend,
May thy woes and wanderings cease;
Late and lovely be thine end;
Hope and triumph, joy and peace!

As our lakes, at day's decline,
Brighten through the gathering gloom,
May thy latest moments shine
Through the night-fall of the tomb.”

Wand.

“Though our Parent perish'd here,
Like the Phœnix on her nest,
Lo! new-fledg'd her wings appear,
Hovering in the golden West.

Thither shall her sons repair,
And beyond the roaring main
Find their native country there,
Find their Switzerland again.

Mountains, can ye chain the will?
Ocean, canst thou quench the heart?
No; I feel my country still,
LIBERTY! where'er thou art.

Thus it was in hoary time,
When our fathers sallied forth,
Full of confidence sublime,
From the famine-wasted North.

‘Freedom, in a land of rocks
‘Wild as Scandinavia, give,
‘Power Eternal!—where our flocks
‘And our little ones may live.’

Thus they pray'd;—a secret hand
Led them, by a path unknown,
To that dear delightful land
Which I yet must call my own.

To the vale of Switz they came:
Soon their meliorating toil
Gave the forests to the flame,
And their ashes to the soil.

Thence their ardent labours spread,
Till above the mountain-snows
Towering beauty show'd her head,
And a new creation rose!

—So, in regions wild and wide,
We will pierce the savage woods,
Clothe the rocks in purple pride,
Plough the valleys, tame the floods;—

Till a beauteous inland isle,
By a forest-sea embraced,
Shall make Desolation smile
In the depth of his own waste.

There, unenvied, and unknown,
We shall dwell secure and free,
In a country all our own,
In a land of Liberty.”

Shep.

“Yet the woods, the rocks, the streams,
Unbeloved, shall bring to mind,
Warm with Evening's purple beams,
Dearer objects left behind;—

And thy native country's song,
Caroll'd in a foreign clime,
When new echoes shall prolong,
—Simple, tender, and sublime;—

How will thy poor cheek turn pale,
And, before thy banish'd eyes,
Underwalden's charming vale,
And thine own sweet cottage, rise!”

Wand.

“By the glorious ghost of TELL;
By Morgarthen's awful fray;
By the field where Albert fell
In thy last and bitter day;

Soul of Switzerland, arise!
—Ha! the spell has waked the dead:
From her ashes to the skies
Switzerland exalts her head.

See the Queen of Mountains stand,
In immortal mail complete,
With the lightning in her hand,
And the Alps beneath her feet.

Hark! her voice:—‘My sons, awake:
‘Freedom dawns, behold the day:
‘From the bed of bondage break,
‘'Tis your Mother calls,—obey.’

At the sound, our Fathers' graves,
On each ancient battle-plain,
Utter groans, and toss like waves
When the wild blast sweeps the main.

Rise, my Brethren: cast away
All the chains that bind you slaves:
Rise,—your Mother's voice obey,
And appease your Fathers' graves.

Strike!—the conflict is begun;
Freemen, Soldiers, follow me.
Shout!—the victory is won,—
Switzerland and Liberty!”

Shep.
“Warrior, Warrior, stay thine arm!
Sheathe, oh sheathe, thy frantic sword!”

Wand.
“Ah! I rave—I faint:—the charm
Flies,—and memory is restored.

Yes, to agony restored,
From the too transporting charm:—
Sleep for ever, O my sword!
Be thou wither'd, O mine arm!

Switzerland is but a name:
—Yet I feel, where'er I roam,
That my heart is still the same,
Switzerland is still my home.”

THE WEST INDIES:

A POEM, IN FOUR PARTS, WRITTEN IN HONOUR OF THE ABOLITION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE, BY THE BRITISH LEGISLATURE, IN 1807.

“Receive him for ever; not now as a servant, but above a servant,—a brother beloved.”
St. Paul's Epist. to Philemon, v. 15, 16.

I. PART I.

ARGUMENT.

Introduction: on the Abolition of the Slave Trade.— The Mariner's Compass.—Columbus.—The Discovery of America.—The West Indian Islands.— The Charibs.—Their Extermination.

“Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!”
Thus saith the island empress of the sea;
Thus saith Britannia. O, ye winds and waves!
Waft the glad tidings to the land of slaves;
Proclaim on Guinea's coast, by Gambia's side,
And far as Niger rolls his eastern tide,
Through radiant realms, beneath the burning zone,
Where Europe's curse is felt, her name unknown,
Thus saith Britannia, empress of the sea,
“Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!”

Long lay the ocean-paths from man conceal'd;
Light came from heaven,—the magnet was reveal'd,
A surer star to guide the seaman's eye
Than the pale glory of the northern sky;
Alike ordain'd to shine by night and day,
Through calm and tempest, with unsetting ray;
Where'er the mountains rise, the billows roll,
Still with strong impulse turning to the pole,
True as the sun is to the morning true,
Though light as film, and trembling as the dew.

Then man no longer plied with timid oar,
And failing heart, along the windward shore;
Broad to the sky he turn'd his fearless sail,
Defied the adverse, woo'd the favouring gale,
Bared to the storm his adamantine breast,
Or soft on ocean's lap lay down to rest;
While, free as clouds the liquid ether sweep,
His white-wing'd vessels coursed the unbounded deep;
From clime to clime the wanderer loved to roam,
The waves his heritage, the world his home.

Then first Columbus, with the mighty hand
Of grasping genius, weigh'd the sea and land;
The floods o'erbalanced:—where the tide of light,
Day after day, roll'd down the gulph of night,
There seem'd one waste of waters:—long in vain
His spirit brooded o'er the Atlantic main;
When, sudden as creation burst from nought,
Sprang a new world through his stupendous thought,
Light, order, beauty!—While his mind explored
The unveiling mystery, his heart adored;
Where'er sublime imagination trod,
He heard the voice, he saw the face, of God.

Far from the western cliffs he cast his eye,
O'er the wide ocean stretching to the sky;
In calm magnificence the sun declined,
And left a paradise of clouds behind:
Proud at his feet, with pomp of pearl and gold,
The billows in a sea of glory roll'd.

“—Ah! on this sea of glory might I sail,
Track the bright sun, and pierce the eternal veil
That hides those lands, beneath Hesperian skies,
Where daylight sojourns till our morrow rise!”

Thoughtful he wander'd on the beach alone;
Mild o'er the deep the vesper planet shone,
The eye of evening, brightening through the west
Till the sweet moment when it shut to rest:
“Whither, O golden Venus! art thou fled?
Not in the ocean-chambers lies thy bed;
Round the dim world thy glittering chariot drawn
Pursues the twilight, or precedes the dawn;
Thy beauty noon and midnight never see,
The morn and eve divide the year with thee.”

Soft fell the shades, till Cynthia's slender bow
Crested the farthest wave, then sunk below:
“Tell me, resplendent guardian of the night,
Circling the sphere in thy perennial flight,

What secret path of heaven thy smiles adorn,
What nameless sea reflects thy gleaming horn?”

Now earth and ocean vanish'd, all serene
The starry firmament alone was seen;
Through the slow, silent hours, he watch'd the host
Of midnight suns in western darkness lost,
Till Night himself, on shadowy pinions borne,
Fled o'er the mighty waters, and the morn
Danced on the mountains:—“Lights of heaven!” he cried,
“Lead on;—I go to win a glorious bride;
Fearless o'er gulphs unknown I urge my way,
Where peril prowls, and shipwreck lurks for prey:
Hope swells my sail;—in spirit I behold
That maiden-world, twin-sister of the old,
By nature nursed beyond the jealous sea,
Denied to ages, but betroth'd to me.”

The winds were prosperous, and the billows bore
The brave adventurer to the promised shore;
Far in the west, array'd in purple light,
Dawn'd the new world on his enraptured sight:
Not Adam, loosen'd from the encumbering earth,
Waked by the breath of God to instant birth,
With sweeter, wilder wonder gazed around,
When life within, and light without he found;
When, all creation rushing o'er his soul,
He seem'd to live and breathe throughout the whole.
So felt Columbus, when, divinely fair,
At the last look of resolute despair,
The Hesperian isles, from distance dimly blue,
With gradual beauty open'd on his view.
In that proud moment, his transported mind
The morning and the evening worlds combined,
And made the sea, that sunder'd them before,
A bond of peace, uniting shore to shore.

Vain, visionary hope! rapacious Spain
Follow'd her hero's triumph o'er the main,
Her hardy sons in fields of battle tried,
Where Moor and Christian desperately died.
A rabid race, fanatically bold,
And steel'd to cruelty by lust of gold,
Traversed the waves, the unknown world explored,
The cross their standard, but their faith the sword;
Their steps were graves; o'er prostrate realms they trod;
They worshipp'd Mammon while they vow'd to God.

Let nobler bards in loftier numbers tell
How Cortez conquer'd, Montezuma fell;
How fierce Pizarro's ruffian arm o'erthrew
The sun's resplendent empire in Peru;
How, like a prophet, old Las Casas stood,
And rais'd his voice against a sea of blood,
Whose chilling waves recoil'd while he foretold
His country's ruin by avenging gold.
—That gold, for which unpitied Indians fell,
That gold, at once the snare and scourge of hell,
Thenceforth by righteous Heaven was doom'd to shed
Unmingled curses on the spoiler's head;
For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away,—
His gold and he were every nation's prey.

But themes like these would ask an angel-lyre,
Language of light and sentiment of fire;
Give me to sing, in melancholy strains,
Of Charib martyrdoms and Negro chains;
One race by tyrants rooted from the earth,
One doom'd to slavery by the taint of birth!

Where first his drooping sails Columbus furl'd,
And sweetly rested in another world,

Amidst the heaven-reflecting ocean, smiles
A constellation of elysian isles;
Fair as Orion when he mounts on high,
Sparkling with midnight splendour from the sky:
They bask beneath the sun's meridian rays,
When not a shadow breaks the boundless blaze;
The breath of ocean wanders through their vales
In morning breezes and in evening gales:
Earth from her lap perennial verdure pours,
Ambrosial fruits, and amaranthine flowers;
O'er the wild mountains and luxuriant plains,
Nature in all the pomp of beauty reigns,
In all the pride of freedom.—Nature free
Proclaims that Man was born for liberty.
She flourishes where'er the sunbeams play
O'er living fountains, sallying into day;
She withers where the waters cease to roll,
And night and winter stagnate round the pole:
Man too, where freedom's beams and fountains rise,
Springs from the dust, and blossoms to the skies;
Dead to the joys of light and life, the slave
Clings to the clod; his root is in the grave:
Bondage is winter, darkness, death, despair;
Freedom the sun, the sea, the mountains, and the air!

In placid indolence supinely blest,
A feeble race these beauteous isles possess'd;
Untamed, untaught, in arts and arms unskill'd,
Their patrimonial soil they rudely till'd,
Chased the free rovers of the savage wood,
Insnared the wild-bird, swept the scaly flood;
Shelter'd in lowly huts their fragile forms
From burning suns and desolating storms;
Or when the halcyon sported on the breeze,
In light canoes they skimm'd the rippling seas;
Their lives in dreams of soothing languor flew,
No parted joys, no future pains, they knew,
The passing moment all their bliss or care;
Such as their sires had been the children were,
From age to age; as waves upon the tide
Of stormless time, they calmly lived and died.

Dreadful as hurricanes, athwart the main
Rush'd the fell legions of invading Spain;
With fraud and force, with false and fatal breath,
(Submission bondage, and resistance death,)
They swept the isles. In vain the simple race
Kneel'd to the iron sceptre of their grace,
Or with weak arms their fiery vengeance braved;
They came, they saw, they conquer'd, they enslaved,
And they destroy'd;—the generous heart they broke,
They crush'd the timid neck beneath the yoke;
Where'er to battle march'd their fell array,
The sword of conquest plough'd resistless way;
Where'er from cruel toil they sought repose,
Around the fires of devastation rose.
The Indian, as he turn'd his head in flight,
Beheld his cottage flaming through the night,
And, midst the shrieks of murder on the wind,
Heard the mute bloodhound's death-step close behind.

The conflict o'er, the valiant in their graves,
The wretched remnant dwindled into slaves;
Condemn'd in pestilential cells to pine,
Delving for gold amidst the gloomy mine.
The sufferer, sick of life-protracting breath,
Inhaled with joy the fire-damp blast of death:
—Condemn'd to fell the mountain palm on high,
That cast its shadow from the evening sky,
Ere the tree trembled to his feeble stroke,
The woodman languish'd, and his heart-strings broke;
—Condemn'd in torrid noon, with palsied hand,
To urge the slow plough o'er the obdurate land,
The labourer, smitten by the sun's quick ray,
A corpse along the unfinish'd furrow lay.
O'erwhelm'd at length with ignominious toil,
Mingling their barren ashes with the soil,
Down to the dust the Charib people pass'd,
Like autumn foliage withering in the blast:
The whole race sunk beneath the oppressor's rod,
And left a blank among the works of God.

II. PART II.

ARGUMENT.

The Cane.—Africa.—The Negro.—The Slave-Carrying Trade.—The Means and Resources of the Slave Trade.—The Portuguese,—Dutch,— Danes,—French,—and English, in America.

Among the bowers of paradise, that graced
Those islands of the world-dividing waste,
Where towering cocoas waved their graceful locks,
And vines luxuriant cluster'd round the rocks;
Where orange-groves perfum'd the circling air,
With verdure, flowers, and fruit for ever fair;
Gay myrtle-foliage track'd the winding rills,
And cedar forests slumber'd on the hills;

—An eastern plant, ingrafted on the soil,
Was till'd for ages with consuming toil;
No tree of knowledge with forbidden fruit,
Death in the taste, and ruin at the root;
Yet in its growth were good and evil found,—
It bless'd the planter, but it cursed the ground:
While with vain wealth it gorged the master's hoard,
And spread with manna his luxurious board,
Its culture was perdition to the slave,—
It sapp'd his life, and flourish'd on his grave.

When the fierce spoiler from remorseless Spain
Tasted the balmy spirit of the cane,
(Already had his rival in the west
From the rich reed ambrosial sweetness press'd,)
Dark through his thoughts the miser purpose roll'd
To turn its hidden treasures into gold.
But at his breath, by pestilent decay,
The Indian tribes were swiftly swept away;
Silence and horror o'er the isles were spread,
The living seem'd the spectres of the dead.
The Spaniard saw; no sigh of pity stole,
No pang of conscience touch'd his sullen soul:
The tiger weeps not o'er the kid;—he turns
His flashing eyes abroad, and madly burns
For nobler victims, and for warmer blood:
Thus on the Charib shore the tyrant stood,
Thus cast his eyes with fury o'er the tide,
And far beyond the gloomy gulph descried
Devoted Africa: he burst away,
And with a yell of transport grasp'd his prey.

Where the stupendous Mountains of the Moon
Cast their broad shadows o'er the realms of noon;
From rude Caffraria, where the giraffes browse
With stately heads among the forest boughs,
To Atlas, where Numidian lions glow
With torrid fire beneath eternal snow;
From Nubian hills, that hail the dawning day,
To Guinea's coast, where evening fades away;
Regions immense, unsearchable, unknown,
Bask in the splendour of the solar zone,—
A world of wonders, where creation seems
No more the works of Nature, but her dreams.
Great, wild, and beautiful, beyond control,
She reigns in all the freedom of her soul;
Where none can check her bounty when she showers
O'er the gay wilderness her fruits and flowers;
None brave her fury when, with whirlwind breath
And earthquake step, she walks abroad with death.
O'er boundless plains she holds her fiery flight,
In terrible magnificence of light;
At blazing noon pursues the evening breeze,
Through the dun gloom of realm-o'ershadowing trees;
Her thirst at Nile's mysterious fountain quells,
Or bathes in secrecy where Niger swells
An inland ocean, on whose jasper rocks
With shells and sea-flower wreaths she binds her locks.
She sleeps on isles of velvet verdure, placed
Midst sandy gulphs and shoals for ever waste;
She guides her countless flocks to cherish'd rills,
And feeds her cattle on a thousand hills;
Her steps the wild bees welcome through the vale,
From every blossom that embalms the gale;
The slow unwieldy river-horse she leads
Through the deep waters, o'er the pasturing meads;
And climbs the mountains that invade the sky,
To soothe the eagle's nestlings when they cry.
At sunset, when voracious monsters burst
From dreams of blood, awaked by maddening thirst;
When the lorn caves, in which they shrunk from light,
Ring with wild echoes through the hideous night;
When darkness seems alive, and all the air
Is one tremendous uproar of despair,
Horror, and agony;—on her they call;
She hears their clamour, she provides for all,
Leads the light leopard on his eager way,
And goads the gaunt hyæna to his prey.

In these romantic regions man grows wild:
Here dwells the Negro, nature's outcast child,
Scorn'd by his brethren; but his mother's eye,
That gazes on him from her warmest sky,
Sees in his flexile limbs untutor'd grace,
Power on his forehead, beauty in his face;
Sees in his breast, where lawless passions rove,
The heart of friendship and the home of love;
Sees in his mind, where desolation reigns,
Fierce as his clime, uncultur'd as his plains,
A soil where virtue's fairest flowers might shoot,
And trees of science bend with glorious fruit;
Sees in his soul, involved with thickest night,
An emanation of eternal light,
Ordain'd, midst sinking worlds, his dust to fire,
And shine for ever when the stars expire.

Is he not man, though knowledge never shed
Her quickening beams on his neglected head?
Is he not man, though sweet religion's voice
Ne'er made the mourner in his God rejoice?
Is he not man, by sin and suffering tried?
Is he not man, for whom the Saviour died?
Belie the Negro's powers:—in headlong will,
Christian! thy brother thou shalt prove him still:
Belie his virtues; since his wrongs began,
His follies and his crimes have stampt him Man.

The Spaniard found him such:—the island-race
His foot had spurn'd from earth's insulted face;
Among the waifs and foundlings of mankind,
Abroad he look'd, a sturdier stock to find;
A spring of life, whose fountains should supply
His channels as he drank the rivers dry:
That stock he found on Afric's swarming plains,
That spring he open'd in the Negro's veins;
A spring, exhaustless as his avarice drew,
A stock that like Prometheus' vitals grew
Beneath the eternal beak his heart that tore,
Beneath the insatiate thirst that drain'd his gore.
Thus, childless as the Charibbeans died,
Afric's strong sons the ravening waste supplied;
Of hardier fibre to endure the yoke,
And self-renew'd beneath the severing stroke;
As grim oppression crush'd them to the tomb,
Their fruitful parent's miserable womb
Teem'd with fresh myriads, crowded o'er the waves,
Heirs to their toil, their sufferings, and their graves.

Freighted with curses was the bark that bore
The spoilers of the west to Guinea's shore;
Heavy with groans of anguish blew the gales
That swell'd that fatal bark's returning sails;
Old Ocean shrunk as o'er his surface flew
The human cargo and the demon crew.
—Thenceforth, unnumber'd as the waves that roll
From sun to sun, or pass from pole to pole,
Outcasts and exiles, from their country torn,
In floating dungeons o'er the gulph were borne;
—The valiant, seized in peril-daring fight;
The weak, surprised in nakedness and night;
Subjects by mercenary despots sold;
Victims of justice prostitute for gold;
Brothers by brothers, friends by friends, betray'd;
Snared in her lover's arms the trusting maid;
The faithful wife by her false lord estranged,
For one wild cup of drunken bliss exchanged;
From the brute-mother's knee, the infant-boy,
Kidnapp'd in slumber, barter'd for a toy;
The father, resting at his father's tree,
Doom'd by the son to die beyond the sea:
—All bonds of kindred, law, alliance, broke;
All ranks, all nations, crouching to the yoke;
From fields of light, unshadow'd climes, that lie
Panting beneath the sun's meridian eye;
From hidden Ethiopia's utmost land;
From Zaara's fickle wilderness of sand;
From Congo's blazing plains and blooming woods;
From Whidah's hills, that gush with golden floods;
Captives of tyrant power and dastard wiles,
Dispeopled Africa, and gorged the isles.
Loud and perpetual o'er the Atlantic waves,
For guilty ages, roll'd the tide of slaves;
A tide that knew no fall, no turn, no rest,
Constant as day and night from east to west;
Still widening, deepening, swelling in its course,
With boundless ruin and resistless force.

Quickly by Spain's alluring fortune fired,
With hopes of fame and dreams of wealth inspired,
Europe's dread powers from ignominious ease
Started; their pennons stream'd on every breeze;
And still where'er the wide discoveries spread,
The cane was planted, and the native bled;
While, nursed by fiercer suns, of nobler race,
The Negro toil'd and perish'd in his place.

First, Lusitania,—she whose prows had borne
Her arms triumphant round the car of morn,
—Turn'd to the setting sun her bright array,
And hung her trophies o'er the couch of day.

Holland,—whose hardy sons roll'd back the sea,
To build the halcyon-nest of liberty,
Shameless abroad the enslaving flag unfurl'd,
And reign'd a despot in the younger world.

Denmark,—whose roving hordes, in barbarous times,
Fill'd the wide North with piracy and crimes,
Awed every shore, and taught their keels to sweep
O'er every sea, the Arabs of the deep,
—Embark'd, once more to western conquest led
By Rollo's spirit, risen from the dead.

Gallia,—who vainly aim'd, in depth of night,
To hurl old Rome from her Tarpeian height,

(But lately laid, with unprevented blow,
The thrones of kings, the hopes of freedom, low,)
—Rush'd o'er the theatre of splendid toils,
To brave the dangers and divide the spoils.

Britannia,—she who scathed the crest of Spain,
And won the trident sceptre of the main,
When to the raging wind and ravening tide
She gave the huge Armada's scatter'd pride,
Smit by the thunder-wielding hand that hurl'd
Her vengeance round the wave-encircled world;
—Britannia shared the glory and the guilt,—
By her were Slavery's island-altars built,
And fed with human victims;—while the cries
Of blood demanding vengeance from the skies,
Assail'd her traders' grovelling hearts in vain,
—Hearts dead to sympathy, alive to gain,
Hard from impunity, with avarice cold,
Sordid as earth, insensible as gold.

Thus through a night of ages, in whose shade
The sons of darkness plied the infernal trade,
Wild Africa beheld her tribes, at home,
In battle slain; abroad, condemn'd to roam
O'er the salt waves, in stranger isles to bear,
(Forlorn of hope, and sold into despair,)
Through life's slow journey, to its dolorous close,
Unseen, unwept, unutterable woes.

III. PART III.

ARGUMENT.

The Love of Country, and of Home, the same in all Ages and among all Nations.—The Negro's Home and Country.—Mungo Park.—Progress of the Slave Trade.—The Middle Passage.—The Negro in the West Indies.—The Guinea Captain. —The Creole Planter.—The Moors of Barbary. —Buccaneers.—Maroons.—St. Domingo.— Hurricanes.—The Yellow Fever.

There is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,
Time-tutor'd age, and love-exalted youth;
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touch'd by remembrance, trembles to that pole;
For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his soften'd looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend:
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
“Where shall that land, that spot of earth, be found?”
Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around;
O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!

On Greenland's rocks, o'er rude Kamschatka's plains,
In pale Siberia's desolate domains;
When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The reindeer's spoil, the ermine's treasure, shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of bears;
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main;
—His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky;
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home.

O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods;
In California's pathless world of woods;
Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throne,
Looks down in scorn upon the Summer zone;
By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles,
Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles;
On pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health;
In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink,
Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink;

On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanish'd like a dream;
Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonour'd vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous isle of Liberty;
—Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

And is the Negro outlaw'd from his birth?
Is he alone a stranger on the earth?
Is there no shed, whose peeping roof appears
So lovely that it fills his eyes with tears?
No land, whose name, in exile heard, will dart
Ice through his veins, and lightning through his heart?
Ah! yes; beneath the beams of brighter skies,
His home amidst his father's country lies;
There with the partner of his soul he shares
Love-mingled pleasures, love-divided cares:
There, as with nature's warmest filial fire,
He soothes his blind, and feeds his helpless, sire;
His children sporting round his hut behold
How they shall cherish him when he is old,
Train'd by example from their tenderest youth
To deeds of charity, and words of truth.
—Is he not blest? Behold, at closing day,
The negro-village swarms abroad to play;
He treads the dance through all its rapturous rounds,
To the wild music of barbarian sounds;
Or, stretch'd at ease, where broad palmettos shower
Delicious coolness in his shadowy bower,
He feasts on tales of witchcraft, that give birth
To breathless wonder, or ecstatic mirth:
Yet most delighted, when, in rudest rhymes,
The minstrel wakes the song of elder times,
When men were heroes, slaves to Beauty's charms,
And all the joys of life were love and arms.
—Is not the Negro blest? His generous soil
With harvest-plenty crowns his simple toil;
More than his wants his flocks and fields afford:
He loves to greet the stranger at his board:
“The winds were roaring, and the White Man fled,
The rains of night descended on his head;
The poor White Man sat down beneath our tree,
Weary and faint, and far from home, was he:
For him no mother fills with milk the bowl,
No wife prepares the bread to cheer his soul;
—Pity the poor White Man who sought our tree,
No wife, no mother, and no home, has he.”
Thus sang the Negro's daughters;—once again,
O that the poor White Man might hear that strain!
—Whether the victim of the treacherous Moor,
Or from the Negro's hospitable door
Spurn'd as a spy from Europe's hateful clime,
And left to perish for thy country's crime;
Or destined still, when all thy wanderings cease,
On Albion's lovely lap to rest in peace;
Pilgrim! in heaven or earth, where'er thou be,
Angels of mercy guide and comfort thee!

Thus lived the Negro in his native land,
Till Christian cruisers anchor'd on his strand:
Where'er their grasping arms the spoilers spread,
The Negro's joys, the Negro's virtues, fled;
Till, far amidst the wilderness unknown,
They flourish'd in the sight of Heaven alone:
While from the coast, with wide and wider sweep,
The race of Mammon dragg'd across the deep
Their sable victims, to that western bourn,
From which no traveller might e'er return,
To blazon in the ears of future slaves
The secrets of the world beyond the waves.

When the loud trumpet of eternal doom
Shall break the mortal bondage of the tomb;
When with a mother's pangs the expiring earth
Shall bring her children forth to second birth;

Then shall the sea's mysterious caverns, spread
With human relics, render up their dead:
Though warm with life the heaving surges glow,
Where'er the winds of heaven were wont to blow,
In sevenfold phalanx shall the rallying hosts
Of ocean slumberers join their wandering ghosts,
Along the melancholy gulph, that roars
From Guinea to the Charibbean shores,
Myriads of slaves, that perish'd on the way,
From age to age the shark's appointed prey,
By livid plagues, by lingering tortures slain,
Or headlong plunged alive into the main,
Shall rise in judgment from their gloomy beds,
And call down vengeance on their murderers' heads.

Yet small the number, and the fortune blest,
Of those who in the stormy deep found rest,
Weigh'd with the unremember'd millions more,
That 'scaped the sea, to perish on the shore,
By the slow pangs of solitary care,
The earth-devouring anguish of despair,
The broken heart, which kindness never heals,
The home-sick passion which the Negro feels,
When, toiling, fainting in the land of canes,
His spirit wanders to his native plains;
His little lovely dwelling there he sees,
Beneath the shade of his paternal trees,
The home of comfort:—then before his eyes
The terrors of captivity arise.
—'Twas night:—his babes around him lay at rest,
Their mother slumber'd on their father's breast:
A yell of murder rang around their bed;
They woke; their cottage blazed; the victims fled;
Forth sprang the ambush'd ruffians on their prey,
They caught, they bound, they drove them far away;
The white man bought them at the mart of blood;
In pestilential barks they cross'd the flood;
Then were the wretched ones asunder torn,
To distant isles, to separate bondage borne,
Denied, though sought with tears, the sad relief
That misery loves,—the fellowship of grief.
The Negro, spoil'd of all that nature gave
To freeborn man, thus shrunk into a slave;
His passive limbs, to measured tasks confined,
Obey'd the impulse of another mind;
A silent, secret, terrible control,
That ruled his sinews, and repress'd his soul.
Not for himself he waked at morning-light,
Toil'd the long day, and sought repose at night;
His rest, his labour, pastime, strength, and health,
Were only portions of a master's wealth;
His love—O, name not love, where Britons doom
The fruit of love to slavery from the womb!

Thus spurn'd, degraded, trampled, and oppress'd,
The Negro-exile languish'd in the West,
With nothing left of life but hated breath,
And not a hope except the hope in death—
To fly for ever from the Creole-strand,
And dwell a freeman in his father-land.

Lives there a savage ruder than the slave?
—Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave,
False as the winds that round his vessel blow,
Remorseless as the gulf that yawns below,
Is he who toils upon the wafting flood,
A Christian broker in the trade of blood!
Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold,
He buys, he sells,—he steals, he kills, for gold.
At noon, when sky and ocean, calm and clear,
Bend round his bark one blue unbroken sphere;
When dancing dolphins sparkle through the brine,
And sunbeam circles o'er the waters shine;
He sees no beauty in the heaven serene,
No soul-enchanting sweetness in the scene,
But, darkly scowling at the glorious day,
Curses the winds that loiter on their way.
When, swoln with hurricanes, the billows rise
To meet the lightning midway from the skies;
When, from the unburden'd hold, his shrieking slaves
Are cast, at midnight, to the hungry waves;
Not for his victims strangled in the deeps,
Not for his crimes, the harden'd pirate weeps,—
But, grimly smiling, when the storm is o'er,
Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.

Lives there a reptile baser than the slave?
—Loathsome as death, corrupted as the grave,
See the dull Creole, at his pompous board,
Attendant vassals cringing round their lord:
Satiate with food, his heavy eyelids close,
Voluptuous minions fan him to repose;
Prone on the noonday couch he lolls in vain,
Delirious slumbers rock his maudlin brain;
He starts in horror from bewildering dreams;
His bloodshot eye with fire and frenzy gleams:
He stalks abroad; through all his wonted rounds,
The Negro trembles, and the lash resounds,
And cries of anguish, shrilling through the air,
To distant fields his dread approach declare.
Mark, as he passes, every head declined;
Then slowly raised,—to curse him from behind.
This is the veriest wretch on nature's face,
Own'd by no country, spurn'd by every race;
The tether'd tyrant of one narrow span,
The bloated vampire of a living man;
His frame,—a fungous form, of dunghill birth,
That taints the air, and rots above the earth;
His soul—has he a soul, whose sensual breast
Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest;
Who follows, headlong, ignorant, and blind,
The vague brute instinct of an idiot mind;
Whose heart, 'midst scenes of suffering senseless grown,
E'en from his mother's lap was chill'd to stone;
Whose torpid pulse no social feelings move?
A stranger to the tenderness of love,
His motley harem charms his gloating eye,
Where ebon, brown, and olive beauties vie;
His children, sprung alike from sloth and vice,
Are born his slaves, and loved at market price:
Has he a soul?—With his departing breath,
A form shall hail him at the gates of death,—
The spectre Conscience,—shrieking through the gloom,
“Man! we shall meet again beyond the tomb.”

O Africa! amidst thy children's woes,
Did earth and heaven conspire to aid thy foes?
No, thou hadst vengeance—from thy northern shores
Sallied the lawless corsairs of the Moors,
And back on Europe's guilty nations hurl'd
Thy wrongs and sufferings in the sister world:
Deep in thy dungeons Christians clank'd their chains,
Or toil'd and perish'd on thy parching plains.

But where thine offspring crouch'd beneath the yoke,
In heavier peals the avenging thunder broke.

—Leagued with rapacious rovers of the main,
Hayti's barbarian hunters harass'd Spain,
A mammoth race, invincible in might,
Rapine and massacre their dire delight,
Peril their element;—o'er land and flood
They carried fire, and quench'd the flames with blood;
Despairing captives hail'd them from the coasts;
They rush'd to conquest, led by Charib ghosts.

Tremble, Britannia! while thine islands tell
The appalling mysteries of Obi's spell;
The wild Maroons, impregnable and free,
Among the mountain-holds of liberty,
Sudden as lightning darted on their foe,—
Seen like the flash, remember'd like the blow.

While Gallia boasts of dread Marengo's fight,
And Hohenlinden's slaughter-deluged night,
Her spirit sinks;—the sinews of the brave,
That crippled Europe, shrunk before the slave;
The demon-spectres of Domingo rise,
And all her triumphs vanish from her eyes.

God is a Spirit, veil'd from human sight
In secret darkness of eternal light:
Through all the glory of his works we trace
The hidings of his counsel and his face;
Nature, and time, and change, and fate fulfil,
Unknown, unknowing, his mysterious will;
Mercies and judgments mark him, every hour,
Supreme in grace, and infinite in power:
Oft o'er the Eden-islands of the West,
In floral pomp and verdant beauty drest,
Roll the dark clouds of his awaken'd ire:
—Thunder and earthquake, whirlwind, flood, and fire,
Midst reeling mountains and disparting plains,
Tell the pale world,—“the God of vengeance reigns.”

Nor in the majesty of storms alone,
The Eternal makes his dread displeasure known.
At his command, the pestilence abhorr'd
Spares the poor slave, and smites the haughty lord:
While to the tomb he sees his friend consign'd,
Foreboding melancholy sinks his mind;
Soon at his heart he feels the monster's fangs,
They tear his vitals with convulsive pangs:
The light is anguish to his eye; the air,
Sepulchral vapours laden with despair:
Now frenzy-horrors rack his whirling brain,
Tremendous pulses throb through every vein;
The firm earth shrinks beneath his torture-bed,
The sky in ruins rushes o'er his head;—
He rolls, he rages, in consuming fires,
Till nature, spent with agony, expires!

IV. PART IV.

ARGUMENT.

The Moravian Brethren.—Their Missions in Greenland, North America, and the West Indies.— Christian Negroes.—The Advocates of the Negroes in England.—Granville Sharpe,—Clarkson, —Wilberforce,—Pitt,—Fox,—The Nation itself. —The Abolition of the Slave Trade.—The Future State of the West Indies,—of Africa,—of the Whole World.—The Millennium.

Was there no mercy, mother of the slave!
No friendly hand to succour and to save,
While commerce thus thy captive tribes oppress'd,
And lowering vengeance linger'd o'er the west?
Yes, Africa! beneath the stranger's rod
They found the freedom of the sons of God.

When Europe languish'd in barbarian gloom,
Beneath the ghostly tyranny of Rome,
Whose second empire, cowl'd and mitred, burst
A phœnix from the ashes of the first;
From Persecution's piles, by bigots fired,
Among Bohemian mountains Truth retired:
There, 'midst rude rocks, in lonely glens obscure,
She found a people scatter'd, scorn'd, and poor,
A little flock through quiet valleys led,
A Christian Israel in the desert fed,
While ravening wolves, that scorn'd the shepherd's hand,
Laid waste God's heritage through every land.

With these the lovely exile sojourn'd long:
Soothed by her presence, solaced by her song,
They toil'd through danger, trials, and distress,
A band of Virgins in the wilderness,
With burning lamps, amid their secret bowers,
Counting the watches of the weary hours,
In patient hope the Bridegroom's voice to hear,
And see his banner in the clouds appear.
But when the morn returning chased the night,
These stars, that shone in darkness, sunk in light:
Luther, like Phosphor, led the conquering day,—
His meek forerunners waned, and pass'd away.

Ages roll'd by; the turf perennial bloom'd
O'er the lorn relics of those saints entomb'd:
No miracle proclaim'd their power divine,—
No kings adorn'd, no pilgrims kiss'd, their shrine;
Cold and forgotten in the grave they slept:
But God remember'd them:—their Father kept
A faithful remnant;—o'er their native clime
His Spirit moved in his appointed time;
The race revived at his almighty breath,
A seed to serve him, from the dust of death.

“Go forth, my sons! through heathen realms proclaim
Mercy to sinners in a Saviour's name:”
Thus spake the Lord; they heard, and they obey'd:
—Greenland lay wrapt in nature's heaviest shade;
Thither the ensign of the Cross they bore;
The gaunt barbarians met them on the shore;
With joy and wonder hailing from afar,
Through polar storms, the light of Jacob's star.

Where roll Ohio's streams, Missouri's floods,
Beneath the umbrage of eternal woods,
The Red Man roam'd, a hunter-warrior wild:
On him the everlasting Gospel smiled;
His heart was awed, confounded, pierced, subdued,
Divinely melted, moulded, and renew'd:
The bold base savage, nature's harshest clod,
Rose from the dust the image of his God.

And thou, poor Negro! scorn'd of all mankind;
Thou dumb and impotent, and deaf and blind;
Thou dead in spirit! toil-degraded slave,
Crush'd by the curse on Adam to the grave;—
The messengers of peace, o'er land and sea,
That sought the sons of sorrow, stoop'd to thee.
—The captive raised his slow and sullen eye;
He knew no friend, nor deem'd a friend was nigh,
Till the sweet tones of Pity touch'd his ears,
And Mercy bathed his bosom with her tears:
Strange were those tones, to him those tears were strange;
He wept and wonder'd at the mighty change,
Felt the quick pang of keen compunction dart,
And heard a still small whisper in his heart,
A voice from Heaven, that bade the outcast rise
From shame on earth to glory in the skies!

From isle to isle the welcome tidings ran;
The slave that heard them, started into man:
Like Peter, sleeping in his chains he lay,—
The angel came, his night was turn'd to day;
“Arise!”—his fetters fall, his slumbers flee;
He wakes to life, he springs to liberty.

No more to demon-gods, in hideous forms,
He pray'd for earthquakes, pestilence, and storms,
In secret agony devour'd the earth,
And, while he spared his mother, cursed his birth;—
To Heaven the Christian Negro sent his sighs,
In morning vows and evening sacrifice;
He pray'd for blessings to descend on those
That dealt to him the cup of many woes;
Thought of his home in Africa forlorn;
Yet, while he wept, rejoiced that he was born.
No longer, burning with unholy fires,
He wallow'd in the dust of base desires;
Ennobling virtue fix'd his hopes above,
Enlarged his heart, and sanctified his love:
With humble steps the paths of peace he trod,
A happy pilgrim, for he walk'd with God.

Still slowly spread the dawn of life and day,
In death and darkness pagan myriads lay:
Stronger and heavier chains than those that bind
The captive's limbs, enthrall'd his abject mind;
The yoke of man his neck indignant bore,
The yoke of sin his willing spirit wore.

Meanwhile, among the great, the brave, the free,
The matchless race of Albion and the sea,
Champions arose to plead the Negro's cause.
In the wide breach of violated laws,
Through which the torrent of injustice roll'd,
They stood:—with zeal unconquerably bold,
They raised their voices, stretch'd their arms, to save
From chains the freeman, from despair the slave;
The exile's heart-sick anguish to assuage,
And rescue Afric from the spoiler's rage.
She, miserable mother, from the shore,
Age after age, beheld the barks that bore
Her tribes to bondage:—with distraction wrung,
Wild as the lioness that seeks her young,
She flash'd unheeded lightnings from her eyes;
Her inmost deserts echoing to her cries;
Till agony the sense of suffering stole,
And stern unconscious grief benumb'd her soul.
So Niobe, when all her race were slain,
In ecstasy of woe forgot her pain:
Cold in her eye serenest sorrow shone,
While pitying Nature soothed her into stone.

Thus Africa, entranced with sorrow, stood,
Her fix'd eye gleaming on the restless flood:
—When Sharpe, on proud Britannia's charter'd shore,
From Libyan limbs the unsanction'd fetters tore,
And taught the world, that, while she rules the waves,
Her soil is freedom to the feet of slaves:
—When Clarkson his victorious course began,
Unyielding in the cause of God and man;
Wise, patient, persevering to the end,
No guile could thwart, no power his purpose bend;
He rose o'er Afric like the sun in smiles,—
He rests in glory on the western isles:
—When Wilberforce, the minister of grace,
The new Las Casas of a ruin'd race,

With angel-might opposed the rage of hell,
And fought like Michael, till the dragon fell:
—When Pitt, supreme amid the senate, rose
The Negro's friend among the Negro's foes;
Yet while his tones like heaven's high thunder broke,
No fire descended to consume the yoke:
—When Fox, all-eloquent, for freedom stood,
With speech resistless as the voice of blood,
The voice that cries through all the patriot's veins,
When at his feet his country groans in chains;
The voice that whispers in the mother's breast,
When smiles her infant in his rosy rest;
Of power to bid the storm of passion roll,
Or touch with sweetest tenderness the soul.
He spake in vain;—till, with his latest breath,
He broke the spell of Africa in death.

The Muse to whom the lyre and lute belong,
Whose song of freedom is her noblest song,
The lyre with awful indignation swept,
O'er the sweet lute in silent sorrow wept,
—When Albion's crimes drew thunder from her tongue,
—When Afric's woes o'erwhelm'd her while she sung.
Lamented Cowper! in thy path I tread;
O! that on me were thy meek spirit shed!
The woes that wring my bosom, once were thine;
Be all thy virtues, all thy genius, mine!
Peace to thy soul! thy God my portion be;
And in his presence may I rest with thee!

Quick at the call of Virtue, Freedom, Truth,
Weak withering Age and strong aspiring Youth
Alike the expanding power of Pity felt;
The coldest, hardest hearts began to melt;
From breast to breast the flame of justice glow'd;
Wide o'er its banks the Nile of mercy flow'd;
Through all the isle the gradual waters swell'd;
Mammon in vain the encircling flood repell'd;
O'erthrown at length, like Pharoah and his host,
His shipwreck'd hopes lay scatter'd round the coast.

High on her rock in solitary state,
Sublimely musing, pale Britannia sate:
Her awful forehead on her spear reclined,
Her robe and tresses streaming with the wind;
Chill through her frame foreboding tremors crept!
The Mother thought upon her sons, and wept.
—She thought of Nelson in the battle slain,
And his last signal beaming o'er the main;
In Glory's circling arms the hero bled,
While Victory bound the laurel on his head;
At once immortal, in both worlds, became
His soaring spirit and abiding name;
—She thought of Pitt, heart-broken on his bier;
And, “O my country!” echoed in her ear;
—She thought of Fox; she heard him faintly speak,
His parting breath grew cold upon her cheek,
His dying accents trembled into air;
“Spare injured Africa! the Negro spare!”

She started from her trance!—and, round the shore,
Beheld her supplicating sons once more
Pleading the suit so long, so vainly tried,
Renew'd, resisted, promised, pledged, denied,—
The Negro's claim to all his Maker gave,
And all the tyrant ravish'd from the slave.
Her yielding heart confess'd the righteous claim,
Sorrow had soften'd it, and love o'ercame;
Shame flush'd her noble cheek, her bosom burn'd;
To helpless, hopeless Africa she turn'd;

She saw her sister in the mourner's face,
And rush'd with tears into her dark embrace:
“All hail!” exclaim'd the empress of the sea,—
“Thy chains are broken—Africa, be free!”

Muse! take the harp of prophecy:—behold!
The glories of a brighter age unfold:
Friends of the outcast! view the accomplish'd plan,
The Negro towering to the height of man.
The blood of Romans, Saxons, Gauls, and Danes,
Swell'd the rich fountain of the Briton's veins;
Unmingled streams a warmer life impart,
And quicker pulses to the Negro's heart:
A dusky race, beneath the evening sun,
Shall blend their spousal currents into one.
Is beauty bound to colour, shape, or air?
No; God created all his offspring fair:
Tyrant and slave their tribes shall never see,
For God created all his offspring free:
Then Justice, leagued with Mercy, from above,
Shall reign in all the liberty of love;
And the sweet shores beneath the balmy west
Again shall be “the islands of the blest.”

Unutterable mysteries of fate
Involve, O Africa! thy future state.
—On Niger's banks, in lonely beauty wild,
A Negro-mother carols to her child:
“Son of my widow'd love, my orphan joy!
Avenge thy father's murder, O my boy!”
Along those banks the fearless infant strays,
Bathes in the stream, among the eddies plays;
See the boy bounding through the eager race;
The fierce youth, shouting foremost in the chase,
Drives the grim lion from his ancient woods,
And smites the crocodile amidst his floods:
To giant strength in unshorn manhood grown,
He haunts the wilderness, he dwells alone.
A tigress with her whelps to seize him sprung;
He tears the mother, and he tames the young
In the drear cavern of their native rock:
Thither wild slaves and fell banditti flock;
He heads their hordes; they burst, like torrid rains,
In death and devastation o'er the plains;
Stronger and bold er grows his ruffian band,
Prouder his heart, more terrible his hand;
He spreads his banner: crowding from afar,
Innumerable armies rush to war;
Resistless as the pillar'd whirlwinds fly
O'er Libyan sands revolving to the sky,
In fire and wrath through every realm they run,
Where the noon-shadow shrinks beneath the sun;
Till at the Conqueror's feet, from sea to sea,
A hundred nations bow the servile knee,
And throned in nature's unreveal'd domains,
The Jenghis Khan of Africa he reigns.

Dim through the night of these tempestuous years
A Sabbath-dawn o'er Africa appears:
Then shall her neck from Europe's yoke be freed,
And healing arts to hideous arms succeed;
At home fraternal bonds her tribes shall bind,
Commerce abroad espouse them with mankind;
While Truth shall build, and pure Religion bless,
The Church of God amidst the wilderness.

Nor in the isles and Africa alone
Be the Redeemer's cross and triumph known:
Father of Mercies! speed the promised hour;
Thy kingdom come with all-restoring power;
Peace, virtue, knowledge, spread from pole to pole,
As round the world the ocean-waters roll!
—Hope waits the morning of celestial light;
Time plumes his wings for everlasting flight;
Unchanging seasons have their march begun;
Millennial years are hastening to the sun;
Seen through thick clouds, by Faith's transpiercing eyes,
The New Creation shines in purer skies.
—All hail!—the age of crime and suffering ends;
The reign of righteousness from Heaven descends;
Vengeance for ever sheathes the afflicting sword;
Death is destroy'd, and Paradise restored:
Man, rising from the ruins of his fall,
Is one with God, and God is All in All!

THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD:

A POEM, IN TEN CANTOS.

TO THE SPIRIT OF A DEPARTED FRIEND.

Many, my friend, have mourn'd for Thee,
And yet shall many mourn,
Long as thy name on earth shall be
In sweet remembrance borne,
By those who loved Thee here, and love
Thy Spirit still in realms above.

For while thine absence they deplore,
'Tis for themselves they weep:
Though they behold thy face no more,
In peace thine ashes sleep,
And o'er the tomb they lift their eye,
—Thou art not dead, Thou couldst not die

In silent anguish, O my friend!
When I recall thy worth,
Thy lovely life, thine early end,
I feel estranged from earth;
My soul with thine desires to rest,
Supremely and for ever blest.

In loftier mood I fain would raise
With my victorious breath
Some fair memorial of thy praise,
Beyond the reach of Death;
Proud wish, and vain!—I cannot give
The word, that makes the dead to live.

Thou art not dead, Thou couldst not die;
To nobler life new-born,
Thou look'st in pity from the sky
Upon a world forlorn,
Where glory is but dying flame,
And immortality a name.

Yet didst Thou prize the Poet's art;
And when to Thee I sung,
How pure, how fervent from the heart,
The language of thy tongue!
In praise or blame alike sincere,
But still most kind when most severe.

When first this dream of ancient times
Warm on my fancy glow'd,
And forth in rude spontaneous rhymes
The Song of Wonder flow'd;
Pleased but alarm'd, I saw Thee stand,
And check'd the fury of my hand.

That hand with awe resumed the lyre,
I trembled, doubted, fear'd,
Then did thy voice my hope inspire,
My soul thy presence cheer'd;
But suddenly the light was flown,—
I look'd, and found myself alone!

Alone, in sickness, care, and woe,
Since that bereaving day,
With heartless patience, faint and low,
I trill'd the secret lay,
Afraid to trust the bold design
To less indulgent ears than thine.

'Tis done;—nor would I dread to meet
The World's repulsive brow,
Had I presented at thy feet
The Muse's trophy now,
And gain'd the smile I long'd to gain,
The pledge of labour not in vain.

Full well I know, if Thou wert here,
A pilgrim still with me,—
Dear as my theme was once, and dear
As I was once to Thee,—
Too mean to yield Thee pure delight,
The strains that now the world invite:

Yet could they reach Thee where thou art,
And sounds might Spirits move,
Their better, their diviner part,
Thou surely wouldst approve;
Though heavenly thoughts are all thy joy,
And Angel-Songs thy tongue employ.

My task is o'er; and I have wrought
With self-rewarding toil,
To raise the scatter'd seed of thought
Upon a desert soil:
O for soft winds and clement showers!
I seek not fruit,—I planted flowers.

Those flowers I train'd, of many a hue,
Along thy path to bloom;
And little thought, that I must strew
Their leaves upon thy tomb:
—Beyond that tomb I lift mine eye,
Thou art not dead, Thou couldst not die.

Farewell: but not a long farewell!
In heaven may I appear,
The trials of my faith to tell
In thy transported ear,
And sing with Thee the eternal strain,
“Worthy the Lamb that once was slain.”

Sheffield, January 23. 1813.

THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.

CANTO FIRST.

The Invasion of Eden by the Descendants of Cain. The Flight of Javan from the Camp of the Invaders to the Valley where the Patriarchs dwelt. The Story of Javan's former Life.

Eastward of Eden's early peopled plain,
When Abel perish'd by the hand of Cain,
The murderer from his Judge's presence fled:
Thence to the rising sun his offspring spread;

But he, the fugitive of care and guilt,
Forsook the haunts he chose, the homes he built;
While filial nations hail'd him Sire and Chief,
Empire nor honour brought his soul relief;
He found, where'er he roam'd, uncheer'd, unblest,
No pause from suffering, and from toil no rest.

Ages, meanwhile, as ages now are told,
O'er the young world in long succession roll'd;
For such the vigour of primeval man,
Through number'd centuries his period ran,
And the first Parents saw their hardy race,
O'er the green wilds of habitable space,
By tribes and kindred, scatter'd wide and far,
Beneath the track of every varying star.
But as they multiplied from clime to clime,
Embolden'd by their elder brother's crime,
They spurn'd obedience to the Patriarchs' yoke,
The bonds of Nature's fellowship they broke;
The weak became the victims of the strong,
And Earth was fill'd with violence and wrong.

Yet long on Eden's fair and fertile plain
A righteous nation dwelt, that knew not Cain;
There, fruits and flowers, in genial light and dew,
Luxuriant vines, and golden harvests, grew;
By freshening waters flocks and cattle stray'd,
While Youth and Childhood watch'd them from the shade;
Age, at his fig-tree, rested from his toil,
And manly vigour till'd the unfailing soil;
Green sprang the turf, by holy footsteps trod,
Round the pure altars of the living God;
Till foul Idolatry those altars stain'd,
And lust and revelry through Eden reign'd.
Then fled the people's glory and defence,
The joys of home, the peace of innocence;
Sin brought forth sorrows in perpetual birth,
And the last light from heaven forsook the earth,
Save in one forest-glen, remote and wild,
Where yet a ray of lingering mercy smiled,
Their quiet course where Seth and Enoch ran,
And God and Angels deign'd to walk with man.

Now from the east, supreme in arts and arms,
The tribes of Cain, awakening war-alarms,
Full in the spirit of their father, came
To waste their brethren's lands with sword and flame.
In vain the younger race of Adam rose,
With force unequal, to repel their foes;
Their fields in blood, their homes in ruins, lay,
Their whole inheritance became a prey;
The stars, to whom as Gods they raised their cry,
Roll'd, heedless of their offerings, through the sky;
Till, urged on Eden's utmost bounds at length,
In fierce despair, they rallied all their strength.
They fought, but they were vanquish'd in the fight,
Captured, or slain, or scatter'd in the flight:
The morning battle-scene at eve was spread
With ghastly heaps, the dying and the dead:
The dead unmourn'd, unburied left to lie;
By friends and foes, the dying left to die.
The victim, while he groan'd his soul away,
Heard the gaunt vulture hurrying to his prey,
Then strengthless felt the ravening beak, that tore
His widen'd wounds, and drank the living gore.

One sole surviving remnant, void of fear,
Woods in their front, Euphrates in their rear,
Were sworn to perish at a glorious cost,
For all they once had known, and loved, and lost;
A small, a brave, and melancholy band,
The orphans and the childless of the land.
The hordes of Cain, by giant-chieftains led,
Wide o'er the north their vast encampment spread:
A broad and sunny champaign stretch'd between;
Westward a maze of waters girt the scene;
There on Euphrates, in its ancient course,
Three beauteous rivers roll'd their confluent force.
Whose streams, while man the blissful garden trod,
Adorn'd the earthly paradise of God;
But since he fell, within their triple bound,
Fenced a lone region of forbidden ground;
Meeting at once, where high athwart their bed
Repulsive rocks a curving barrier spread,
The embattled floods, by mutual whirlpools crost,
In hoary foam and surging mist were lost;
Thence, like an Alpine cataract of snow,
White down the precipice they dash'd below;
There, in tumultuous billows broken wide,
They spent their rage, and yoked their fourfold tide;
Through one majestic channel, calm and free,
The sister-rivers sought the parent-sea.

The midnight watch was ended;—down the west
The glowing moon declined towards her rest;
Through either host the voice of war was dumb;
In dreams the hero won the fight to come;
No sound was stirring, save the breeze that bore
The distant cataract's everlasting roar,

When, from the tents of Cain, a Youth withdrew;
Secret and swift, from post to post he flew,
And pass'd the camp of Eden, while the dawn
Gleam'd faintly o'er the interjacent lawn;
Skirting the forest, cautiously and slow,
He fear'd at every step to start a foe;
Oft leap'd the hare across his path, up sprung
The lark beneath his feet, and soaring sung;
What time, o'er eastern mountains seen afar,
With golden splendour rose the morning-star,
As if an Angel-sentinel of night,
From earth to heaven had wing'd his homeward flight,—
Glorious at first, but lessening by the way,
And lost insensibly in higher day.

From track of man and herd his path he chose,
Where high the grass, and thick the copsewood rose;
Then by Euphrates' banks his course inclined,
Where the grey willows trembled to the wind;
With toil and pain their humid shade he clear'd
When at the porch of heaven the sun appear'd,
Through gorgeous clouds that streak'd the orient sky,
And kindled into glory at his eye;
While dark amidst the dews that glitter'd round,
From rock and tree, long shadows traced the ground.
Then climb'd the fugitive an airy height,
And, resting, back o'er Eden cast his sight.

Far on the left, to man for ever closed,
The Mount of Paradise in clouds reposed:
The gradual landscape open'd to his view;
From Nature's face the veil of mist withdrew,
And left, in clear and purple light reveal'd,
The radiant river, and the tented field;
The black pine-forest, in whose girdle lay
The patriot phalanx, hemm'd in close array;
The verdant champaign narrowing to the north,
Whence from their dusky quarters sallied forth
The proud Invaders, early roused to fight,
Tribe after tribe emerging into light;
Whose shields and lances, in the golden beams,
Flash'd o'er the restless scene their flickering gleams,
As when the breakers catch the morning glow,
And ocean rolls in living fire below;
So, round the unbroken border of the wood,
The Giants pour'd their army like a flood,
Eager to force the covert of their foe,
And lay the last defence of Eden low.

From that safe eminence, absorb'd in thought,
Even till the wind the shout of legions brought,
He gazed,—his heart recoil'd,—he turn'd his head,
And o'er the southern hills his journey sped.

Who was the fugitive?—In infancy
A youthful Mother's only hope was he,
Whose spouse and kindred, on a festal day,
Precipitate destruction swept away;
Earth trembled, open'd, and entomb'd them all;
She saw them sinking, heard their voices call
Beneath the gulf,—and agonised, aghast,
On the wild verge of eddying ruin cast,
Felt in one pang, at that convulsive close,
A Widow's anguish, and a Mother's throes:
A Babe sprang forth, an inauspicious birth,
Where all had perish'd that she loved on earth.
Forlorn and helpless, on the upriven ground,
The parent, with her offspring, Enoch found;
And thence, with tender care and timely aid,
Home to the Patriarchs' glen his charge convey'd.

Restored to life, one pledge of former joy,
One source of bliss to come, remain'd,—her boy!
Sweet in her eye the cherish'd infant rose,
At once the seal and solace of her woes.
When the pale widow clasp'd him to her breast,
Warm gush'd the tears, and would not be represt:
In lonely anguish, when the truant child
Leap'd o'er the threshold, all the mother smiled.
In him, while fond imagination view'd
Husband and parents, brethren, friends renew'd,
Each vanish'd look, each well-remember'd grace,
That pleased in them, she sought in Javan's face;
For quick his eye and changeable its ray,
As the sun glancing through a vernal day;
And, like the lake by storm or moonlight seen,
With darkening furrows or cerulean mien,
His countenance, the mirror of his breast,
The calm or trouble of his soul express'd.

As years enlarged his form, in moody hours
His mind betray'd its weakness with its powers.
Alike his fairest hopes and strangest fears
Were nursed in silence, or divulged with tears:
The fulness of his heart repress'd his tongue,
Though none might rival Javan when he sung.
He loved, in lonely indolence reclined,
To watch the clouds, and listen to the wind,

But from the north when snow and tempest came,
His nobler spirit mounted into flame;
With stern delight he roam'd the howling woods,
Or hung in ecstasy o'er headlong floods.
Meanwhile, excursive fancy long'd to view
The world, which yet by fame alone he knew;
The joys of freedom were his daily theme,
Glory the secret of his midnight dream:
That dream he told not; though his heart would ache,
His home was precious for his mother's sake.
With her the lowly paths of peace he ran,
His guardian angel, till he verged to man;
But when her weary eye could watch no more,
When to the grave her timeless corse he bore,
Not Enoch's counsels could his steps restrain;
He fled, and sojourn'd in the land of Cain.
There, when he heard the voice of Jubal's lyre,
Instinctive genius caught the ethereal fire;
And soon, with sweetly-modulating skill,
He learn'd to wind the passions at his will,
To rule the chords with such mysterious art,
They seem'd the life-strings of the hearer's heart.
Then Glory's opening field he proudly trod,
Forsook the worship and the ways of God;
Round the vain world pursued the phantom Fame,
And cast away his birthright for a name.

Yet no delight the Minstrel's bosom knew,—
None save the tones that from his harp he drew,
And the warm visions of a wayward mind,
Whose transient splendour left a gloom behind,
Frail as the clouds of sunset, and as fair,
Pageants of light resolving into air.
The world, whose charms his young affections stole,
He found too mean for an immortal soul;
Wound with his life, through all his feelings wrought,
Death and eternity possess'd his thought;
Remorse impell'd him, unremitting care
Harass'd his path, and stung him to despair.
Still was the secret of his griefs unknown,
Amidst the universe he sigh'd alone;
The fame he follow'd and the fame he found,
Heal'd not his heart's immedicable wound;
Admired, applauded, crown'd, where'er he roved,
The Bard was homeless, friendless, unbeloved.
All else that breathed below the circling sky,
Were link'd to earth by some endearing tie;
He only, like the ocean-weed uptorn,
And loose along the world of waters borne,
Was cast companionless, from wave to wave,
On life's rough sea,—and there was none to save.

The Giant King, who led the hosts of Cain,
Delighted in the Minstrel and his vein;
No hand, no voice, like Javan's could control,
With soothing concords, his tempestuous soul.
With him the wandering Bard, who found no rest
Through ten years' exile, sought his native west;
There from the camp retiring, he pursued
His journey to the Patriarchs' solitude.
This son of peace no martial armour wore;
A scrip for food, a staff in hand, he bore;
Flaxen his robe; and o'er his shoulder hung,
Broad as a warrior's shield, his harp unstrung,
A shell of tortoise, exquisitely wrought
With hieroglyphics of embodied thought;
Jubal himself enchased the polish'd frame;
And Javan won it in the strife for fame,
Among the sons of Music, when their Sire
To his victorious skill adjudged the lyre.

'Twas noon, when Javan climb'd the bordering hill,
By many an old remembrance hallow'd still,
Whence he beheld, by sloping woods enclosed,
The hamlet where his Parent's dust reposed,
His home of happiness in early years,
And still the home of all his hopes and fears,
When, from ambition struggling to break free,
He mused on joys and sorrows yet to be.
Awhile he stood, with rumination pale,
Casting an eye of sadness o'er the vale,
When, suddenly abrupt, spontaneous prayer
Burst from his lips for One who sojourn'd there;
For One, whose cottage, far appearing, drew,
Even from his Mother's grave, his transient view:
One, whose unconscious smiles were wont to dart
Ineffable emotion through his heart;
A nameless sympathy, more sweet, more dear
Than friendship, solaced him when she was near.
And well he guess'd, while yet a timorous boy,
That Javan's artless songs were Zillah's joy.
But when ambition, with a fiercer flame
Than untold love, had fired his soul for fame,
This infant passion, cherish'd yet represt,
Lived in his pulse, but died within his breast;
For oft in distant lands, when hope beat high,
Westward he turn'd his eager glistening eye,
And gazed in spirit on her absent form,
Fair as the moon emerging through the storm,

Till sudden, strange, bewildering horrors cross'd
His thought,—and every glimpse of joy was lost.
Even then, when melancholy numb'd his brain,
And life itself stood still in every vein,
While his cold, quivering lips sent vows above,
—Never to curse her with his bitter love!
His heart, espoused with hers, in secret sware
To hold its truth unshaken by despair:
The vows dispersed that from those lips were borne,
But never, never, was that heart forsworn;
Throughout the world, the charm of Zillah's name
Repell'd the touch of every meaner flame.
Jealous and watchful of the Sex's wiles,
He trembled at the light of Woman's smiles!
So turns the mariner's mistrusting eye
From proud Orion bending through the sky,
Beauteous and terrible, who shines afar,
At once the brightest and most baneful star.

Where Javan from that eastern hill survey'd
The circling forest and embosom'd glade,
Earth wore one summer-robe of living green,
In heaven's blue arch the sun alone was seen;
Creation slumber'd in the cloudless light,
And noon was silent as the depth of night.
O what a throng of rushing thoughts oppress'd,
In that vast solitude, his anxious breast!
—To wither in the blossom of renown,
And unrecorded to the dust go down,
Or, for a name on earth, to quit the prize
Of immortality beyond the skies,
Perplex'd his wavering choice:—when Conscience fail'd,
Love rose against the World, and Love prevail'd;
Passion, in aid of Virtue, conquer'd Pride,
And Woman won the heart to Heaven denied.

CANTO SECOND.

Javan, descending through the Forest, arrives at the place where he had formerly parted with Zillah, when he withdrew from the Patriarchs' Glen. There he again discovers her in a Bower formed on the spot. Their strange Interview, and abrupt Separation.

Steep the descent, and wearisome the way;
The twisted boughs forbade the light of day;
No breath from heaven refresh'd the sultry gloom,
The arching forest seem'd one pillar'd tomb,
Upright and tall the trees of ages grow,
While all is loneliness and waste below;
There, as the massy foliage, far aloof
Display'd a dark impenetrable roof,
So, gnarl'd and rigid, claspt and interwound,
An uncouth maze of roots emboss'd the ground:
Midway beneath, the sylvan wild assumed
A milder aspect, shrubs and flowerets bloom'd;
Openings of sky, and little plots of green,
And showers of sun-beams through the leaves, were seen.

Awhile the traveller halted at the place
Where last he caught a glimpse of Zillah's face,
One lovely eve, when in that calm retreat
They met, as they were often wont to meet,
And parted, not as they were wont to part,
With gay regret, but heaviness of heart;
Though Javan named for his return the night
When the new moon had roll'd to full-orb'd light.
She stood, and gazed through tears, that forced their way,
Oft as from steep to steep, with fond delay,
Lessening at every view, he turn'd his head,
Hail'd her with weaker voice, then forward sped.
From that sad hour, she saw his face no more
In Eden's woods, or on Euphrates' shore:
Moons wax'd and waned; to her no hope appear'd,
Who much his death, but more his falsehood, fear'd.

Now, while he paused, the lapse of years forgot,
Remembrance eyed her lingering near the spot.
Onward he hasten'd; all his bosom burn'd,
As if that eve of parting were return'd;
And she, with silent tenderness of woe,
Clung to his heart, and would not let him go.
Sweet was the scene! apart the cedars stood,
A sunny islet open'd in the wood;
With vernal tints the wild-briar thicket glows,
For here the desert flourish'd as the rose;
From sapling trees, with lucid foliage crown'd,
Gay lights and shadows twinkled on the ground;
Up the tall stems luxuriant creepers run,
To hang their silver blossoms in the sun;

Deep velvet verdure clad the turf beneath,
Where trodden flowers their richest odours breathe:
O'er all, the bees, with murmuring music, flew
From bell to bell, to sip the treasured dew;
While insect myriads, in the solar gleams,
Glanced to and fro, like intermingling beams;
So fresh, so pure, the woods, the sky, the air,
It seem'd a place where angels might repair,
And tune their harps beneath those tranquil shades,
To morning songs, or moonlight serenades.

He paused again, with memory's dream entranced,
Again his foot unconsciously advanced,
For now the laurel-thicket caught his view
Where he and Zillah wept their last adieu.
Some curious hand, since that bereaving hour,
Had twined the copse into a covert bower,
With many a light and fragrant shrub between,
Flowering aloft amidst perennial green.
As Javan search'd this blossom-woven shade,
He spied the semblance of a sleeping Maid:
'Tis she; 'tis Zillah, in her leafy shrine;
O'erwatch'd in slumber by a Power Divine,
In cool retirement from the heat of day,
Alone, unfearing, on the moss she lay,
Fair as the rainbow shines through darkening showers,
Pure as a wreath of snow on April flowers.

O youth! in later times, whose gentle ear
This tale of ancient constancy shall hear;
If thou hast known the sweetness, and the pain,
To love with secret hope, yet love in vain;
If months and years in pining silence worn,
Till doubt and fear might be no longer borne,
In evening shades thy faltering tongue confess'd
The last dear wish that trembled in thy breast,
While at each pause the streamlet purl'd along,
And rival woodlands echoed song for song;
Recall the Maiden's look;—the eye, the cheek,
The blush that spoke what language could not speak;
Recall her look, when at the altar's side
She seal'd her promise, and became thy bride.
Such were, to Javan, Zillah's form and face,
The flower of meekness on a stem of grace;
O! she was all that Youth of Beauty deems,
All that to Love the loveliest object seems.

Moments there are, that, in their sudden flight,
Bring the slow mysteries of years to light:
Javan, in one transporting instant, knew,
That all he wish'd, and all he fear'd, was true;
For while the harlot-world his soul possess'd,
Love seem'd a crime in his apostate breast;
How could he tempt her innocence to share
His poor ambition, and his fix'd despair!
But now the phantoms of a wandering brain,
And wounded spirit, cross'd his thoughts in vain:
Past sins and follies, cares and woes, forgot,
Peace, virtue, Zillah, seem'd his present lot;
Where'er he look'd, around him or above,
All was the pledge of Truth, the work of Love,
At whose transforming hand, where last they stood,
Had sprung that lone memorial in the wood.

Thus on the slumbering maid while Javan gazed,
With quicker swell her hidden bosom raised
The shadowy tresses, that profusely shed
Their golden wreaths from her reclining head;
A deeper crimson mantled o'er her cheek,
Her close lip quiver'd as in act to speak,
While broken sobs, and tremors of unrest,
The inward trouble of a dream express'd:
At length, amidst imperfect murmurs, fell
The name of “Javan!” and a low “farewell!”
Tranquil again, her cheek resumed its hue,
And soft as infancy her breath she drew.

When Javan's ear those startling accents thrill'd,
Wonder and ecstasy his bosom fill'd;
But quick compunction humbler feelings wrought,
He blush'd to be a spy on Zillah's thought;
He turn'd aside; within the neighbouring brake
Resolved to tarry till the nymph awake,
There, as in luxury of thought reclined,
A calm of tenderness composed his mind:
His stringless harp upon the turf was thrown,
And on a pipe of most mellifluous tone,
Framed by himself, the musing Minstrel play'd,
To charm the slumberer, cloister'd in the shade.
Jubal had taught the lyre's responsive string
Beneath the rapture of his touch to sing;
And bade the trumpet wake, with bolder breath,
The joy of battle in the field of death;
But Javan first, whom pure affection fired,
With Love's clear eloquence the flute inspired;
At once obedient to the lip and hand,
It utter'd every feeling at command.
Light o'er the stops his airy fingers flew,
A spirit spoke in every tone they drew;

'Twas now the skylark on the wings of morn,
Now the night-warbler leaning on her thorn;
Anon through every pulse the music stole,
And held sublime communion with the soul,
Wrung from the coyest breast the unprison'd sigh,
And kindled rapture in the coldest eye.

Thus on his dulcet pipe while Javan play'd,
Within her bower awoke the conscious maid;
She, in her dream, by varying fancies crost,
Had hail'd her wanderer found, and mourn'd him lost:
In one wild vision, midst a land unknown,
By a dark river, as she sat alone,
Javan beyond the stream dejected stood;
He spied her soon, and leapt into the flood;
The thwarting current urged him down its course,
But Love repell'd it with victorious force;
She ran to help him landing, where at length
He struggled up the bank with failing strength:
She caught his hand;—when, downward from the day,
A water-monster dragg'd the youth away;
She follow'd headlong, but her garments bore
Her form, light floating, till she saw no more:
For suddenly the dream's delusion changed,
And through a blooming wilderness she ranged;
Alone she seem'd, but not alone she walk'd,—
Javan, invisible, beside her talk'd.
He told, how he had journey'd many a year
With changing seasons in their swift career,
Danced with the breezes in the bowers of morn,
Slept in the valley where new moons are born,
Rode with the planets, on their golden cars,
Round the blue world inhabited by stars,
And, bathing in the sun's crystalline streams,
Became ethereal spirit in the beams,
Whence were his lineaments, from mortal sight,
Absorb'd in pure transparency of light;
But now, his pilgrimage of glory past,
In Eden's vale he sought repose at last.
—The voice was mystery to Zillah's ear,
Not speech, nor song, yet full, melodious, clear;
No sounds of winds or waters, birds or bees,
Were e'er so exquisitely tuned to please.
Then, while she sought him with desiring eyes,
The airy Javan darted from disguise:
Full on her view a stranger's visage broke;
She fled, she fell, he caught her,—she awoke.

Awoke from sleep,—but in her solitude
Found the enchantment of her dream renew'd;
That living voice, so full, melodious, clear,
That voice of mystery, warbled in her ear.
Yet words no longer wing the trembling notes,
Unearthly, inexpressive music floats,
In liquid tones so voluble and wild,
Her senses seem by slumber still beguiled:
Alarm'd, she started from her lonely den,
But, blushing, instantly retired again;
The viewless phantom came in sound so near,
The stranger of her dream might next appear.
Javan, conceal'd behind the verdant brake,
Felt his lip fail, and strength his hand forsake;
Then dropt his flute, and while he lay at rest
Heard every pulse that travell'd through his breast.
Zillah, who deem'd the strange illusion fled,
Now from the laurel-arbour show'd her head,
Her eye quick-glancing round as if, in thought,
Recoiling from the object that she sought:
By slow degrees, to Javan in the shade,
The emerging nymph her perfect shape display'd.
Time had but touch'd her form to finer grace,
Years had but shed their favours on her face,
While secret Love, and unrewarded Truth,
Like cold clear dew upon the rose of youth,
Gave to the springing flower a chasten'd bloom,
And shut from rifling winds its coy perfume.

Words cannot paint the wonder of her look,
When once again his pipe the Minstrel took,
And soft in under-tones began to play,
Like the caged woodlark's low-lamenting lay:
Then loud and shrill, by stronger breath impell'd,
To higher strains the undaunted music swell'd,
Till new-born echoes through the forest rang,
And birds, at noon, in broken slumbers sang.
Bewildering transport, infantine surprise,
Throbb'd in her bosom, sparkled in her eyes;
O'er every feature every feeling shone,
Her colour changed as Javan changed his tone:
While she between the bower and brake, entranced,
Alternately retreated or advanced;
Sometimes the lessening cadence seem'd to fly,
Then the full melody came rolling nigh;
She shrunk, or follow'd still, with eye and feet,
Afraid to lose it, more afraid to meet;
For yet through Eden's land, by fame alone,
Jubal's harmonious minstrelsy was known,
Though nobler songs than cheer'd the Patriarchs' glen
Never resounded from the lips of men.

Silence, at length, the listening Maiden broke;
The heart of Javan check'd him while she spoke:
Though sweeter than his pipe her accents stole,
He durst not learn the tumult of her soul,
But, closely cowering in his ambuscade,
With sprightlier breath and nimbler finger play'd.
—“'Tis not the nightingale that sang so well,
When Javan left me near this lonely cell:
'Tis not indeed the nightingale;—her voice
Could never, since that hour, my soul rejoice:
Some bird from Paradise hath lost her way,
And carols here a long-forbidden lay;
For ne'er since Eve's transgression mortal ear
Was privileged such heavenly sounds to hear;
Perhaps an Angel, while he rests his wings,
On earth alighting, here his descant sings;
Methinks those tones, so full of joy and love,
Must be the language of the world above!
Within this brake he rests:” With curious ken,
As if she fear'd to stir a lion's den,
Breathless, on tiptoe, round the copse she crept;
Her heart beat quicker, louder, as she stept,—
Till Javan rose, and fix'd on her his eyes,
In dumb embarrassment, and feign'd surprise;
Upright she started, at the sudden view,
Back from her brow the scatter'd ringlets flew:
Paleness a moment overspread her face;
But fear to frank astonishment gave place,
And, with the virgin-blush of innocence,
She ask'd,—“Who art thou, Stranger, and from whence?”

With mild demeanour, and with downcast eye,
Javan, advancing, humbly made reply:
—“A Wretch, escaping from the tribes of men,
Seeks an asylum in the Patriarchs' glen.
As through the forest's breathless gloom I stray'd,
Up sprang the breeze in this delicious shade;
Then, while I sate beneath the rustling tree,
I waked this pipe to wildest minstrelsy,
Child of my fancy, framed with Jubal's art,
To breathe at will the fulness of my heart:
Fairest of Women! if the clamour rude
Hath scared the quiet of thy solitude,
Forgive the innocent offence, and tell
How far beyond these woods the righteous dwell.”

Though changed his voice, his look and stature changed.
In air and garb, in all but love estranged,
Still in the youthful exile Zillah sought
A dear lost friend, for ever near her thought!
Yet answer'd coldly,—jealous and afraid
Her heart might be mistaken, or betray'd:
—“Not far from hence the faithful race reside;
Pilgrim! to whom shall I thy footsteps guide?
Alike to all, if thou an alien be:
My father's home invites thee; follow me.”

She spoke with such a thought-divining look,
Colour his lip, and power his tongue, forsook;
At length, in hesitating tone, and low,
—“Enoch,” said he, “the friend of God, I know;
To him I bear a message full of fear;
I may not rest till he vouchsafe to hear.”

He paused; his cheek with red confusion burn'd;
Kindness through her relenting breast return'd:
—“Behold the path,” she cried, and led the way:
Ere long, the vale unbosom'd to the day:
—“Yonder, where two embracing oaks are seen,
Arch'd o'er a cottage-roof, that peeps between,
Dwells Enoch. Stranger! peace attend thee there;
My father's sheep demand his daughter's care.”

Javan was so rebuked beneath her eye,
She vanish'd ere he falter'd a reply,
And sped, while he in cold amazement stood,
Along the winding border of the wood;
Now lost, now re-appearing, as the glade
Shone to the sun, or darken'd in the shade,
He saw, but might not follow, where her flock
Were wont to rest at noon, beneath a rock.
He knew the willowy champaign, and the stream,
Of many an early lay the simple theme,
Chanted in Boyhood's unsuspecting hours,
When Zillah join'd the song, or praised his powers.
Thither he watch'd her, while her course she bore,
Nor ceased to gaze when she was seen no more.

CANTO THIRD.

Javan's Soliloquy on Zillah's Desertion of him. He reaches the Ruins of his Mother's Cottage. Thence he proceeds to Enoch's Dwelling. His Reception there. Enoch and Javan proceed together towards the Place of Sacrifice. Description of the Patriarchs' Glen;—Occasion of the Family of Seth retiring thither at first.

“Am I so changed by suffering, so forgot,
That love disowns me, Zillah knows me not?

Ah! no: she shrinks from my disastrous fate;
She dare not love me, and she cannot hate.
'Tis just; I merit this:—When Nature's womb
Ingulf'd my kindred in one common tomb,
Why was I spared?—A reprobate by birth,
To Heaven rebellious, unallied on earth,
Whither, O whither, shall the outcast flee?
There is no home, no peace, no hope, for me.
I hate the worldling's vanity and noise,
I have no fellow-feeling in his joys;
The saint's serener bliss I cannot share,
My soul, alas! hath no communion there.
This is the portion of my cup below,—
Silent, unmingled, solitary woe;
To bear from clime to clime the curse of Cain,
Sin with remorse, yet find repentance vain;
And cling, in blank despair, from breath to breath,
To nought in life, except the fear of Death.”

While Javan gave his bitter passion vent,
And wander'd on, unheeding where he went,
His feet, instinctive, led him to the spot
Where rose the ruins of his Childhood's cot:
Here, as he halted in abrupt surprise,
His Mother seem'd to vanish from his eyes,
As if her gentle form, unmark'd before,
Had stood to greet him at the wonted door;
Yet did the pale retiring Spirit dart
A look of tenderness that broke his heart:
'Twas but a thought, arrested on its flight,
And bodied forth with visionary light,
But chill the life-blood ran through every vein,
The fire of frenzy faded from his brain,
He cast himself in terror on the ground:
—Slowly recovering strength, he gazed around,
In wistful silence eyed those walls decay'd,
Between whose chinks the lively lizard play'd;
The moss-clad timbers, loose and lapsed awry,
Threatening ere long in wider wreck to lie;
The fractured roof, through which the sun-beams shone,
With rank unflowering verdure overgrown;
The prostrate fragments of the wicker-door,
And reptile traces on the damp green floor.
This mournful spectacle while Javan view'd,
Life's earliest scenes and trials were renew'd;
O'er his dark mind, the light of years gone by
Gleam'd, like the meteors of a northern sky.
He moved his lips, but strove in vain to speak,
A few slow tears stray'd down his cold wan cheek,
Till from his breast a sigh convulsive sprung,
And “O my mother!” trembled from his tongue.
That name, though but a murmur, that dear name
Touch'd every kind affection into flame;
Despondency assumed a milder form,
A ray of comfort darted through the storm;
“O God! be merciful to me!”—He said,
Arose, and straight to Enoch's dwelling sped.

Enoch, who sate, to taste the freshening breeze,
Beneath the shadow of his cottage-trees,
Beheld the Youth approaching; and his eye,
Instructed by the light of prophecy,
Knew from afar, beneath the stranger's air,
The orphan object of his tenderest care;
Forth, with a father's joy, the holy man
To meet the poor returning pilgrim ran,
Fell on his neck, and kiss'd him, wept, and cried,
“My son! my son!”—but Javan shrunk aside;
The Patriarch raised, embraced him, oft withdrew
His head to gaze, then wept and clasp'd anew.
The mourner bow'd with agony of shame,
Clung round his knees, and call'd upon his name.
—“Father! behold a supplicant in me,
A sinner in the sight of Heaven and thee:
Yet, for thy former love, may Javan live;
O, for the mother's sake, the son forgive!—
The meanest office, and the lowest seat,
In Enoch's house be mine, at Enoch's feet.”

“Come to my home, my bosom, and my rest,
Not as a stranger, and way-faring guest;
My bread of peace, my cup of blessings share,
Child of my faith! and answer to my prayer!
O! I have wept through many a night for thee,
And watch'd through many a day this day to see.
Crown'd is the hope of my desiring heart,
I am resign'd, and ready to depart:
With joy I hail my course of nature run,
Since I have seen thy face, my son! my son!”

So saying, Enoch led to his abode
The trembling penitent, along the road
That through the garden's gay enclosure wound.
Midst fruits and flowers the Patriarch's spouse they found,
Plucking the purple clusters from the vine
To crown the cup of unfermented wine:
She came to meet them;—but in strange surmise
Stopt, and on Javan fix'd her earnest eyes;

He kneel'd to greet her hand with wonted grace—
Ah! then she knew him!—as he bow'd his face,
His mother's features in a glimpse she caught,
And the son's image rush'd upon her thought:
Pale she recoil'd with momentary fright,
As if a spirit had risen before her sight;
Returning, with a heart too full to speak,
She pour'd a flood of tears upon his cheek,
Then laugh'd for gladness,—but her laugh was wild:
“Where hast thou been, my own, my orphan child?
Child of my soul! bequeath'd in death to me,
By her who had no other wealth than thee!”
She cried, and with a mother's love caress'd
The Youth, who wept in silence on her breast.

This hasty tumult of affection o'er,
They pass'd within the hospitable door;
There on a grassy couch, with joy o'ercome,
Pensive with awe, with veneration dumb,
Javan reclined, while, kneeling at his seat,
The humble Patriarch wash'd the traveller's feet.
Quickly the Spouse her plenteous table spread
With homely viands, milk and fruits and bread.
Ere long the guest, grown innocently bold,
With simple eloquence, his story told;
His sins, his follies, frankly were reveal'd,
And nothing but his nameless love conceal'd.
“While thus,” he cried, “I proved the world a snare,
Pleasure a serpent, Fame a cloud in air;
While with the sons of men my footsteps trod,
My home, my heart, was with the sons of God.”

“Went not my spirit with thee,” Enoch said,
“When from the Mother's grave the Orphan fled?
Others believed thee slain by beasts of blood,
Or self-devoted to the strangling flood,
(Too plainly in thy grief-bewilder'd mien,
By every eye, a breaking heart was seen;)
I mourn'd in secret thine apostasy,
Nor ceased to intercede with Heaven for thee.
Strong was my faith; in dreams or waking thought,
Oft as thine image o'er my mind was brought,
I deem'd thee living by this conscious sign,
The deep communion of my soul with thine.
This day a voice, that thrill'd my breast with fear,
(Methought 'twas Adam's) whisper'd in mine ear,
—‘Enoch! ere thrice the morning meet the sun,
Thy joy shall be fulfill'd, thy rest begun.’—
While yet those tones were murmuring in air,
I turn'd to look,—but saw no speaker there:
Thought I not then of thee, my long-lost joy?
Leapt not my heart abroad to meet my boy?
Yes! and while still I sate beneath the tree,
Revolving what the signal meant to me,
I spied thee coming, and with eager feet
Ran, the returning fugitive to greet:
Nor less the welcome art thou since I know,
By this high warning, that from earth I go;
My days are number'd; peace on thine attend!
The trial comes,—be faithful to the end.”

“O live the years of Adam!” cried the youth;
“Yet seem thy words to breathe prophetic truth.
Sire! while I roam'd the world, a transient guest,
From sunrise to the ocean of the west,
I found that sin, where'er the foot of man
Nature's primeval wilderness o'er-ran,
Had track'd his steps, and through advancing Time
Urged the deluded race from crime to crime,
Till wrath and strife, in fratricidal war,
Gather'd the force of nations from afar,
To deal and suffer Death's unheeded blow,
As if the curse on Adam were too slow.
Even now an host, like locusts on their way,
That desolate the earth, and dim the day,
Led by a Giant-King, whose arm hath broke
Remotest realms to wear his iron yoke,
Hover o'er Eden, resolute to close
His final triumph o'er his latest foes;
A feeble band, that in their covert lie,
Like cowering doves beneath the falcon's eye.
That easy and ignoble conquest won,
There yet remains one fouler deed undone.
Oft have I heard the tyrant, in his ire,
Devote this glen to massacre and fire,
And swear to root, from Earth's dishonour'd face,
The last least relic of the faithful race;
Thenceforth he hopes, on God's terrestrial throne
To rule the nether universe alone.
Wherefore, O Sire! when evening shuts the sky,
Fly with thy kindred, from destruction fly!
Far to the south, unpeopled wilds of wood
Skirt the dark borders of Euphrates' flood;
There shall the Patriarchs find secure repose,
Till Eden rest, forsaken of her foes.”

At Javan's speech the Matron's cheek grew pale;
Her courage, not her faith, began to fail:
Eve's youngest daughter she: the silent tear
Witness'd her patience, but betray'd her fear.

Then answer'd Enoch, with a smile serene,
That shed celestial beauty o'er his mien:
“Here is mine earthly habitation; here
I wait till my Redeemer shall appear;
Death and the face of man I dare not shun,
God is my refuge, and His will be done!”

The Matron check'd her uncomplaining sigh,
And wiped the drop that trembled in her eye.
Javan with shame and self-abasement blush'd,
But every care at Enoch's smile was hush'd:
He felt the power of truth; his heart o'erflow'd,
And in his look sublime devotion glow'd.
Westward the Patriarch turn'd his tranquil face;
“The Sun,” said he, “hath well nigh run his race;
I to the yearly sacrifice repair,
Our Brethren meet me at the place of prayer.”

“I follow: O, my father! I am thine;
Thy God, thy people, and thine altar, mine!”
Exclaim'd the youth, on highest thoughts intent,
And forth with Enoch through the valley went.

Deep was that valley, girt with rock and wood,
In rural groups the scatter'd hamlet stood;
Tents, arbours, cottages, adorn'd the scene,
Gardens and fields and shepherds' walks between;
Through all, a streamlet, from its mountain-source,
Seen but by stealth, pursued its willowy course.

When first the mingling sons of God and man
The demon-sacrifice of war began,
Self-exiled here, the family of Seth
Renounced a world of violence and death,
Faithful alone amidst the faithless found,
And innocent while murder cursed the ground.
Here, in retirement from profane mankind,
They worshipp'd God with purity of mind,
Fed their small flocks, and till'd their narrow soil,
Like parent Adam, with submissive toil,
—Adam, whose eyes their pious hands had closed,
Whose bones beneath their quiet turf reposed.
No glen like this, unstain'd with human blood,
Could youthful Nature boast before the flood;
Far less shall Earth, now hastening to decay,
A scene of sweeter loneliness display,
Where nought was heard but sounds of peace and love,
Nor seen but woods around, and heaven above.

Yet not in cold and unconcern'd content
Their years in that delicious range were spent;
Oft from their haunts the fervent Patriarchs broke,
In strong affection to their kindred spoke,
With tears and prayers reproved their growing crimes,
Or told the impending judgments of the times.
In vain: the world despised the warning word,
With scorn belied it, or with mockery heard;
Forbade the zealous monitors to roam,
And stoned, or chased them to their forest home.
There, from the depth of solitude, their sighs
Pleaded with Heaven in ceaseless sacrifice;
And long did righteous Heaven the guilty spare,
Won by the holy violence of prayer.

Yet sharper pangs of unavailing woe,
Those Sires in secrecy were doom'd to know;
Oft by the world's alluring snares misled,
Their youth from that sequester'd valley fled,
Join'd the wild herd, increased the godless crew,
And left the virtuous remnant weak and few.

CANTO FOURTH.

Enoch relates to Javan the Circumstances of the Death of Adam, including his Appointment of an Annual Sacrifice on the Day of his Transgression and Fall in Paradise.

Thus through the valley while they held their walk,
Enoch of former days began to talk:—
“Thou know'st our place of sacrifice and prayer,
Javan! for thou wert wont to worship there:
Built by our father's venerable hands,
On the same spot our ancient altar stands,
Where, driven from Eden's hallow'd groves, he found
A home on earth's unconsecrated ground;
Whence too, his pilgrimage of trial o'er,
He reach'd the rest which sin can break no more.
Oft hast thou heard our elder Patriarchs tell
How Adam once by disobedience fell:
Would that my tongue were gifted to display
The terror and the glory of that day,
When, seized and stricken by the hand of Death,
The first transgressor yielded up his breath!

Nigh threescore years, with interchanging light,
The host of heaven have measured day and night,
Since we beheld the ground, from which he rose,
On his returning dust in silence close.

“With him his noblest sons might not compare,
In godlike feature and majestic air:
Not out of weakness rose his gradual frame,
Perfect from his Creator's hand he came;
And as in form excelling, so in mind
The Sire of men transcended all mankind.
A soul was in his eye, and in his speech
A dialect of heaven no art could reach;
For oft of old to him the evening breeze
Had borne the voice of God among the trees;
Angels were wont their songs with his to blend,
And talk with him as their familiar friend.
But deep remorse for that mysterious crime,
Whose dire contagion through elapsing time
Diffused the curse of death beyond control,
Had wrought such self-abasement in his soul,
That he, whose honours were approach'd by none,
Was yet the meekest man beneath the sun.
From sin, as from the serpent that betray'd
Eve's early innocence, he shrunk afraid;
Vice he rebuked with so austere a frown,
He seem'd to bring an instant judgment down;
Yet, while he chid, compunctious tears would start,
And yearning tenderness dissolve his heart!
The guilt of all his race became his own,
He suffer'd as if he had sinn'd alone.
Within our glen to filial love endear'd,
Abroad for wisdom, truth, and justice fear'd,
He walk'd so humbly in the sight of all,
The vilest ne'er reproach'd him with his fall.
Children were his delight;—they ran to meet
His soothing hand, and clasp his honour'd feet;
While 'midst their fearless sports supremely blest,
He grew in heart a child among the rest.
Yet, as a Parent, nought beneath the sky
Touch'd him so quickly as an infant's eye:
Joy from its smile of happiness he caught;
Its flash of rage sent horror through his thought:
His smitten conscience felt as fierce a pain,
As if he fell from innocence again.

“One morn I track'd him on his lonely way,
Pale as the gleam of slow-awakening day:
With feeble step he climb'd yon craggy height,
Thence fix'd on distant Paradise his sight;
He gazed awhile in silent thought profound,
Then, falling prostrate on the dewy ground,
He pour'd his spirit in a flood of prayer,
Bewail'd his ancient crime with self-despair,
And claim'd the pledge of reconciling grace,
The promised Seed, the Saviour of his race.
Wrestling with God, as nature's vigour fail'd,
His faith grew stronger and his plea prevail'd;
The prayer from agony to rapture rose,
And sweet as Angel accents fell the close.
I stood to greet him: when he raised his head,
Divine expression o'er his visage spread;
His presence was so saintly to behold,
He seem'd in sinless Paradise grown old.

“—‘This day,’ said he, ‘in Time's star-lighted round,
Renews the anguish of that mortal wound
On me inflicted, when the Serpent's tongue
My Spouse with his beguiling falsehood stung.
Though years of grace through centuries have pass'd
Since my transgression, this may be my last;
Infirmities without, and fears within,
Foretell the consummating stroke of sin:
The hour, the place, the form to me unknown,
But God, who lent me life, will claim his own:
Then, lest I sink as suddenly in death,
As quicken'd into being by his breath,
Once more I climb'd these rocks with weary pace,
And but once more, to view my native place,
To bid yon garden of delight farewell,
The earthly Paradise from which I fell.
This mantle, Enoch! which I yearly wear
To mark the day of penitence and prayer,—
These skins, the covering of my first offence,
When, conscious of departed innocence,
Naked and trembling from my Judge I fled,
A hand of mercy o'er my vileness spread;—
Enoch! this mantle, thus vouchsafed to me,
At my dismission I bequeath to thee;
Wear it in sad memorial on this day,
And yearly at mine earliest altar slay
A lamb immaculate, whose blood be spilt
In sign of wrath removed and cancell'd guilt:
So be the sins of all my race confest,
So on their heads may peace and pardon rest!’
—Thus spake our Sire, and down the steep descent,
With strengthen'd heart and fearless footstep, went:
O Javan! when we parted at his door,
I loved him as I never loved before.

“Ere noon, returning to his bower, I found
Our father labouring in his harvest ground,
(For yet he till'd a little plot of soil,
Patient and pleased with voluntary toil;)
But O how changed from him, whose morning eye
Outshone the star that told the sun was nigh!
Loose in his feeble grasp the sickle shook;
I mark'd the ghastly dolour of his look,
And ran to help him; but his latest strength
Fail'd;—prone upon his sheaves he fell at length:
I strove to raise him; sight and sense were fled,
Nerveless his limbs, and backward sway'd his head.
Seth pass'd; I call'd him, and we bore our Sire
To neighbouring shades from noon's afflictive fire:
Ere long he 'woke to feeling, with a sigh,
And half unclosed his hesitating eye;
Strangely and timidly he peer'd around,
Like men in dreams whom sudden lights confound:
—‘Is this a new Creation?—Have I pass'd
The bitterness of death?’—He look'd aghast,
Then sorrowful!—‘No; men and trees appear;
'Tis not a new Creation—pain is here:
From Sin's dominion is there no release?
Lord! let thy Servant now depart in peace.’
—Hurried remembrance crowding o'er his soul,
He knew us; tears of consternation stole
Down his pale cheeks:—‘Seth!—Enoch! Where is Eve?
How could the spouse her dying consort leave?’

“Eve look'd that moment from their cottage-door
In quest of Adam, where he toil'd before:
He was not there; she call'd him by his name;
Sweet to his ear the well-known accents came:
—‘Here am I,’ answer'd he, in tone so weak,
That we who held him scarcely heard him speak;
But, resolutely bent to rise, in vain
He struggled till he swoon'd away with pain.
Eve call'd again, and, turning tow'rds the shade,
Helpless as infancy beheld him laid:
She sprang, as smitten with a mortal wound,
Forward, and cast herself upon the ground
At Adam's feet; half rising in despair,
Him from our arms she wildly strove to tear;
Repell'd by gentle violence, she press'd
His powerless hand to her convulsive breast,
And kneeling, bending o'er him, full of fears,
Warm on his bosom shower'd her silent tears.
Light to his eyes at that refreshment came,
They opened on her in a transient flame;
—‘And art thou here, my Life! my Love!’ he cried,
‘Faithful in death to this congenial side?
Thus let me bind thee to my breaking heart,
One dear, one bitter moment, ere we part.’
—‘Leave me not, Adam! leave me not below;
With thee I tarry, or with thee I go,’
She said, and, yielding to his faint embrace,
Clung round his neck, and wept upon his face.
Alarming recollection soon return'd,
His fever'd frame with growing anguish burn'd:
Ah! then, as Nature's tenderest impulse wrought,
With fond solicitude of love she sought
To soothe his limbs upon their grassy bed,
And make the pillow easy to his head;
She wiped his reeking temples with her hair;
She shook the leaves to stir the sleeping air;
Moisten'd his lips with kisses: with her breath
Vainly essay'd to quell the fire of Death,
That ran and revell'd through his swollen veins
With quicker pulses and severer pains.

“The sun, in summer majesty on high,
Darted his fierce effulgence down the sky;
Yet dimm'd and blunted were the dazzling rays,
His orb expanded through a dreary haze,
And, circled with a red portentous zone,
He look'd in sickly horror from his throne:
The vital air was still; the torrid heat
Oppress'd our hearts, that labour'd hard to beat.
When higher noon had shrunk the lessening shade,
Thence to his home our father we convey'd,
And stretch'd him, pillow'd with his latest sheaves,
On a fresh couch of green and fragrant leaves.
Here, though his sufferings through the glen were known,
We chose to watch his dying bed alone,
Eve, Seth, and I.—In vain he sigh'd for rest,
And oft his meek complainings thus express'd:
—‘Blow on me, Wind! I faint with heat! O bring
Delicious water from the deepest spring;
Your sunless shadows o'er my limbs diffuse,
Ye Cedars! wash me cold with midnight dews.
—Cheer me, my friends! with looks of kindness cheer;
Whisper a word of comfort in mine ear;
Those sorrowing faces fill my soul with gloom;
This silence is the silence of the tomb.
Thither I hasten; help me on my way:
O sing to soothe me; and to strengthen, pray!

We sang to soothe him,—hopeless was the song;
We pray'd to strengthen him,—he grew not strong.
In vain from every herb, and fruit, and flower,
Of cordial sweetness or of healing power,
We press'd the virtue; no terrestrial balm
Nature's dissolving agony could calm.
Thus as the day declined, the fell disease
Eclipsed the light of life by slow degrees:
Yet, while his pangs grew sharper, more resign'd,
More self-collected, grew the sufferer's mind;
Patient of heart, though rack'd at every pore,
The righteous penalty of sin he bore:
Not his the fortitude that mocks at pains,
But that which feels them most, and yet sustains.
—‘'Tis just, 'tis merciful,’ we heard him say;
‘Yet wherefore hath He turn'd his face away?
I see Him not; I hear Him not; I call;
My God! my God! support me, or I fall.’

“The sun went down amidst an angry glare
Of flushing clouds, that crimson'd all the air;
The winds brake loose; the forest boughs were torn,
And dark aloof the eddying foliage borne;
Cattle to shelter scudded in affright;
The florid evening vanish'd into night:
Then burst the hurricane upon the vale,
In peals of thunder, and thick-vollied hail;
Prone-rushing rains with torrents whelm'd the land,
Our cot amidst a river seem'd to stand;
Around its base, the foamy-crested streams
Flash'd through the darkness to the lightning's gleams;
With monstrous throes an earthquake heaved the ground,
The rocks were rent, the mountains trembled round.
Never, since Nature into being came,
Had such mysterious motion shook her frame:
We thought, ingulf'd in floods, or wrapt in fire,
The world itself would perish with our Sire.

“Amidst this war of elements, within
More dreadful grew the sacrifice of sin,
Whose victim on his bed of torture lay,
Breathing the slow remains of life away.
Erewhile, victorious faith sublimer rose
Beneath the pressure of collected woes:
But now his spirit waver'd, went and came,
Like the loose vapour of departing flame,
Till, at the point when comfort seem'd to die
For ever in his fix'd unclosing eye,
Bright through the smouldering ashes of the man,
The saint brake forth, and Adam thus began:

“—‘O ye, that shudder at this awful strife,
This wrestling agony of Death and Life,
Think not that He, on whom my soul is cast,
Will leave me thus forsaken to the last:
Nature's infirmity alone you see;
My chains are breaking, I shall soon be free;
Though firm in God the Spirit holds her trust,
The flesh is frail, and trembles into dust.
Horror and anguish seize me;—'tis the hour
Of darkness, and I mourn beneath its power;
The Tempter plies me with his direst art,
I feel the Serpent coiling round my heart;
He stirs the wound he once inflicted there,
Instils the deadening poison of despair,
Belies the truth of God's delaying grace,
And bids me curse my Maker to his face.
—I will not curse Him, though his grace delay;
I will not cease to trust Him, though He slay;
Full on his promised mercy I rely,
For God hath spoken,—God, who cannot lie.
—Thou, of my faith the Author and the End!
Mine early, late, and everlasting Friend!
The joy, that once thy presence gave, restore,
Ere I am summon'd hence, and seen no more:
Down to the dust returns this earthly frame,
Receive my Spirit, Lord! from whom it came;
Rebuke the Tempter, show thy power to save,
O let thy glory light me to the grave,
That these, who witness my departing breath,
May learn to triumph in the grasp of Death.’

“He closed his eyelids with a tranquil smile,
And seem'd to rest in silent prayer awhile:
Around his couch with filial awe we kneel'd,
When suddenly a light from heaven reveal'd
A Spirit, that stood within the unopen'd door;—
The sword of God in his right hand he bore;
His countenance was lightning, and his vest
Like snow at sunrise on the mountain's crest;
Yet so benignly beautiful his form,
His presence still'd the fury of the storm:
At once the winds retire, the waters cease;
His look was love, his salutation, ‘Peace!’

“Our mother first beheld him, sore amazed,
But terror grew to transport while she gazed:

—‘'Tis He, the Prince of Seraphim, who drove
Our banish'd feet from Eden's happy grove;
Adam, my Life, my Spouse, awake!’ she cried;
‘Return to Paradise; behold thy Guide!
O let me follow in this dear embrace!’
She sunk, and on his bosom hid her face.
Adam look'd up; his visage changed its hue,
Transform'd into an Angel's at the view:
‘I come!’ he cried, with faith's full triumph fired,
And in a sigh of ecstasy expired.
The light was vanish'd, and the vision fled;
We stood alone, the living with the dead;
The ruddy embers, glimmering round the room,
Display'd the corpse amidst the solemn gloom:
But o'er the scene a holy calm reposed,—
The gate of heaven had open'd there, and closed.

“Eve's faithful arm still clasp'd her lifeless Spouse;
Gently I shook it, from her trance to rouse;
She gave no answer; motionless and cold,
It fell like clay from my relaxing hold:
Alarm'd, I lifted up the locks of grey
That hid her cheek; her soul had pass'd away!
A beauteous corse she graced her partner's side;
Love bound their lives, and Death could not divide.

“Trembling astonishment of grief we felt,
Till Nature's sympathies began to melt:
We wept in stillness through the long dark night;
—And O how welcome was the morning light!”

CANTO FIFTH.

The Burying-place of the Patriarchs. The Sacrifice on the Anniversary of the Fall of Adam. Enoch's Prophecy.

“And here,” said Enoch, with dejected eye,
“Behold the grave, in which our Parents lie.”
They stopp'd, and o'er the turf-enclosure wept,
Where, side by side, the First-Created slept:
It seem'd as if a voice, with still small sound,
Heard in their bosoms, issued from that mound:
—“From earth we came, and we return'd to earth;
Descendants! spare the Dust that gave you birth;
Though Death, the pain for our transgression due,
By sad inheritance we left to you,
O let our Children bless us in our grave,
And man forgive the wrong that God forgave!”

Thence to the altar Enoch turn'd his face;
But Javan linger'd in that burying-place,—
A scene sequester'd from the haunts of men,
The loveliest nook of all that lovely glen,
Where weary pilgrims found their last repose.
The little heaps were ranged in comely rows,
With walks between, by friends and kindred trod,
Who dress'd with duteous hands each hallow'd sod:
No sculptured monument was taught to breathe
His praises, whom the worm devour'd beneath;
The high, the low, the mighty, and the fair,
Equal in death, were undistinguish'd there.
Yet not a hillock moulder'd near that spot,
By one dishonour'd or by all forgot:
To some warm heart, the poorest dust was dear;
From some kind eye, the meanest claim'd a tear.
And oft the living, by affection led,
Were wont to walk in spirit with their dead,
Where no dark cypress cast a doleful gloom,
No blighting yew shed poison o'er the tomb,
But, white and red with intermingling flowers,
The graves look'd beautiful in sun and showers:
Green myrtles fenced it, and beyond their bound
Ran the clear rill with ever-murmuring sound.
'Twas not a scene for Grief to nourish care;
It breathed of Hope, and moved the heart to prayer.

Why linger'd Javan in that lone retreat?
The shrine of her that bare him drew his feet:
Trembling he sought it, fearing to behold
A bed of thistles, or unsightly mould;
But, lo! the turf, which his own hands had piled,
With choicest flowers and richest verdure smiled:
By all the glen, his mother's couch of rest,
In his default, was visited and blest.
He kneel'd, he kiss'd it, full of love and woe;
His heart was where his treasure lay, below;
And long he tarried, ere, with heav'nward eyes,
He rose, and hasten'd to the sacrifice.

Already, on a neighbouring mount that stood
Apart amidst the valley, girt with wood,
Whose open summit, rising o'er the trees,
Caught the cool fragrance of the evening breeze,
The Patriarchal Worshippers were met:
The Lamb was brought, the wood in order set

On Adam's rustic altar, moss-o'ergrown,
An unwrought mass of earth-embedded stone,
Long known and hallow'd, where, for man's offence,
The earth first drank the blood of innocence,
When God himself ordain'd the typic rite
To Eden's Exiles, resting on their flight.
Foremost amidst the group was Enoch seen,
Known by his humble port and heavenly mien:
On him the Priest's mysterious office lay,
For 'twas the eve of Man's transgression-day,
And him had Adam, with expiring breath,
Ordain'd to offer yearly, from his death,
A victim on that mountain whence the skies
Had first inhaled the fumes of sacrifice.
In Adam's coat of skins array'd he stands,
Spreading to heaven his supplicating hands,
Ere from his robe the deadly steel he drew
To smite the victim, sporting in his view.
Behind him Seth, in majesty confess'd,
The World's great Elder, tower'd above the rest.
Serenely shone his sweet and solemn eye,
Like the sun reigning in the western sky;
Though nine slow centuries by stealth had shed
Grey hairs, the crown of glory, on his head,
In hardy health he rear'd his front sublime:
Like the green aloe, in perennial prime,
When, full of years, it shoots forth all its bloom,
And glads the forest through the inmost gloom;
So, in the blossom of a good old age,
Flourish'd amidst his sons that peerless sage.

Around him, in august succession, stood
The fathers of the world before the Flood:
—Enos; who taught mankind, on solemn days,
In sacred groves to meet for prayer and praise,
And warn'd idolaters to lift their eye,
From sun and stars, to Him who made the sky:
—Canaan and Malahel; of whom alone
Their age, of all that once they were, is known:
—Jared; who, full of hope beyond the tomb,
Hallow'd his offspring from the Mother's womb,
And heaven received the Son that Parent gave,
He walk'd with God, and overstepp'd the grave:
—A mighty pilgrim in the vale of tears,
Born to the troubles of a thousand years,
Methuselah, whose feet unhalting ran
To the last circle of the life of man:
—Lamech; from infancy inured to toil,
To wring slow blessings from the accursed soil,
Ere yet, to dress his vineyards, reap his corn,
And comfort him in care, was Noah born,
Who, in a later age, by signal grace,
Survived to renovate the human race:
Both worlds, by sad reversion, were his due,—
The Orphan of the old, the Father of the new.

These, with their families on either hand,
Aliens and exiles in their native land,
The few who loved their Maker from their youth,
And worshipp'd God in spirit and in truth;
These stood with Enoch:—All had fix'd their eyes
On him, and on the Lamb of sacrifice,
For now with trembling hand he shed the blood,
And placed the slaughter'd victim on the wood;
Then kneeling, as the sun went down, he laid
His hand upon the hallow'd pyre, and pray'd:—
“Maker of heaven and earth! supreme o'er all
That live, and move, and breathe, on Thee we call:
Our father sinn'd and suffer'd;—we, who bear
Our father's image, his transgression share;
Humbled for his offences, and our own,
Thou, who art holy, wise, and just alone,
Accept, with free confession of our guilt,
This victim slain, this blood devoutly spilt,
While through the veil of sacrifice we see
Thy mercy smiling, and look up to Thee:
O grant forgiveness! power and grace are thine;
God of salvation! cause thy face to shine;
Hear us in heaven! fulfil our souls' desire,
God of our father! answer now with fire.”

He rose: no light from heaven around him shone,
No fire descended from the eternal throne:
Cold on the pile the offer'd victim lay,
Amidst the stillness of expiring day.
The eyes of all that watch'd in vain to view
The wonted sign distractedly withdrew;
Fear clipp'd their breath, their doubling pulses raised,
And each by stealth upon his neighbour gazed;
From heart to heart a strange contagion ran,
A shuddering instinct crowded man to man;

Even Seth with secret consternation shook,
And cast on Enoch an imploring look.
Enoch, in whose sublime, unearthly mien,
No change of hue, no cloud of care, was seen,
Full on the mute assembly turn'd his face,
Clear as the sun prepared to run his race:
He spoke; his words, with awful warning fraught,
Rallied and fix'd the scatter'd powers of thought.

“Men, brethren, fathers! wherefore do ye fear?
Hath God departed from us?—God is here;
Present in every heart, with sovereign power
He tries, He proves, his people in this hour:
Naked as light to his all-searching eye,
The thoughts that wrong, the doubts that tempt Him lie;
Yet, slow to anger, merciful as just,
He knows our frame, remembers we are dust,
And spares our weakness:—In his truth believe,
Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.
What though no flame on Adam's altar burn,
No signal of acceptance yet return,
God is not man, who to our father sware,
All times, in every place, to answer prayer:
He cannot change; though heaven and earth decay,
The word of God shall never pass away.

“But mark the season:—from the rising sun,
Westward, the race of Cain the world o'er-run;
Their monarch, mightiest of the sons of men,
Hath sworn destruction to the Patriarchs' glen:
Hither he hastens; carnage strews his path:
—Who will await the giant in his wrath?
Or who will take the wings of silent night,
And seek deliverance from his sword by flight?
Thus saith the Lord:—Ye weak of faith and heart,
Who dare not trust the living God, depart!
The Angel of his presence leads your way,
Your lives are safe, and given you as a prey:
But ye, who, unappall'd at earthly harm,
Lean on the strength of his Almighty arm,
Prepared for life or death, with firm accord,
Stand still, and see the glory of the Lord.”

A pause, a dreary pause, ensued:—then cried
The holy man,—“On either hand divide;
The feeble fly; with me the valiant stay:
Choose now your portion; whom will ye obey,—
God, or your fears? His counsel, or your own?”
—“The Lord; the Lord; for He is God alone!”
Exclaim'd at once, with consentaneous choice,
The whole assembly, heart, and soul, and voice.
Then light from heaven with sudden beauty came,
Pure on the altar blazed the unkindled flame,
And upwards to their glorious source return'd
The sacred fires in which the victim burn'd:
While through the evening gloom, to distant eyes,
Morn o'er the Patriarchs' mountains seem'd to rise.

Awe-struck, the congregation kneel'd around,
And worshipp'd with their faces to the ground;
The peace of God, beyond expression sweet,
Fill'd every spirit humbled at his feet,
And love, joy, wonder, deeply mingling there,
Drew from the heart unutterable prayer.

They rose. As if his soul had pass'd away,
Prostrate before the altar Enoch lay;
Entranced so deeply, all believed him dead:
At length he breathed, he moved, he raised his head;
To heaven in ecstasy he turn'd his eyes;
—With such a look the dead in Christ shall rise,
When the last trumpet calls them from the dust,
To join the resurrection of the just:—
Yea, and from earthly grossness so refined,
(As if the soul had left the flesh behind,
Yet wore a mortal semblance,) upright stood
The great Evangelist before the Flood;
On him the vision of the Almighty broke,
And future times were present while he spoke.

“The Saints shall suffer; righteousness shall fail;
O'er all the world iniquity prevail;
Giants, in fierce contempt of man and God,
Shall rule the nations with an iron rod;
On every mountain idol groves shall rise,
And darken heaven with human sacrifice:
But God the Avenger comes,—a judgment-day,
A flood, shall sweep his enemies away.
How few, whose eyes shall then have seen the sun,
—One righteous family, and only one,—
Saved from that wreck of Nature, shall behold
The new Creation rising from the old!

“O, that the world of wickedness, destroy'd,
Might lie for ever without form and void!
Or, that the earth, to innocence restored,
Might flourish as the garden of the Lord!

It will not be:—among the sons of men,
The Giant-Spirit shall go forth again,
From clime to clime shall kindle murderous rage,
And spread the plagues of sin from age to age;
Yet shall the God of mercy, from above,
Extend the golden sceptre of his love,
And win the rebels to his righteous sway,
Till every mouth confess, and heart obey.

“Amidst the visions of ascending years,
What mighty Chief, what Conqueror, appears;
His garments roll'd in blood, his eyes of flame,
And on his thigh the unutterable name?
—‘'Tis I that bring deliverance: strong to save,
I pluck'd the prey from death, and spoil'd the grave.’
—Wherefore, O Warrior! are thy garments red,
Like those whose feet amidst the vintage tread?
—‘I trod the wine-press of the field alone;
I look'd around for succour; there was none;
Therefore my wrath sustain'd me while I fought,
And mine own arm my Saints' salvation wrought.’
—Thus may thine arm for evermore prevail;
Thus may thy foes, O Lord! for ever fail;
Captive by thee captivity be led;
Seed of the woman! bruise the serpent's head;
Redeemer! promised since the world began,
Bow the high heavens, and condescend to man.

“Hail to the Day-spring! dawning from afar,
Bright in the east I see his natal star:
Prisoners of hope! lift up your joyful eyes;
Welcome the King of Glory from the skies:
Who is the King of Glory?—Mark his birth:
In deep humility he stoops to earth,
Assumes a Servant's form, a Pilgrim's lot,
Comes to his own, his own receive him not,
Though angel-choirs his peaceful advent greet,
And Gentile sages worship at his feet.

“Fair as that sovereign Plant, whose scions shoot
With healing verdure, and immortal fruit,
The Tree of Life, beside the stream that laves
The fields of Paradise with gladdening waves;
Behold him rise from infancy to youth,
The Father's image, full of grace and truth;
Tried, tempted, proved in secret, till the hour
When, girt with meekness, but array'd with power,
Forth in the spirit of the Lord, at length,
Like the sun shining in meridian strength,
He goes:—to preach good tidings to the poor;
To heal the wounds that nature cannot cure;
To bind the broken-hearted; to control
Disease and death; to raise the sinking soul;
Unbar the dungeon, set the captive free,
Proclaim the joyous year of liberty,
And, from the depth of undiscover'd night,
Bring life and immortality to light.

“How beauteous on the mountains are thy feet,
Thy form how comely, and thy voice how sweet,
Son of the Highest!—Who can tell thy fame?
The Deaf shall hear it, while the Dumb proclaim;
Now bid the Blind behold their Saviour's light,
The Lame go forth rejoicing in their might;
Cleanse with a touch yon kneeling Leper's skin;
Cheer this pale Penitent, forgive her sin;
O, for that Mother's faith, her Daughter spare;
Restore the Maniac to a Father's prayer;
Pity the tears those mournful Sisters shed,
And Be the Resurrection of the Dead!

“What scene is this?—Amidst involving gloom
The moonlight lingers on a lonely tomb;
No noise disturbs the garden's hallow'd bound,
But the watch walking on their midnight round:
Ah! who lies here, with marr'd and bloodless mien,
In whom no form or comeliness is seen;
His livid limbs with nails and scourges torn,
His side transpierced, his temples wreathed with thorn?
'Tis He, the Man of Sorrows! He who bore
Our sins and chastisement:—His toils are o'er:
On earth erewhile a suffering life he led;
Here hath he found a place to lay his head:
Rank'd with transgressors he resign'd his breath,
But with the rich he made his bed in death.
Sweet is the grave, where Angels watch and weep;
Sweet is the grave, and sanctified his sleep;
Rest, O my spirit! by this martyr'd form,
This wreck, that sunk beneath the Almighty storm,
When floods of wrath that weigh'd the world to hell,
On Him alone in righteous vengeance fell;
While men derided, demons urged, his woes,
And God forsook him,—till the awful close;

Then, in triumphant agony, He cried,
‘'Tis finish'd!’—bow'd his sacred head, and died.
Death, as he struck that noblest victim, found
His sting was lost for ever in the wound;
The Grave, that holds his corse, her richest prize,
Shall yield him back, victorious, to the skies.
He lives: ye bars of steel! ye gates of brass!
Give way and let the King of Glory pass:—
He lives: ye golden portals of the spheres!
Open! the Sun of Righteousness appears.
But, ah! my spirit faints beneath the blaze
That breaks and brightens o'er the latter days,
When every tongue his trophies shall proclaim,
And every knee shall worship at his name;
For He shall reign with undivided power,
To Earth's last bounds, to Nature's final hour.

“'Tis done:—again the conquering Chief appears
In the dread vision of dissolving years;
His vesture dipp'd in blood, his eyes of flame,
The Word of God his everlasting name;
Throned in mid-heaven, with clouds of glory spread,
He sits in judgment on the quick and dead;
Strong to deliver: Saints! your songs prepare;
Rush from your tombs to meet him in the air:
But terrible in vengeance; Sinners! bow
Your haughty heads, the grave protects not now:
He who alone in mortal conflict trod
The mighty wine-press of the wrath of God,
Shall fill the cup of trembling to his foes,
The unmingled cup of inexhausted woes;
The proud shall drink it in that dreadful day,
While Earth dissolves, and Heaven is roll'd away.”

Here ceased the Prophet:—from the altar broke
The last dim wreaths of fire-illumined smoke;
Darkness had fall'n around; but o'er the streams
The Moon, new-ris'n, diffused her brightening beams:
Homeward, with tears, the worshippers return'd,
Yet, while they wept, their hearts within them burn'd.

CANTO SIXTH.

Javan's second Interview with Zillah. He visits the various Dwellings scattered throughout the Glen, and, in the Evening, sings to his Harp, amidst the assembled Inhabitants:—Address to Twilight; Jubal's Song of the Creation: the Power of Music exemplified.

Spent with the toils of that eventful day,
All night in dreamless slumber Javan lay;
But, early springing from his bed of leaves,
Waked by the songs of swallows on the eaves,
From Enoch's cottage, in the cool grey hour,
He wander'd forth to Zillah's woodland bower.
There, in his former covert, on the ground,
The frame of his forsaken harp he found:
He smote the boss; the convex orb, unstrung,
Instant with sweet reverberation rung:
The minstrel smiled, at that sonorous stroke,
To find the spell of harmony unbroke:
Trickling with dew, he bore it to the cell:
There, as with leaves he dried the sculptured shell,
He thought of Zillah; and resolved, too late,
To plead his constancy, and know his fate.

She, from the hour when, in a pilgrim's guise,
Javan return'd,—a stranger to her eyes,
Not to her heart,—from anguish knew no rest;
Love, pride, resentment, struggling in her breast.
All day she strove to hide her misery,
In vain;—a mother's eye is quick to see,
Slow to rebuke, a daughter's bashful fears,
And Zillah's mother only chid with tears:
Night came, but Javan came not with the night;
Light vanish'd, Hope departed with the light;
Her lonely couch conceal'd her sleepless woes,
But with the morning star the maiden rose.
The soft refreshing breeze, the orient beams,
The dew, the mist unrolling from the streams,
The light, the joy, the music of the hour,
Stole on her spirit with resistless power,
With healing sweetness soothed her fevered brain,
And woke the pulse of tenderness again.
Thus while she wander'd, with unconscious feet,
Absent in thought she reach'd her sylvan seat:
The youth descried her not amidst the wood,
Till, like a vision, at his side she stood.

Their eyes encounter'd; both at once exclaim'd,
“Javan!” and “Zillah!”—each the other named;
Those sounds were life or death to either heart:
He rose; she turn'd in terror to depart;
He caught her hand:—“O do not, do not flee!”
—It was a moment of eternity,
And now or never must he plight his vow,
Win or abandon her for ever now.

“Stay:—hear me, Zillah!—every power above,
Heaven, earth, thyself, bear witness to my love!
Thee have I loved from earliest infancy,
Loved with supreme affection only thee.
Long in these shades my timid passion grew,
Through every change, in every trial, true;
I loved thee through the world in dumb despair,
Loved thee, that I might love no other fair;
Guilty, yet faithful still, to thee I fly;
Receive me, love me, Zillah! or I die.”

Thus Javan's lips, so long in silence seal'd,
With sudden vehemence his soul reveal'd;
Zillah meanwhile recover'd power to speak,
While deadly paleness overcast her cheek:
—“Say not, ‘I love thee!’—Witness every tree
Around this bower thy cruel scorn of me!
Could Javan love me through the world, yet leave
Her whom he loved, for hopeless years, to grieve?
Returning, could he find her here alone,
Yet pass her by, unknowing as unknown?
All day was she forsaken, or forgot?
Did Javan seek her at her father's cot?
That cot of old so much his soul's delight,
His mother's seem'd not fairer in his sight:
No: Javan mocks me; none could love so well,
So long, so painfully,—and never tell.”

“Love owns no law,” rejoin'd the pleading youth,
“Except obedience to eternal truth:
Deep streams are silent; from the generous breast,
The dearest feelings are the last confest:
Erewhile I strove in vain to break my peace,
Now I could talk of love and never cease:
—Still had my trembling passion been conceal'd,
Still but in parables by stealth reveal'd,
Had not thine instantaneous presence wrung,
By swift surprise, the secret from my tongue.
Yet hath Affection language of her own,
And mine in every thing but words was shown;
In childhood, as the bird of nature free,
My song was gladness, when I sung to thee:
In youth, when'er I mourn'd a bosom flame
And praised a maiden whom I durst not name,
Couldst thou not then my hidden thought divine?
Didst thou not feel that I was wholly thine?
When for vain glory I forsook thee here,
Dear as thou wert, unutterably dear,
From virtue, truth, and innocence estranged,
To thee, thee only, was my heart unchanged;
And as I loved without a hope before,
Without a hope I loved thee yet the more.
At length, when, weary of the ways of men,
Refuge I sought in this maternal glen,
Thy sweet remembrance drew me from afar,
And Zillah's beauty was my leading star.
Here when I found thee, fear itself grew bold,
Methought my tale of love already told;
But soon thine eyes the dream of folly broke,
And I from bliss, as they from slumber, woke;
My heart, my tongue, were chill'd to instant stone,
I durst not speak thy name, nor give my own.
When thou wert vanish'd, horror and affright
Seized me, my sins uprose before my sight;
Like fiends they rush'd upon me; but Despair
Wrung from expiring Faith a broken prayer;
Strength came; the path to Enoch's bower I trod;
He saw me, met me, led me back to God.
O Zillah! while I sought my Maker's grace,
And flesh and spirit fail'd before His face,
Thy tempting image from my breast I drove,
It was no season then for earthly love.”

“For earthly love it is no season now,”
Exclaim'd the maiden, with reproachful brow,
And eyes through tears of tenderness that shone,
And voice half peace half anger in its tone.
“Freely thy past unkindness I forgive;
Content to perish here, so Javan live:
The tyrant's menace to our tribe we know;
The Patriarchs never seek, nor shun, a foe;
Thou, while thou mayst, from swift destruction fly;
I and my father's house resolve to die.”

“With thee and with thy father's house, to bear
Death or captivity, is Javan's prayer;
Remorse for ever be the recreant's lot:
If I forsake thee now, I love thee not.”

Thus while he vow'd, a gentle answer sprung
To Zillah's lips, but died upon her tongue;
Trembling she turn'd, and hasten'd to the rock,
Beyond those woods, that hid her folded flock,
Whose bleatings reach'd her ear, with loud complaint
Of her delay; she loosed them from restraint;
Then bounding headlong forth, with antic glee,
They roam'd in all the joy of liberty.
Javan beside her walk'd as in a dream,
Nor more of love renew'd the fruitless theme.

Forthwith, from home to home throughout the glen,
The friends whom once he knew he sought again;
Each hail'd the stranger welcome at his board,
As lost but found, as dead to life restored.
From Eden's camp no tidings came; the day
In awful expectation pass'd away.
At eve his harp the fond enthusiast strung,
On Adam's mount, and to the Patriarchs sung;
While youth and age, an eager throng, admire
The mingling music of the voice and lyre.

“I love thee, Twilight! as thy shadows roll,
The calm of evening steals upon my soul,
Sublimely tender, solemnly serene,
Still as the hour, enchanting as the scene.
I love thee, Twilight! for thy gleams impart
Their dear, their dying influence to my heart,
When o'er the harp of thought thy passing wind
Awakens all the music of the mind,
And Joy and Sorrow, as the spirit burns,
And Hope and Memory, sweep the chords by turns;
While Contemplation, on seraphic wings,
Mounts with the flame of sacrifice, and sings.
Twilight! I love thee; let thy glooms increase
Till every feeling, every pulse, is peace:
Slow from the sky the light of day declines,
Clearer within the dawn of glory shines,
Revealing, in the hour of Nature's rest,
A world of wonders in the poet's breast
Deeper, O Twilight! then thy shadows roll,
An awful vision opens on my soul.

“On such an evening, so divinely calm,
The woods all melody, the breezes balm,
Down in a vale, where lucid waters stray'd,
And mountain-cedars stretch'd their downward shade,
Jubal, the Prince of Song (in youth unknown),
Retired to commune with his harp alone;
For still he nursed it, like a secret thought
Long cherish'd and to late perfection wrought,—
And still with cunning hand, and curious ear,
Enrich'd, ennobled, and enlarged its sphere,
Till he had compass'd, in that magic round,
A soul of harmony, a heaven of sound.
Then sang the minstrel, in his laurel bower,
Of Nature's origin, and Music's power.
—‘He spake, and it was done;—Eternal Night,
At God's command, awaken'd into light;
He call'd the elements, Earth, Ocean, Air,
He call'd them when they were not, and they were:
He look'd through space, and, kindling o'er the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars, came forth to meet his eye:
His spirit moved upon the desert earth,
And sudden life through all things swarm'd to birth;
Man from the dust He raised to rule the whole;
He breathed, and man became a living soul:
Through Eden's groves the Lord of Nature trod,
Upright and pure, the image of his God.
Thus were the heavens and all their host display'd,
In wisdom thus were earth's foundations laid:
The glorious scene a holy sabbath closed;
Amidst his works the Omnipotent reposed;
And while He view'd and bless'd them from his seat,
All worlds, all beings, worshipp'd at his feet:
The morning stars in choral concert sang,
The rolling deep with hallelujahs rang,
Adoring angels from their orbs rejoice:
The voice of Music was Creation's voice.

“‘Alone along the lyre of Nature sigh'd
The master-chord, to which no chord replied:
For Man, while bliss and beauty reign'd around,
For Man alone, no fellowship was found,
No fond companion, in whose dearer breast
His heart, repining in his own, might rest;
For, born to love, the heart delights to roam,
A kindred bosom is its happiest home.
On earth's green lap, the Father of mankind,
In mild dejection, thoughtfully reclined;
Soft o'er his eyes a sealing slumber crept,
And Fancy soothed him while Reflection slept.
Then God—who thus would make his counsel known,
Counsel that will'd not man to dwell alone—
Created Woman with a smile of grace,
And left the smile that made her on her face.

The Patriarch's eyelids open'd on his bride,
—The morn of beauty risen from his side!
He gazed with new-born rapture on her charms,
And Love's first whispers won her to his arms,
Then, tuned through all the chords supremely sweet,
Exulting Nature found her lyre complete,
And, from the key of each harmonious sphere,
Struck music worthy of her Maker's ear.’

“Here Jubal paused; for grim before him lay,
Couch'd like a lion watching for his prey,
With blood-red eye of fascinating fire,
Fix'd, like the gazing serpent's, on the lyre,
An awful form, that through the gloom appear'd
Half brute, half human; whose terrific beard,
And hoary flakes of long dishevell'd hair,
Like eagle's plumage ruffled by the air,
Veil'd a sad wreck of grandeur and of grace,
Limbs worn and wounded, a majestic face,
Deep-plough'd by Time, and ghastly pale with woes,
That goaded till remorse to madness rose:
Haunted by phantoms, he had fled his home,
With savage beasts in solitude to roam;
Wild as the waves, and wandering as the wind,
No art could tame him, and no chains could bind:
Already seven disastrous years had shed
Mildew and blast on his unshelter'd head;
His brain was smitten by the sun at noon,
His heart was wither'd by the cold night-moon.

“'Twas Cain, the sire of nations:—Jubal knew
His kindred looks, and tremblingly withdrew;
He, darting like the blaze of sudden fire,
Leap'd o'er the space between, and grasp'd the lyre;
Sooner with life the struggling bard would part,
And, ere the fiend could tear it from his heart,
He hurl'd his hand with one tremendous stroke
O'er all the strings; whence in a whirlwind broke
Such tones of terror, dissonance, despair,
As till that hour had never jarr'd in air.
Astonish'd into marble at the shock,
Backward stood Cain, unconscious as a rock,
Cold, breathless, motionless through all his frame:
But soon his visage quicken'd into flame,
When Jubal's hand the crashing jargon changed
To melting harmony, and nimbly ranged
From chord to chord, ascending sweet and clear,
Then rolling down in thunder on the ear;
With power the pulse of anguish to restrain,
And charm the evil spirit from the brain.

“Slowly recovering from that trance profound,
Bewilder'd, touch'd, transported with the sound,
Cain view'd himself, the bard, the earth, the sky,
While wonder flash'd and faded in his eye,
And reason, by alternate frenzy crost,
Now seem'd restored, and now for ever lost.
So shines the moon, by glimpses, through her shrouds,
When windy Darkness rides upon the clouds,
Till through the blue, serene, and silent night,
She reigns in full tranquillity of light.
Jubal, with eager hope, beheld the chase
Of strange emotions hurrying o'er his face,
And wak'd his noblest numbers to control
The tide and tempest of the maniac's soul:
Through many a maze of melody they flew,
They rose like incense, they distill'd like dew,
Pour'd through the sufferer's breast delicious balm,
And soothed remembrance till remorse grew calm,
Till Cain forsook the solitary wild,
Led by the minstrel like a weaned child.
O! had you seen him to his home restored,
How young and old ran forth to meet their lord;
How friends and kindred on his neck did fall,
Weeping aloud, while Cain outwept them all:
But hush!—thenceforward when recoiling care
Lower'd on his brow, and sadden'd to despair,
The lyre of Jubal, with divinest art,
Repell'd the demon, and revived his heart.
Thus Song, the breath of heaven, had power to bind
In chains of harmony the mightiest mind;
Thus Music's empire in the soul began,
The first-born Poet ruled the first-born Man.”

While Javan sang, the shadows fell around,
The moving glow-worm brighten'd on the ground.
He ceased: the mute assembly rose in tears;
Delight and wonder were chastised with fears;
That heavenly harmony, unheard before,
Awoke the feeling,—“Who shall hear it more?”
The sun had set in glory on their sight,
For them in vain might morn restore the light;
Though self-devoted, through each mortal frame,
At thought of Death, a cold sick shuddering came,
Nature's infirmity;—but faith was given,
The flame that lifts the sacrifice to heaven:
Through doubt and darkness then beyond the skies
Eternal prospects open'd on their eyes;
Already seem'd the immortal spirit free,
And Death was swallow'd up in victory.

CANTO SEVENTH.

The Patriarchs and their Families carried away captive by a Detachment from the Army of the Invaders. The Tomb of Abel: his Murder by Cain described. The Origin of the Giants: the Infancy and early Adventures of their King: the Leader of their Host encamped in Eden.

The flocks and herds throughout the glen reposed;
No human eyelid there in slumber closed;
None, save the infant's on the mother's breast;—
With arms of love caressing and carest,
She, while her elder offspring round her clung,
Each eye intent on hers, and mute each tongue,
The voice of Death in every murmur heard,
And felt his touch in every limb that stirr'd.

At midnight, down the forest hills, a train
Of eager warriors from the host of Cain
Burst on the stillness of the scene:—they spread
In bands, to clutch the victims ere they fled:
Of flight unmindful, at their summons, rose
Those victims, meekly yielding to their foes;
Though woman wept to leave her home behind,
The weak were comforted, the strong resign'd,
And ere the moon, descending o'er the vale,
Grew, at the bright approach of morning, pale,
Collected thus, the patriarchal clan,
With strengthen'd confidence, their march began,
Since not in ashes were their dwellings laid,
And death, though threaten'd still, was still delay'd.
Struck with their fearless innocence, they saw
Their fierce assailants check'd with sacred awe;
The foe became a phalanx of defence,
And brought them, like a guard of angels, thence.
A vista-path, that through the forest led,
(By Javan shunn'd when from the camp he fled,)
The pilgrims track'd till on the mountain's height
They met the sun new risen, in glorious light;
Empurpled mists along the landscape roll'd,
And all the orient flamed with clouds of gold.

Here, while they halted, on their knees they raise
To God the sacrifice of prayer and praise:
—“Glory to Thee, for every blessing shed,
In days of peace, on our protected head;
Glory to Thee, for fortitude to bear
The wrath of man, rejoicing o'er despair;
Glory to Thee, whatever ill befall,
For faith on thy victorious name to call.
Thine own eternal purposes fulfil;
We come, O God! to suffer all thy will.”

Refresh'd and rested, on their course they went,
Ere the clouds melted from the firmament;
Odours abroad the winds of morning breathe,
And fresh with dew the herbage sprang beneath:
Down from the hills, that gently sloped away
To the broad river shining into day,
They pass'd; along the brink the path they kept,
Where high aloof o'er-arching willows wept,
Whose silvery foliage glisten'd in the beam,
And floating shadows fringed the chequer'd stream.

Adjacent rose a myrtle-planted mound,
Whose spiry top a granite fragment crown'd;
Tinctured with many-colour'd moss, the stone,
Rich as a cloud of summer-evening, shone
Amidst encircling verdure, that array'd
The beauteous hillock with a cope of shade.

“Javan!” said Enoch, “on this spot began
The fatal curse;—man perish'd here by man;
The earliest death a son of Adam died
Was murder, and that murder fratricide!
Here Abel fell a corse along this shore;
Here Cain's recoiling footsteps reek'd with gore:
Horror upraised his locks, unloosed his knees;
He heard a voice; he hid among the trees:
—‘Where is thy brother?’—from the whirlwind came
The voice of God, amidst enfolding flame:
—‘Am I my brother's keeper?’—hoarse and low,
Cain mutter'd from the copse,—‘that I should know!’
—‘What hast thou done?—For vengeance to the skies,
Lo! from the dust the blood of Abel cries.
Curst from the earth that drank his blood, with toil
Thine hand shall plough in vain her barren soil:
An exile and a wanderer thou shalt be;
A brother's eye shall never look on thee!’

“The shuddering culprit answer'd in despair,
—‘Greater the punishment than flesh can bear.’
—‘Yet shalt thou bear it: on thy brow reveal'd,
Thus be thy sentence and thy safeguard seal'd!’
Silently, swiftly as the lightning's blast,
A hand of fire athwart his temples pass'd:

He ran, as in the terror of a dream,
To quench his burning anguish in the stream;
But, bending o'er the brink, the swelling wave
Back to the eye his branded visage gave:
As soon on murder'd Abel durst he look;
Yet power to fly his palsied limbs forsook.
There, turn'd to stone for his presumptuous crime,
A monument of wrath to latest time,
Might Cain have stood: but Mercy raised his head
In prayer for help,—his strength return'd,—he fled.
That mound of myrtles o'er their favourite child,
Eve planted, and the hand of Adam piled;
Yon mossy stone, above his ashes raised,
His altar once, with Abel's offering blazed,
When God well pleased beheld the flames arise,
And smiled acceptance on the sacrifice.”

Enoch to Javan, walking at his side,
Thus held discourse apart: the youth replied:
“Relieved from toil, though Cain is gone to rest,
And the turf flowers on his disburden'd breast,
Amongst his race the murdering spirit reigns,
But riots fiercest in the giants' veins.
—Sprung from false leagues, when monstrous love combined
The sons of God and daughters of mankind,
Self-styled the progeny of heaven and earth,
Eden first gave the world's oppressors birth;
Thence far away, beneath the rising moon,
Or where the shadow vanishes at noon,
The adulterous mothers from the sires withdrew:
—Nurst in luxuriant climes their offspring grew;
Till, as in stature o'er mankind they tower'd,
And giant-strength all mortal strength o'erpower'd,
To heaven the proud blasphemers raised their eyes,
And scorn'd the tardy vengeance of the skies:
On earth invincible, they sternly broke
Love's willing bonds, and Nature's kindred yoke;
Mad for dominion, with remorseless sway,
Compell'd their reptile-brethren to obey,
And doom'd their human herds, with thankless toil,
Like brutes, to grow and perish on the soil,
Their sole inheritance, through lingering years,
The bread of misery and the cup of tears,
The tasks of oxen, with the hire of slaves,
Dishonour'd lives, and desecrated graves.

“When war,—that self-inflicted scourge of man,
His boldest crime and bitterest curse,—began;
As lions fierce, as forest-cedars tall,
And terrible as torrents in their fall,
Headlong from rocks, through vales and vineyards hurl'd,
These men of prey laid waste the eastern world;
They taught their tributary hordes to wield
The sword, red-flaming, through the death-strown field,
With strenuous arm the uprooted rock to throw,
Glance the light arrow from the bounding bow,
Whirl the broad shield to meet the darted stroke,
And stand to combat, like the unyielding oak.
Then eye from eye with fell suspicion turn'd,
In kindred breasts unnatural hatred burn'd;
Brother met brother in the lists of strife,
The son lay lurking for the father's life;
With rabid instinct, men who never knew
Each other's face before, each other slew;
All tribes, all nations, learn'd the fatal art,
And every hand was arm'd to pierce a heart.
Nor man alone the giants' might subdued;
—The camel, wean'd from quiet solitude,
Grazed round their camps, or, slow along the road,
Midst marching legions bore the servile load.
With flying forelock and dishevell'd mane,
They caught the wild steed prancing o'er the plain,
For war or pastime rein'd his fiery force;
Fleet as the wind he stretch'd along the course,
Or, loudly neighing at the trumpet's sound,
With hoofs of thunder smote the indented ground.
The enormous elephant obey'd their will,
And, tamed to cruelty with direst skill,
Roar'd for the battle, when he felt the goad,
And his proud lord his sinewy neck bestrode,
Through crashing ranks resistless havoc bore,
And writhed his trunk, and bathed his tusks in gore.

“Thus while the giants trampled friends and foes,
Amongst their tribe a mighty chieftain rose;
His birth mysterious, but traditions tell
What strange events his infancy befell.

“A goatherd fed his flock on many a steep,
Where Eden's rivers swell the southern deep;
A melancholy man, who dwelt alone,
Yet far abroad his evil fame was known,
The first of woman born, that might presume
To wake the dead bones mouldering in the tomb,
And, from the gulf of uncreated night,
Call phantoms of futurity to light.

'Twas said his voice could stay the falling flood,
Eclipse the sun, and turn the moon to blood,
Roll back the planets on their golden cars,
And from the firmament unfix the stars:
Spirits of fire and air, of sea and land,
Came at his call, and flew at his command;
His spells so potent, that his changing breath
Open'd or shut the gates of life and death:
O'er Nature's powers he claim'd supreme control,
And held communion with all Nature's soul:
The name and place of every herb he knew,
Its healing balsam, or pernicious dew:
The meanest reptile, and the noblest birth
Of ocean's caverns, or the living earth,
Obey'd his mandate:—lord of all the rest,
Man more than all his hidden art confess'd,
Cringed to his face, consulted, and revered
His oracles,—detested him and fear'd.

“Once by the river, in a waking dream,
He stood to watch the ever-running stream,
In which, reflected upward to his eyes,
He giddily look'd down upon the skies;
For thus he feign'd, in his ecstatic mood,
To summon divination from the flood.
His steady view, a floating object cross'd;
His eye pursued it till the sight was lost,—
An outcast infant in a fragile bark!
The river whirl'd the willow-woven ark
Down tow'rds the deep; the tide returning bore
The little voyager unharm'd to shore:
Him, in his cradle-ship securely bound
With swathing skins, at eve the goatherd found.
Nurst by that foster-sire, austere and rude,
Midst rocks and glens, in savage solitude,
Among the kids, the rescued foundling grew,
Nutrition from whose shaggy dams he drew,
Till baby-curls his broader temples crown'd,
And torrid suns his flexile limbs embrown'd:
Then as he sprang from green to florid age,
And rose to giant-stature, stage by stage,
He roam'd the vallies with his browsing flock,
And leapt in joy of youth from rock to rock;
Climb'd the sharp precipice's steepest breast,
To seize the eagle brooding on her nest,
And rent his way through matted woods, to tear
The skulking panther from his hidden lair.
A trodden serpent, horrible and vast,
Sprang on the heedless rover as he pass'd;
Limb lock'd o'er limb, with many a straitening fold
Of orbs inextricably involved, he roll'd
On earth in vengeance, broke the twisted toils,
Strangled the hissing fiend, and wore the spoils.
With hardy exercise, and cruel art,
To nerve the frame, and petrify the heart,
The wizard train'd his pupil, from a span,
To thrice the bulk and majesty of man.
His limbs were sinewy strength; commanding grace,
And dauntless spirit sparkled in his face;
His arm could pluck the lion from his prey,
And hold the horn'd rhinoceros at bay;
His feet o'er highest hills pursue the hind,
Or tire the ostrich buoyant on the wind.

“Yet 'twas the stripling's chief delight to brave
The river's wrath, and wrestle with the wave:
When torrent rains had swoln the furious tide,
Light on the foamy surge he loved to ride;
When calm and clear the stream was wont to flow,
Fearless he dived to search the caves below.
His childhood's story, often told, had wrought
Sublimest hopes in his aspiring thought.
—Once on a cedar, from its mountain-throne
Pluck'd by the tempest, forth he sail'd alone,
And reach'd the gulf;—with eye of eager fire,
And flushing cheek, he watch'd the shores retire,
Till sky and water wide around were spread;
—Straight to the sun he thought his voyage led,
With shouts of transport hail'd its setting light,
And follow'd all the long and lonely night:
But, ere the morning-star expired, he found
His stranded bark once more on earthly ground.
Tears, wrung from secret shame, suffused his eyes,
When in the east he saw the sun arise;
Pride quickly check'd them—young ambition burn'd
For bolder enterprise, as he return'd.

“Through snares and deaths pursuing fame and power,
He scorn'd his flock from that adventurous hour,
And, leagued with monsters of congenial birth,
Began to scourge and subjugate the earth.
Meanwhile the sons of Cain, who till'd the soil,
By noble arts had learn'd to lighten toil:
Wisely their scatter'd knowledge he combined;
Yet had an hundred years matured his mind,
Ere, with the strength that laid the forest low,
And skill that made the iron furnace glow,

His genius launch'd the keel, and sway'd the helm,
(His throne and sceptre on the watery realm,)
While from the tent of his expanded sail
He eyed the heavens and flew before the gale,
The first of men whose courage knew to guide
The bounding vessel through the refluent tide.
Then sware the giant, in his pride of soul,
To range the universe from pole to pole,
Rule the remotest nations with his nod,
To live a hero, and to die a god.

“This is the king that wars in Eden:—now
Fulfill'd at length he deems his early vow;
His foot hath over-run the world,—his hand
Smitten to dust the pride of every land:
The Patriarchs last, beneath his impious rod,
He dooms to perish or abjure their God.
—O God of truth! rebuke the tyrant's rage,
And save the remnant of thine heritage!”

When Javan ceased, they stood upon the height
Where first he rested on his lonely flight,
Whence to the sacred mountain far away
The land of Eden in perspective lay.
'Twas noon;—they tarried there, till milder hours
Woke with light airs the breath of evening flowers.

CANTO EIGHTH.

The Scene changes to a Mountain, on the Summit of which, beneath the Shade of ancient Trees, the Giants are assembled round their King. A Minstrel sings the Monarch's Praises, and describes the Destruction of the Remnant of the Force of his Enemies, in an Assault, by Land and Water, on heir Encampment, between the Forest on the eastern Plain of Eden and the River to the West. The Captive Patriarchs are presented before the King and his Chieftains.

“There is a living spirit in the Lyre,
A breath of music and a soul of fire;
It speaks a language to the world unknown;
It speaks that language to the Bard alone:
While warbled symphonies entrance his ears,
That spirit's voice in every tone he hears;
'Tis his the mystic meaning to rehearse,
To utter oracles in glowing verse,
Heroic themes from age to age prolong,
And make the dead in nature live in song.
Though graven rocks the warrior's deeds proclaim,
And mountains, hewn to statues, wear his name;
Though, shrined in adamant, his relics lie
Beneath a pyramid, that scales the sky;
All that the hand hath fashion'd shall decay;
All that the eye admires shall pass away;
The mouldering rocks, the hero's hope, shall fail,
Earthquakes shall heave the mountains to the vale,
The shrine of adamant betray its trust,
And the proud pyramid resolve to dust:
The Lyre alone immortal fame secures,
For song alone through Nature's change endures;—
Transfused like life, from breast to breast it glows,
From sire to son by sure succession flows,
Speeds its unceasing flight from clime to clime,
Outstripping Death upon the wings of Time.

“Soul of the Lyre! whose magic power can raise
Inspiring visions of departed days;—
Or, with the glimpses of mysterious rhyme,
Dawn on the dreams of unawaken'd Time;
Soul of the Lyre! instruct thy bard to sing
The latest triumph of the Giant-king,
Who sees this day his orb of glory fill'd:
—In what creative numbers shall I build,
With what exalted strains of music crown,
His everlasting pillar of renown?
Though, like the rainbow, by a wondrous birth,
He sprang to light, the joy of heaven and earth;
Though, like the rainbow,—for he cannot die,—
His form shall pass unseen into the sky;
Say, shall the hero share the coward's lot,
Vanish from earth ingloriously forgot?
No! the divinity that rules the Lyre,
And clothes these lips with eloquence of fire,
Commands the song to rise in quenchless flame,
And light the world for ever with his fame.”

Thus on a mountain's venerable head,
Where trees, coeval with creation, spread
Their massy-twisted branches, green and grey,
Mature below, their tops in dry decay,
A bard of Jubal's lineage proudly sung,
Then stay'd awhile the raptures of his tongue:
A shout of horrible applause, that rent
The echoing hills and answering firmament,
Burst from the Giants,—where in barbarous state,
Flush'd with new wine, around their king they sate;

A chieftain each, who, on his brazen car,
Had led an host of meaner men to war;
And now from recent fight on Eden's plain,
Where fell their foes, in helpless conflict slain,
Victoriously return'd, beneath the trees
They rest from toil, carousing at their ease.

Adjacent, where the mountain's spacious breast
Open'd in airy grandeur to the west,
Huge piles of fragrant cedars, on the ground,
As altars blazed, while victims bled around,
To gods, whose worship vanish'd with the Flood,
—Divinities of brass, and stone, and wood,
By man himself in his own image made;
The fond creator to the creature pray'd!
And he, who from the forest or the rock
Hew'd the rough mass, adored the shapen block!
Then seem'd his flocks ignoble in his eyes,
His choicest herds too mean for sacrifice,
He pour'd his brethren's blood upon the pyre,
And pass'd his sons to demons though the fire.

Exalted o'er the vassal chiefs, behold
Their sovereign, cast in Nature's mightiest mould;
Beneath an oak, whose woven boughs display'd
A verdant canopy of light and shade,
Throned on a rock the Giant-king appears,
In the full manhood of five hundred years.
His robe, the spoils of lions, by his might
Dragg'd from their dens, or slain in chase or fight:
His raven locks, unblanch'd by withering Time,
Amply dishevell'd o'er his brow sublime;
His dark eyes, flush'd with restless radiance, gleam
Like broken moonlight rippling on the stream.
Grandeur of soul, which nothing might appal,
And nothing satisfy if less than all,
Had stamp'd upon his air, his form, his face,
The character of calm and awful grace;
But direst cruelty, by guile represt,
Lurk'd in the dark volcano of his breast,
In silence brooding, like the secret power
That springs the earthquake at the midnight hour.

From Eden's summit, with obdurate pride,
Red from afar, the battle-scene he eyed,
Where late he crush'd, with one remorseless blow,
The remnant of his last and noblest foe;
At hand he view'd the trophies of his toils,
Herds, flocks, and steeds, the world's collected spoils;
Below, his legions march'd in war array,
Unstain'd with blood in that unequal fray:
—An hundred tribes, whose sons their arms had borne
Without contention, from the field at morn,
Their bands dividing, when the fight was won,
Darken'd the region tow'rds the slanting sun,
Like clouds, whose shadows o'er the landscape sail,
—While to their camp, that fill'd the northern vale,
A waving sea of tents, immensely spread,
The trumpet summon'd, and the banners led.
With these a train of captives, sad and slow,
Moved to a death of shame, or life of woe,
A death on altars hateful to the skies,
Or life in chains, a slower sacrifice.
Fair smiled the face of Nature;—all serene
And lovely, Evening tranquillised the scene;
The furies of the fight were gone to rest,
The cloudless sun grew broader down the west,
The hills beneath him melted from the sight,
Receding through the heaven of purple light;
Along the plain the maze of rivers roll'd,
And verdant shadows gleam'd in waves of gold.

Thus while the tyrant cast his haughty eye
O'er the broad landscape and incumbent sky,
His heart exulting whisper'd—“All is mine,”
And heard a voice from all things answer “Thine.”
Such was the matchless chief, whose name of yore
Fill'd the wide world;—his name is known no more:
O that for ever from the rolls of fame,
Like his, had perish'd every conqueror's name!
Then had mankind been spared, in after-times,
Their greatest sufferings and their greatest crimes.
The hero scourges not his age alone,
His curse to late posterity is known:
He slays his thousands with his living breath,
His tens of thousands by his fame in death.
Achilles quench'd not all his wrath on Greece,
Through Homer's song its miseries never cease;
Like Phœbus' shafts, the bright contagion brings
Plagues on the people for the feuds of kings.
'Twas not in vain the son of Philip sigh'd
For worlds to conquer,—o'er the western tide,
His spirit, in the Spaniard's form, o'erthrew
Realms, that the Macedonian never knew.
The steel of Brutus struck not Cæsar dead;
Cæsar in other lands hath rear'd his head,

And fought, of friends and foes, on many a plain,
His millions, captured, fugitive, and slain;
Yet seldom suffer'd, where his country died,
A Roman vengeance for his parricide.

The sun was sunk; the sacrificial pyres
From smouldering ashes breathed their last blue fires,
The smiling star, that lights the world to rest,
Walk'd in the rosy gardens of the west,
Like Eve erewhile through Eden's blooming bowers,
A lovelier star amidst a heaven of flowers.
Now in the freshness of the falling shade,
Again the minstrel to the monarch play'd.
—“Where is the youth renown'd?—the youth whose voice
Was wont to make the listening camp rejoice,
When to his harp, in many a peerless strain,
He sang the wonders of the Giant's reign:
O where is Javan?”—Thus the bard renew'd
His lay, and with a rival's transport view'd
The cloud of sudden anger, that o'ercame
The tyrant's countenance, at Javan's name;
Javan, whose song was once his soul's delight,
Now doom'd a traitor recreant by his flight.
The envious minstrel smiled; then boldly ran
His prelude o'er the chords, and thus began:—

“'Twas on the morn that faithless Javan fled,
To yonder plain the king of nations led
His countless hosts, and stretch'd their wide array
Along the woods, within whose shelter lay
The sons of Eden:—these, with secret pride,
In ambush thus the Invincible defied:
—‘Girt with the forest wherefore should we fear?
The Giant's sword shall never reach us here:
Behind, the river rolls its deep defence;
The Giant's hand shall never pluck us hence.’
Vain boast of fools! who to that hand prepare
For their own lives the inevitable snare:
His legions smote the standards of the wood,
And with their prostrate strength controll'd the flood;
Lopt off their boughs, and jointed beam to beam,
The pines and oaks were launch'd upon the stream,
An hundred rafts.—Yet still within a zone
Of tangled coppices,—a waste, o'ergrown
With briars and thorns,—the dauntless victims lie,
Scorn to surrender, and prepare to die.
The second sun went down; the monarch's plan
Was perfected: the dire assault began.

“Marshal'd by twilight, his obedient bands
Engirt the wood, with torches in their hands;
The signal given, they shoot them through the air;
The blazing brands in rapid vollies glare,
Descending through the gloom with spangled light,
As if the stars were falling through the night.
Along the wither'd grass the wild-fire flew,
Higher and hotter with obstruction grew;
The green wood hiss'd; from crackling thickets broke
Light-glancing flame, and heavy-rolling smoke;
Till all the breadth of forest seem'd to rise
In raging conflagration to the skies.
Fresh o'er our heads the winds propitious blow,
But roll the fierce combustion on the foe.
Awhile they paused, of every hope bereft,
Choice of destruction all their refuge left:
If from the flames they fled, behind them lay
The river roaring to receive his prey;
If through the stream they sought the farther strand,
Our rafts were moor'd to meet them ere they land:
With triple death environ'd thus they stood,
Till nearer peril drove them to the flood.
Safe on a hill, where sweetest moonlight slept,
As o'er the changing scene my watch I kept,
I heard their shrieks of agony; I hear
Those shrieks still ring in my tormented ear;
I saw them leap the gulf with headlong fright;
O that mine eyes could now forget that sight!
They sank in multitude; but, prompt to save,
Our warriors snatch'd the stragglers from the wave,
And on their rafts a noble harvest bore
Of rescued heroes, captive, to the shore.

“One little troop their lessening ground maintain'd
Till space to perish in alone remain'd;
Then with a shout that rent the echoing air,
More like the shout of victory than despair,
Wedged in a solid phalanx, man by man,
Right through the scorching wilderness they ran,
Where half extinct the smouldering fuel glow'd,
And levell'd copses strew'd the open road.
Unharm'd as spirits while they seem'd to pass,
Their lighted features flared like molten brass;

Around the flames in writhing volumes spread,
Thwarted their path, or mingled o'er their head;
Beneath their feet the fires to ashes turn'd,
But in their wake with mounting fury burn'd.
Our host recoil'd from that amazing sight;
Scarcely the king himself restrain'd their flight;
He, with his chiefs, in brazen armour, stood
Unmoved, to meet the maniacs from the wood.
Dark as a thunder-cloud their phalanx came,
But split like lightning into forms of flame;
Soon as in purer air their heads they raised
To taste the breath of heaven, their garments blazed;
Then blind, distracted, weaponless, yet flush'd
With dreadful valour, on their foes they rush'd;
The Giants met them midway on the plain;
'Twas but the struggle of a moment;—slain,
They fell; their relics, to the flames return'd,
As offerings to the immortal gods were burn'd;
And never did the light of morning rise
Upon the clouds of such a sacrifice.”

Abruptly here the minstrel ceased to sing,
And every face was turn'd upon the king;
He, while the stoutest hearts recoil'd with fear,
And Giants trembled their own deeds to hear,
Unmoved and unrelenting, in his mind
Deeds of more impious enterprise design'd:
A dire conception labour'd in his breast;
His eye was sternly pointed to the west,
Where stood the mount of Paradise sublime,
Whose guarded top, since man's presumptuous crime,
By noon a dusky cloud appear'd to rise,
But blazed a beacon through nocturnal skies.
As Ætna, view'd from ocean far away,
Slumbers in blue revolving smoke by day,
Till darkness, with terrific splendour, shows
The eternal fires that crest the eternal snows;
So where the cherubim in vision turn'd
Their flaming swords, the summit lower'd or burn'd.
And now conspicuous through the twilight gloom,
The glancing beams the distant hills illume,
And, as the shadows deepen o'er the ground,
Scatter a red and wavering lustre round.

Awhile the monarch, fearlessly amazed,
With jealous anger on the glory gazed:
Already had his arm in battle hurl'd
His thunders round the subjugated world;
Lord of the nether universe, his pride
Was rein'd, while Paradise his power defied.
An upland isle by meeting streams embraced,
It tower'd to heaven amidst a sandy waste;
Below, impenetrable woods display'd
Depths of mysterious solitude and shade;
Above, with adamantine bulwarks crown'd,
Primeval rocks in hoary masses frown'd;
O'er all were seen the cherubim of light,
Like pillar'd flames amidst the falling night;
So high it rose, so bright the mountain shone,
It seem'd the footstool of Jehovah's throne.

The Giant panted with intense desire
To scale those heights, and storm the walls of fire:
His ardent soul, in ecstasy of thought,
Even now with Michael and his angels fought,
And saw the seraphim, like meteors driven
Before his banners through the gates of heaven,
While he secure the glorious garden trod,
And sway'd his sceptre from the mount of God.

When suddenly the bard had ceased to sing
While all the chieftains gazed upon their king,
Whose changing looks a rising storm bespoke,
Ere from his lips the dread explosion broke,
The trumpets sounded, and before his face
Were led the captives of the Patriarchs' race:
—A lovely and a venerable band
Of young and old, amidst their foes they stand;
Unawed they see the fiery trial near;
They fear'd their God, and knew no other fear.

To light the dusky scene, resplendent fires,
Of pine and cedar, blazed in lofty pyres;
While from the east the moon with doubtful gleams
Now tipt the hills, now glanced athwart the streams,
Till, darting through the clouds her beauteous eye,
She open'd all the temple of the sky;
The Giants, closing in a narrower ring,
By turns survey'd the prisoners and the king.
Javan stood forth;—to all the youth was known,
And every eye was fix'd on him alone.

CANTO NINTH.

The King's Determination to sacrifice the Patriarchs and their Families to his Demon-Gods. His Sentence on Javan. Zillah's Distress. The Sorcerer pretends to declare the Secret of the Birth of the King, and proposes his Deification. Enoch appears.

A gleam of joy, at that expected sight,
Shot o'er the monarch's brow with baleful light:
“Behold,” thought he, “the great decisive hour;
Ere morn, these sons of God shall prove my power:
Offer'd by me their blood shall be the price
Of demon-aid to conquer Paradise.”
Thus while he threaten'd, Javan caught his view,
And instantly his visage changed its hue;
Inflamed with rage past utterance, he frown'd,
He gnash'd his teeth, and wildly glared around,
As one who saw a spectre in the air,
And durst not look upon it, nor forbear;
Still on the youth, his eye, wherever cast,
Abhorrently return'd, and fix'd at last:
“Slaves! smite the traitor; be his limbs consign'd
To flames, his ashes scatter'd to the wind!”
He cried in tones so vehement, so loud,
Instinctively recoil'd the shuddering crowd;
And ere the guards to seize their victim rush'd,
The youth was pleading,—every breath was hush'd:
Pale, but undauntedly, he faced his foes;
Warm as he spoke his kindling spirit rose,
Well pleased, on him the Patriarch-fathers smiled,
And every mother loved him as her child.

“Monarch! to thee no traitor, here I stand;
These are my brethren, this my native land;
My native land, by sword and fire consumed,
My brethren captive, and to death foredoom'd;
To these indeed a rebel in my youth,
A fugitive apostate from the truth,
Too late repentant, I confess my crime,
And mourn o'er lost irrevocable time.
—When from thy camp by conscience urged to flee,
I plann'd no wrong, I laid no snare for thee:
Did I provoke these sons of innocence,
Against thine arms, to rise in vain defence?
No; I conjured them, ere this threaten'd hour,
In sheltering forests to escape thy power:
Firm in their rectitude, they scorn'd to fly;
Thy foes they were not,—they resolved to die.
Yet think not thou, amidst thy warlike bands,
They lie beyond redemption in thine hands;
The God in whom they trust may help them still,
They know He can deliver, and HE WILL!
Whether by life or death, afflicts them not,
On His decree, not thine, they rest their lot.
For me, unworthy with the just to share
Death or deliverance, this is Javan's prayer:
Mercy, O God! to these in life be shown;
I die rejoicing, if I die alone.”

“Thou shalt not die alone,” a voice replied,
A well-known voice—'twas Zillah at his side;
She, while he spake, with eagerness to hear,
Step after step, unconsciously drew near;
Her bosom with severe compunction wrung,
Pleased or alarm'd, on every word she hung.
He turn'd his face;—with agonising air,
In all the desolation of despair,
She stood; her hands to heaven uplift and clasp'd,
Then suddenly unloosed, his arm she grasp'd,
And thus, in wild apostrophes of woe,
Vented her grief while tears refused to flow.

“Oh, I have wrong'd thee, Javan!—Let us be
Espoused in death:—No, I will die for thee.
—Tyrant! behold thy victim; on my head
Be all the bitterness of vengeance shed,
But spare the innocent; let Javan live,
Whose crime was love:—Can Javan too forgive
Love's lightest, fondest weakness, maiden-shame,
—It was not pride,—that hid my bosom-flame?
And wilt thou mourn the poor transgressor's death,
Who says, ‘I love thee,’ with her latest breath?
And when thou think'st of days and years gone by,
Will thoughts of Zillah sometimes swell thine eye?
If ever thou hast cherish'd in thine heart
Visions of hope in which I bore a part;
If ever thou hast long'd with me to share
One home-born joy, one home-endearing care;
If thou didst ever love me;—speak the word,
Which late with feign'd indifferency I heard;
Tell me, thou lovest me still;—haste, Javan! mark
How high those ruffians pile the faggots,—hark,
How the flames crackle,—see, how fierce they glare,
Like fiery serpents hissing through the air;—

Farewell! I fear them not.—Now seize me, bind
These willing limbs,—ye cannot touch the mind;
Unawed, I stand on Nature's failing brink:
—Nay, look not on me, Javan! lest I shrink;
Give me thy prayers, but turn away thine eye,
That I may lift my soul to Heaven, and die!”

Thus Zillah raved in passionate distress,
Till frenzy soften'd into tenderness;
Sorrow and love, with intermingling grace,
Terror and beauty, lighten'd o'er her face;
Her voice, her eye, in every soul was felt,
And Giant-hearts were moved, unwont to melt.
Javan, in wonder, pity, and delight,
Almost forgot his being at the sight;
That bending form, those suppliant accents, seem
The strange illusions of a lover's dream;
And while she clung upon his arm, he found
His limbs, his lips, as by enchantment, bound:
He dare not touch her, lest the charm should break;
He dare not move, lest he himself should wake.

But when she ceased to speak, and he to hear,
The silence startled him;—cold, shivering fear
Crept o'er his nerves;—in thought he cast his eye
Back on the world, and heaved a bitter sigh,
Thus from life's sweetest pleasures to be torn,
Just when he seem'd to new existence born;
And cease to feel, when feeling ceased to be
A fever of protracted misery;
And cease to love, when love no more was pain!
'Twas but a pang of transient weakness:—“Vain
Are all thy sorrows,” falteringly he said;
“Already I am number'd with the dead;
But long and blissfully may Zillah live!
—And canst thou ‘Javan's cruel scorn’ forgive?
And wilt thou mourn the poor transgressor's death
Who says, ‘I love thee,’ with his latest breath?
And when thou think'st of days and years gone by,
Will thoughts of Javan sometimes swell thine eye?
Ah! while I wither'd in thy chilling frown,
'Twas easy then to lay life's burden down;
When singly sentenced to these flames, my mind
Gloried in leaving all I loved behind:
How hast thou triumph'd o'er me in this hour!
One look hath crush'd my soul's collected power;
Thy scorn I might endure, thy pride defy,
But O! thy kindness makes it hard to die!”

“Then we will die together.”—“Zillah! no,
Thou shalt not perish; let me, let me go;
Behold thy parents! calm thy father's fears:
Thy mother weeps; canst thou resist her tears?”

“Away with folly!” in tremendous tone,
Exclaim'd a voice, more horrid than the groan
Of famish'd tiger leaping on his prey;
—Crouch'd at the monarch's feet the speaker lay;
But, starting up, in his ferocious mien
That monarch's ancient foster-sire was seen,
The goatherd,—he who snatch'd him from the flood,
The sorcerer, who nursed him up to blood:
Who, still his evil genius, fully bent
On one bold purpose, went where'er he went;
That purpose, long in his own bosom seal'd,
Ripe for fulfilment now, he thus reveal'd.
Full in the midst he rush'd; alarm'd, aghast,
Giants and captives trembled as he pass'd,
For scarcely seem'd he of the sons of earth;
Unchronicled the hour that gave him birth;
Though shrunk his cheek, his temples deeply plough'd,
Keen was his vulture-eye, his strength unbow'd;
Swarthy his features; venerably grey,
His beard dishevell'd o'er his bosom lay:
Bald was his front; but, white as snow behind,
His ample locks were scatter'd to the wind:
Naked he stood, save round his loins a zone
Of shagged fur, and o'er his shoulders thrown
A serpent's skin, that cross'd his breast, and round
His body thrice in glittering volumes wound.

All gazed with horror—deep unutter'd thought
In every muscle of his visage wrought;
His eye, as if his eye could see the air,
Was fix'd: up-writhing rose his horrent hair;
His limbs grew dislocate, convulsed his frame;
Deep from his chest mysterious noises came;
Now purring, hissing, barking, then they swell'd
To hideous dissonance; he shriek'd, he yell'd,
As if the Legion-fiend his soul possess'd,
And a whole hell were worrying in his breast;
Then down he dash'd himself on earth, and roll'd
In agony, till powerless, stiff, and cold,
With face upturn'd to heaven, and arms outspread,
A ghastly spectacle, he lay as dead;
The living too stood round like forms of death,
And every pulse was hush'd, and every breath.

Meanwhile the wind arose, the clouds were driven
In watery masses through the waste of heaven;
The groaning woods foretold a tempest nigh,
And silent lightning skirmish'd in the sky.

Ere long the wizard started from the ground,
Giddily reel'd, and look'd bewilder'd round,
Till on the king he fix'd his hideous gaze;
Then, rapt with ecstasy, and broad amaze,
He kneel'd in adoration, humbly bow'd
His face upon his hands, and cried aloud;
Yet so remote and strange his accents fell,
They seem'd the voice of an invisible:
—“Hail! king and conqueror of the peopled earth,
And more than king and conqueror! Know thy birth:
Thou art a ray of uncreated fire,
The sun himself is thy celestial sire;
The moon thy mother, who to me consign'd
Her babe in secrecy, to bless mankind.
These eyes have watch'd thee rising, year by year,
More great, more glorious, in thine high career:
As the young eagle plies his growing wings
In bounded flights, and sails in wider rings,
Till to the fountain of meridian day,
Full-plumed and perfected, he soars away;
Thus have I mark'd thee, since thy course begun,
Still upward tending to thy sire the sun:—
Now midway meet him! from yon flaming height,
Chase the vain phantoms of cherubic light;
There build a tower, whose spiral top shall rise,
Circle o'er circle lessening to the skies:
The stars, thy brethren, in their spheres shall stand
To hail thee welcome to thy native land;
The moon shall clasp thee in her glad embrace,
The sun behold his image in thy face,
And call thee, as his offspring and his heir,
His throne, his empire, and his orb to share.”

Rising, and turning his terrific head,
That chill'd beholders, thus the enchanter said:
—“Prepare, prepare the piles of sacrifice!
The power that rules on earth, shall rule the skies;
Hither, O chiefs! the captive Patriarchs bring,
And pour their blood an offering to your king;
He, like his sire the sun, in transient clouds
His veil'd divinity from mortals shrouds,
Too pure to shine till these his foes are slain,
And conquer'd Paradise hath crown'd his reign.
Haste! heap the fallen cedars on the pyres,
And give the victims living to the fires:
Shall He, in whom they vainly trust, withstand
Your sovereign's wrath, or pluck them from his hand?
We dare Him;—if He saves his servants now,
To Him let every knee in Nature bow,
For HE is GOD”—at that most awful name,
A spasm of horror wither'd up his frame,
Even as he stood and look'd;—he looks, he stands,
With heaven-defying front, and clenched hands,
And lips half-open'd, eager from his breast
To bolt the blasphemy, by force represt:
For not in feign'd abstraction, as before,
He practised foul deceit by damned lore;
A frost was on his nerves, and in his veins
A fire, consuming with infernal pains;
Conscious, though motionless, his limbs were grown;
Alive to suffering, but alive in stone.

In silent expectation, sore amazed,
The king and chieftains on the sorcerer gazed;
Awhile no sound was heard, save, through the woods,
The wind deep-thundering, and the dashing floods:
At length, with solemn step, amidst the scene
Where that false prophet show'd his frantic mien,
Where lurid flames from green-wood altars burn'd,
Enoch stood forth!—on him all eyes were turn'd:
O'er his dim form and saintly visage fell
The light that glared upon that priest of hell:
Unutterably awful was his look;
Through every joint the Giant-monarch shook;
Shook like Belshazzar, in his festive hall,
When the hand wrote his judgment on the wall;
Shook, like Eliphaz, with dissolving fright,
In thoughts amidst the visions of the night,
When, as the spirit pass'd before his face,
Nor limb nor lineament his eye could trace,
A form of mystery, that chill'd his blood,
Close at his couch in living terror stood,
And death-like silence, till a voice more drear,
More dreadful, than the silence, reach'd his ear:—
Thus from surrounding darkness Enoch brake,
And thus the Giant trembled while he spake.

CANTO TENTH.

The Prophecy of Enoch concerning the Sorcerer, the King, and the Flood. His Translation to Heaven. The Conclusion.

“The Lord is jealous:—He, who reigns on high,
Upholds the earth, and spreads abroad the sky;
His voice the moon and stars by night obey,
He sends the sun his servant forth by day:
From Him all beings came, on Him depend,
To Him return, their Author, Sovereign, End.
Who shall destroy when He would save? or stand,
When He destroys, the stroke of his right hand?
With none His name and power will He divide,
For HE is GOD, and there is none beside.

“The proud shall perish;—mark how wild his air
In impotence of malice and despair!
What frenzy fires the bold blasphemer's cheek!
He looks the curses which he cannot speak:
A hand hath touch'd him that he once defied;
Touch'd, and for ever crush'd him in his pride:
Yet shall he live, despised as fear'd before;
The great deceiver shall deceive no more;
Children shall pluck the beard of him whose arts
Palsied the boldest hands, the stoutest hearts;
His vaunted wisdom fools shall laugh to scorn,
When, muttering spells, a spectacle forlorn,
A drivelling idiot, he shall fondly roam
From house to house, and never find a home!”

The wizard heard his sentence, nor remain'd
A moment longer; from his trance unchain'd,
He plunged into the woods:—the Prophet then
Turn'd, and took up his parable again.

“The proud shall perish:—monarch! know thy doom:
Thy bones shall lack the shelter of a tomb;
Not in the battle-field thine eyes shall close,
Slain upon thousands of thy slaughter'd foes;
Not on the throne of empire, nor the bed
Of weary Nature, thou shalt bow thine head:
Death lurks in ambush; Death, without a name,
Shall pluck thee from thy pinnacle of fame:
At eve, rejoicing o'er thy finish'd toil,
Thy soul shall deem the universe her spoil;
The dawn shall see thy carcass cast away,
The wolves, at sunrise, slumber on their prey.
Cut from the living, whither dost thou go?
Hades is moved to meet thee from below:
The kings thy sword had slain, the mighty dead,
Start from their thrones at thy descending tread;
They ask in scorn,—‘Destroyer! is it thus?
Art thou,—thou too,—become like one of us?
Torn from the feast of music, wine, and mirth,
The worms thy covering, and thy couch the earth!
How art thou fall'n from thine ethereal height,
Son of the morning! sunk in endless night:
How art thou fall'n, who said'st, in pride of soul,
I will ascend above the starry pole,
Thence rule the adoring nations with my nod,
And set my throne above the Mount of God!—
Spilt in the dust, thy blood pollutes the ground;
Sought by the eyes that fear'd thee, yet not found;
Thy chieftains pause, they turn thy relics o'er,
Then pass thee by,—for thou art known no more.
Hail to thine advent! Potentate, in hell,
Unfear'd, unflatter'd, undistinguish'd, dwell:
On earth thy fierce ambition knew no rest,
A worm, a flame, for ever in thy breast;—
Here feel the rage of unconsuming fire,
Intense, eternal, impotent desire;

Here lie, the deathless worm's unwasting prey,
In chains of darkness till the judgment-day!’

“Thus while the dead thy fearful welcome sing,
Thy living slaves bewail their vanish'd king.
Then, though thy reign with infamy expire,
Fulfill'd in death shall be thy vain desire:
The traitors, reeking with thy blood, shall swear
They saw their sovereign ravish'd through the air,
And point thy star revolving o'er the night,
A baleful comet with portentous light,
Midst clouds and storms denouncing from afar
Famine and havoc, pestilence and war.
Temples, not tombs, thy monuments shall be,
And altars blaze on hills and groves to thee;
A pyramid shall consecrate thy crimes,
Thy name and honours, to succeeding times;
There shall thine image hold the highest place
Among the gods of man's revolted race!

“That race shall perish:—Men and Giants, all
Thy kindred and thy worshippers, shall fall.
The babe, whose life with yesterday began,
May spring to youth, and ripen into man;
But, ere his locks are tinged with fading grey
This world of sinners shall be swept away.
Jehovah lifts his standard to the skies;
Swift at the signal, winds and vapours rise;
The sun in sackcloth veils his face at noon.—
The stars are quench'd, and turn'd to blood the moon.
Heaven's fountains open; clouds dissolving roll
In mingled cataracts from pole to pole;
Earth's central sluices burst; the hills, uptorn,
In rapid whirlpools down the gulf are borne:
The voice that taught the Deep his bounds to know,
‘Thus far, O Sea! nor farther, shalt thou go,’—
Sends forth the floods, commission'd to devour
With boundless licence and resistless power;
They own no impulse but the tempest's sway,
Nor find a limit but the light of day.

“The vision opens:—sunk beneath the wave,
The guilty share an universal grave;
One wilderness of water rolls in view,
And heaven and ocean wear one turbid hue;
Still stream unbroken torrents from the skies,
Higher beneath the inundations rise;
A lurid twilight glares athwart the scene.
Low thunders peal, faint lightnings flash between.
—Methinks I see a distant vessel ride,
A lonely object, on the shoreless tide;
Within whose ark the innocent have found
Safety, while stay'd Destruction ravens round:
Thus, in the hour of vengeance, God, who knows
His servants, spares them, while He smites his foes.

“Eastward I turn;—o'er all the deluged lands,
Unshaken yet, a mighty mountain stands,
Where Seth, of old, his flock to pasture led,
And watch'd the stars at midnight, from its head:
An island now, its dark majestic form
Scowls through the thickest ravage of the storm;
While on its top, the monument of fame,
Built by thy murderers to adorn thy name,
Defies the shock;—a thousand cubits high,
The sloping pyramid ascends the sky.
Thither, their latest refuge in distress,
Like hunted wolves, the rallying Giants press;
Round the broad base of that stupendous tower,
The shuddering fugitives collect their power,
Cling to the dizzy cliff, o'er ocean bend,
And howl with terror as the deeps ascend.
The mountain's strong foundations still endure,
The heights repel the surge.—Awhile secure,
And cheer'd with frantic hope, thy votaries climb
The fabric, rising step by step, sublime.
Beyond the clouds they see the summit glow
In heaven's pure daylight, o'er the gloom below;
There too thy worshipp'd image shines like fire,
In the full glory of thy fabled sire.
They hail the omen, and with heart and voice
Call on thy name, and in thy smile rejoice:
False omen! on thy name in vain they call;
Fools in their joy;—a moment and they fall.
Rent by an earthquake of the buried plain,
And shaken by the whole disrupted main,
The mountain trembles on its failing base,
It slides, it stoops, it rushes from its place;
From all the Giants bursts one drowning cry;
Hark! 'tis thy name—they curse it as they die:
Sheer to the lowest gulf the pile is hurl'd,
The last sad wreck of a devoted world!

“So fall transgressors:—Tyrant! now fulfil
Thy secret purposes, thine utmost will;
Here crown thy triumphs:—life or death decree,
The weakest here disdains thy power and thee!”

Thus when the Patriarch ceased, and every ear
Still listen'd in suspense of hope and fear,
Sublime, ineffable, angelic grace
Beam'd in his meek and venerable face;
And sudden glory, streaming round his head,
O'er all his robes with lambent lustre spread;
His earthly features grew divinely bright,
His essence seem'd transforming into light.
Brief silence, like the pause between the flash
At midnight and the following thunder-crash,
Ensued:—Anon, with universal cry,
The Giants rush'd upon the Prophet—“Die!”
The king leapt foremost from his throne;—he drew
His battle-sword, as on his mark he flew;
With aim unerring, and tempestuous sound,
The blade descended deep along the ground:
The foe was fled, and, self-o'erwhelm'd, his strength
Hurl'd to the earth his Atlantean length;
But, ere his chiefs could stretch the helping arm,
He sprang upon his feet in pale alarm;
Headlong and blind with rage he search'd around,
But Enoch walk'd with God, and was not found.

Yet where the captives stood, in holy awe,
Rapt on the wings of cherubim, they saw
Their sainted sire ascending through the night;
He turn'd his face to bless them in his flight,
Then vanish'd:—Javan caught the Prophet's eye,
And snatch'd his mantle falling from the sky;
O'er him the Spirit of the Prophet came,
Like rushing wind awakening hidden flame:
“Where is the God of Enoch now?” he cried;
“Captives, come forth! Despisers, shrink aside!”
He spake, and, bursting through the Giant-throng,
Smote with the mantle as he moved along:
A power invisible their rage controll'd,
Hither and thither as he turn'd they roll'd;
Unawed, unharm'd, the ransom'd prisoners pass'd
Through ranks of foes astonied and aghast:
Close in the youth's conducting steps they trod:
—So Israel march'd when Moses raised his rod,
And led their host, enfranchised, through the wave,
The people's safeguard, the pursuers' grave.

Thus from the wolves this little flock was torn,
And, sheltering in the mountain-caves till morn,
They join'd to sing, in strains of full delight,
Songs of deliverance through the dreary night.

The Giants' frenzy, when they lost their prey,
No tongue of man or angel might portray:
First on their idol-gods their vengeance turn'd,
Those gods on their own altar-piles they burn'd;
Then, at their sovereign's mandate, sallied forth
To rouse their host to combat, from the north;
Eager to risk their uttermost emprise,
Perish ere morn, or reign in Paradise.
Now the slow tempest, that so long had lower'd,
Keen in their faces sleet and hailstones shower'd;
The winds blew loud, the waters roar'd around,
An earthquake rock'd the agonising ground;
Red in the west the burning mount, array'd
With tenfold terror by incumbent shade,
(For moon and stars were wrapt in dunnest gloom,)
Glared like a torch amidst creation's tomb:
So Sinai's rocks were kindled when they felt
Their Maker's footstep, and began to melt;
Darkness was his pavilion, whence He came,
Hid in the brightness of descending flame,
While storm, and whirlwind, and the trumpet's blast,
Proclaim'd his law in thunder as He pass'd.

The Giants reach'd their camp:—the night's alarms
Meanwhile had startled all their slaves to arms:
They grasp'd their weapons as from sleep they sprang,
From tent to tent the brazen clangour rang:
The hail, the earthquake, the mysterious light
Unnerved their strength, o'erwhelm'd them with affright.
“Warriors! to battle;—summon all your powers!
Warriors! to conquest;—Paradise is ours!”
Exclaim'd their monarch:—not an arm was raised;
In vacancy of thought, like men amazed,
And lost amidst confounding dreams, they stood,
With palsied eyes, and horror-frozen blood.
The Giants' rage to instant madness grew;
The king and chiefs on their own legions flew,
Denouncing vengeance! Then had all the plain
Been heap'd with myriads by their leaders slain;
But, ere a sword could fall,—by whirlwinds driven,
In mighty volumes, through the vault of heaven,

From Eden's summit, o'er the camp accurst,
The darting fires with noonday splendour burst;
And fearful grew the scene above, below,
With sights of mystery, and sounds of woe.
The embattled cherubim appear'd on high,
And coursers, wing'd with lightning, swept the sky;
Chariots, whose wheels with living instinct roll'd,
Spirits of unimaginable mould,
Powers, such as dwell in heaven's serenest light,
Too pure, too terrible, for mortal sight,
From depth of midnight suddenly reveal'd,
In arms, against the Giants took the field.
On such an host Elisha's servant gazed,
When all the mountain round the prophet blazed;
With such an host, when war in heaven was wrought,
Michael against the Prince of Darkness fought.

Roused by the trumpet that shall wake the dead,
The torpid foe in consternation fled;
The Giants headlong in the uproar ran,
The king himself the foremost of the van,
Nor e'er his rushing squadrons led to fight
With swifter onset than he led that flight.
Homeward the panic-stricken legions flew;
Their arms, their vestments, from their limbs they threw;
O'er shields and helms the reinless camel strode,
And gold and purple strew'd the desert road.
When through the Assyrian army, like a blast,
At midnight, the destroying angel pass'd,
The tyrant that defied the living God,
Precipitately thus his steps retrod;
Even by the way he came, to his own land,
Return'd, to perish by his offspring's hand.
So fled the Giant-monarch;—but unknown
The hand that smote his life;—he died alone;
Amidst the tumult treacherously slain:
At morn his chieftains sought their lord in vain,
Then, reckless of the harvest of their toils,
Their camp, their captives, all their treasured spoils,
Renew'd their flight o'er eastern hills afar,
With life alone escaping from that war
In which their king had hail'd his realm complete,
The world's last province bow'd beneath his feet.

As, when the waters of the Flood declined,
Rolling tumultuously before the wind,
The proud waves shrunk from low to lower beds,
And high the hills and higher raised their heads,
Till ocean lay, enchased with rock and strand,
As in the hollow of the Almighty's hand,
While earth with wrecks magnificent was strew'd,
And stillness reign'd o'er Nature's solitude:
—Thus, in a storm of horror and dismay,
All night the Giant-army sped away;
Thus, on a lonely, sad, and silent scene
The morning rose in majesty serene.

Early and joyful o'er the dewy grass,
Straight to their glen the ransom'd Patriarchs pass:
As doves released their parent dwelling find,
They fly for life, nor cast a look behind;
And when they reach'd the dear sequester'd spot,
Enoch alone of all their train “was not.”
With them the bard, who from the world withdrew,
Javan, from folly and ambition flew;
Though poor his lot, within that narrow bound
Friendship, and home, and faithful love, he found:
There did his wanderings and afflictions cease;
His youth was penitence, his age was peace.

Meanwhile the scatter'd tribes of Eden's plain
Turn'd to their desolated fields again,
And join'd their brethren, captives once in fight,
But left to freedom in that dreadful flight:
Thenceforth redeem'd from war's unnumber'd woes,
Rich with the spoils of their retreated foes,
By Giant-tyranny no more opprest,
The people flourish'd, and the land had rest.

GREENLAND:

A POEM, IN FIVE CANTOS.

CANTO FIRST.

The first three Moravian Missionaries are represented as on their Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1733. Sketch of the Descent, Establishment, Persecutions, Extinction, and Revival of the Church of the United Brethren from the Tenth to the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. The Origin of their Missions to the West Indies and to Greenland.

The moon is watching in the sky; the stars
Are swiftly wheeling on their golden cars;
Ocean, outstretch'd with infinite expanse,
Serenely slumbers in a glorious trance;
The tide, o'er which no troubling spirits breathe,
Reflects a cloudless firmament beneath;
Where, poised as in the centre of a sphere,
A ship above and ship below appear;
A double image, pictured on the deep,
The vessel o'er its shadow seems to sleep:
Yet, like the host of heaven, that never rest,
With evanescent motion to the west
The pageant glides through loneliness and night,
And leaves behind a rippling wake of light.

Hark! through the calm and silence of the scene,
Slow, solemn, sweet, with many a pause between,
Celestial music swells along the air!
—No!—'tis the evening hymn of praise and prayer
From yonder deck; where, on the stern retired,
Three humble voyagers, with looks inspired,
And hearts enkindled with a holier flame
Than ever lit to empire or to fame,
Devoutly stand:—their choral accents rise
On wings of harmony beyond the skies;
And, 'midst the songs that Seraph-Minstrels sing,
Day without night, to their immortal King,
These simple strains,—which erst Bohemian hills
Echo'd to pathless woods and desert rills,
Now heard from Shetland's azure bound,—are known
In heaven; and He, who sits upon the throne
In human form, with mediatorial power,
Remembers Calvary, and hails the hour
When, by the Almighty Father's high decree,
The utmost north to Him shall bow the knee,
And, won by love, an untamed rebel-race
Kiss the victorious Sceptre of His grace.
Then to His eye, whose instant glance pervades
Heaven's heights, Earth's circle, Hell's profoundest shades,
Is there a group more lovely than those three
Night-watching Pilgrims on the lonely sea?
Or to His ear, that gathers in one sound
The voices of adoring worlds around,
Comes there a breath of more delightful praise
Than the faint notes his poor disciples raise,
Ere on the treacherous main they sink to rest,
Secure as leaning on their Master's breast?

They sleep: but memory wakes; and dreams array
Night in a lively masquerade of day.
The land they seek, the land they leave behind,
Meet on mid-ocean in the plastic mind:
One brings forsaken home and friends so nigh,
That tears in slumber swell the' unconscious eye;
The other opens, with prophetic view,
Perils, which e'en their fathers never knew,
(Though school'd by suffering, long inured to toil,
Outcasts and exiles from their natal soil;)
—Strange scenes, strange men; untold, untried distress;
Pain, hardships, famine, cold, and nakedness,
Diseases; death in every hideous form,
On shore, at sea, by fire, by flood, by storm;
Wild beasts and wilder men;—unmoved with fear,
Health, comfort, safety, life, they count not dear,
May they but hope a Saviour's love to show,
And warn one spirit from eternal woe:
Nor will they faint; nor can they strive in vain,
Since thus—to live is Christ, to die is gain.

'Tis morn:—the bathing moon her lustre shrouds;
Wide o'er the east impends an arch of clouds,
That spans the ocean;—while the infant dawn
Peeps through the portal o'er the liquid lawn,
That ruffled by an April gale appears,
Between the gloom and splendour of the spheres,
Dark-purple as the moorland-heath, when rain
Hangs in low vapours o'er the autumnal plain:
Till the full Sun, resurgent from the flood,
Looks on the waves, and turns them into blood;
But quickly kindling, as his beams aspire,
The lambent billows play in forms of fire.
—Where is the Vessel?—Shining through the light,
Like the white sea-fowl's horizontal flight,
Yonder she wings, and skims, and cleaves her way
Through refluent foam and iridescent spray.

Lo! on the deck with patriarchal grace,
Heaven in his bosom opening o'er his face,
Stands Christian David;—venerable name!
Bright in the records of celestial fame,
On earth obscure;—like some sequester'd star,
That rolls in its Creator's beams afar,
Unseen by man; till telescopic eye,
Sounding the blue abysses of the sky,
Draws forth its hidden beauty into light,
And adds a jewel to the crown of night.
Though hoary with the multitude of years,
Unshorn of strength, between his young compeers
He towers;—with faith, whose boundless glance can see
Time's shadows brightening through eternity;
Love—God's own love in his pure breast enshrined;
Love—love to man the magnet of his mind;
Sublimer schemes maturing in his thought
Than ever statesman plann'd or warrior wrought:
While, with rejoicing tears, and rapturous sighs,
To heaven ascends their morning sacrifice.

Whence are the pilgrims? whither would they roam?
Greenland their port;—Moravia was their home.
Sprung from a race of martyrs; men who bore
The cross on many a Golgotha of yore;
When first Sclavonian tribes the truth received,
And princes, at the price of thrones, believed;
—When Waldo, flying from the' apostate west,
In German wilds his righteous cause confess'd;
—When Wickliffe, like a rescuing Angel, found
The dungeon where the Word of God lay bound,
Unloosed its chains, and led it by the hand,
In its own sunshine, through his native land:

—When Huss, the victim of perfidious foes,
To heaven upon a fiery chariot rose;
And, ere he vanish'd, with a prophet's breath
Foretold the' immortal triumphs of his death:
—When Ziska, burning with fanatic zeal,
Exchanged the Spirit's sword for patriot steel,
And through the heart of Austria's thick array
To Tabor's summit stabb'd resistless way;
But there (as if transfigured on the spot
The world's Redeemer stood) his rage forgot;
Deposed his arms and trophies in the dust,
Wept like a babe, and placed in God his trust,
While prostrate warriors kiss'd the hallow'd ground,
And lay, like slain, in silent ranks around:
—When mild Gregorius, in a lowlier field,
As brave a witness, as unwont to yield,
As Ziska's self, with patient footsteps trod
A path of suffering, like the Son of God,
And nobler palms, by meek endurance won,
Than if his sword had blazed from sun to sun:
Though nature fail'd him on the racking wheel,
He felt the joys which parted spirits feel;
Rapt into bliss from ecstasy of pain,
Imagination wander'd o'er a plain:
Fair in the midst, beneath a morning sky,
A tree its ample branches bore on high,
With fragrant bloom, and fruit delicious hung,
While birds beneath the foliage fed and sung;
All glittering to the sun with diamond dew,
O'er sheep and kine a breezy shade it threw;
A lovely boy, the child of hope and prayer,
With crook and shepherd's pipe, was watching there;
At hand three venerable forms were seen,
In simple garb, with apostolic mien,
Who mark'd the distant fields convulsed with strife,
—The guardian Cherubs of that Tree of Life;
Not arm'd, like Eden's host, with flaming brands,
Alike to friends and foes they stretch their hands
In sign of peace, and, while Destruction spread
His path with carnage, welcomed all who fled:
—When poor Comenius, with his little flock,
Escaped the wolves, and, from the boundary rock,
Cast o'er Moravian hills a look of woe,
Saw the green vales expand, the waters flow,
And happier years revolving in his mind,
Caught every sound that murmur'd on the wind;
As if his eye could never thence depart,
As if his ear were seated in his heart,

And his full soul would thence a passage break,
To leave the body, for his country's sake;
While on his knees he pour'd the fervent prayer,
That God would make that martyr-land His care,
And nourish in its ravaged soil a root
Of Gregor's Tree, to bear perennial fruit.

His prayer was heard:—that Church, through ages past,
Assail'd and rent by persecution's blast;
Whose sons no yoke could crush, no burden tire,
Unawed by dungeons, tortures, sword, and fire,
(Less proof against the world's alluring wiles,
Whose frowns have weaker terrors than its smiles;)
—That Church, o'erthrown, dispersed, unpeopled, dead,
Oft from the dust of ruin raised her head,
And rallying round her feet, as from their graves,
Her exiled orphans, hid in forest-caves;
Where, 'midst the fastnesses of rocks and glens,
Banded like robbers, stealing from their dens,
By night they met, their holiest vows to pay,
As if their deeds were dark, and shunn'd the day;
While Christ's revilers, in his seamless robe,
And parted garments, flaunted round the globe;
From east to west while priestcraft's banners flew,
And harness'd kings his iron chariot drew:
—That Church advanced triumphant, o'er the ground
Where all her conquering martyrs had been crown'd,
Fearless her foe's whole malice to defy,
And worship God in liberty,—or die:
For truth and conscience, oft she pour'd her blood,
And firmest in the fiercest conflicts stood,
Wresting from bigotry the proud control
Claim'd o'er the sacred empire of the soul,
Where God, the Judge of all, should fill the throne,
And reign, as in his universe, alone.

'Twas thus through centuries she rose and fell;
At length victorious seem'd the gates of hell;
But founded on a rock, which cannot move—
The' eternal rock of her Redeemer's love—
That Church, which Satan's legions thought destroy'd,
Her name extinct, her place for ever void,
Alive once more, respired her native air,
But found no freedom for the voice of prayer:
Again the cowl'd oppressor clank'd his chains,
Flourish'd his scourge, and threaten'd bonds and pains,
(His arm enfeebled could no longer kill,
But in his heart he was a murderer still:)
Then Christian David, strengthen'd from above,
Wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove;
Bold as a lion on his Master's part,
In zeal a seraph, and a child in heart;
Pluck'd from the gripe of antiquated laws,
(Even as a mother from the felon jaws
Of a lean wolf, that bears her babe away,
With courage beyond nature, rends the prey,)
The little remnant of that ancient race:
—Far in Lusatian woods they found a place;
There—where the sparrow builds her busy nest,
And the clime-changing swallow loves to rest,
Thine altar, God of Hosts!—there still appear
The tribes to worship, unassail'd by fear;
Not like their fathers, vex'd from age to age
By blatant Bigotry's insensate rage,
Abroad in every place,—in every hour
Awake, alert, and ramping to devour.
No; peaceful as the spot where Jacob slept,
And guard all night the journeying angels kept,
Herrnhut yet stands amidst her shelter'd bowers;
—The Lord hath set his watch upon her towers.

Soon, homes of humble form, and structure rude,
Raised sweet society in solitude:
And the lorn traveller there, at fall of night,
Could trace from distant hills the spangled light
Which now from many a cottage window stream'd,
Or in full glory round the chapel beam'd;
While hymning voices, in the silent shade,
Music of all his soul's affections made;
Where through the trackless wilderness, erewhile,
No hospitable ray was known to smile,—
Or if a sudden splendour kindled joy,
'Twas but a meteor dazzling to destroy:
While the wood echoed to the hollow owl,
The fox's cry, or wolf's lugubrious howl.

Unwearied as the camel, day by day,
Tracks through unwater'd wilds his doleful way,
Yet in his breast a cherish'd draught retains,
To cool the fervid current in his veins,
While from the sun's meridian realms he brings
The gold and gems of Ethiopian kings:
So Christian David, spending yet unspent,
On many a pilgrimage of mercy went;
Through all their haunts his suffering brethren sought,
And safely to that land of promise brought;
While in his bosom, on the toilsome road,
A secret well of consolation flow'd,
Fed from the fountain near the' eternal throne,
—Bliss to the world unyielded and unknown.

In stillness thus the little Zion rose:
But scarcely found those fugitives repose,
Ere to the west with pitying eyes they turn'd;
Their love to Christ beyond the' Atlantic burn'd.
Forth sped their messengers, content to be
Captives themselves, to cheer captivity;
Soothe the poor Negro with fraternal smiles,
And preach deliverance in those prison-isles
Where man's most hateful forms of being meet,
—The tyrant, and the slave that licks his feet.

O'er Greenland next two youths in secret wept:
And where the sabbath of the dead was kept,
With pious forethought, while their hands prepare
Beds which the living and unborn shall share,
(For man so surely to the dust is brought,
His grave before his cradle may be wrought,)
They told their purpose, each o'erjoy'd to find
His own idea in his brother's mind.
For counsel in simplicity they pray'd,
And vows of ardent consecration made:
—Vows heard in heaven; from that accepted hour,
Their souls were clothed with confidence and power,
Nor hope deferr'd could quell their hearts' desire;
The bush once kindled grew amidst the fire:
But ere its shoots a tree of life became,
Congenial spirits caught the' electric flame;
And for that holy service, young and old
Their plighted faith and willing names enroll'd;
Eager to change the rest, so lately found,
For life-long labours on barbarian ground;
To break, through barriers of eternal ice,
A vista to the gates of Paradise,
And light beneath the shadow of the pole
The tenfold darkness of the human soul:
To man,—a task more hopeless than to bless
With Indian fruits that arctic wilderness;
With God,—as possible when unbegun
As though the destined miracle were done.

Three chosen candidates at length went forth,
Heralds of mercy to the frozen north;
Like mariners with seal'd instructions sent,
They went in faith, (as childless Abram went
To dwell, by sufferance, in a land decreed
The future birthright of his promised seed,)

Unknowing whither;—uninquiring why
Their lot was cast beneath so strange a sky,
Where cloud nor star appear'd, to mortal sense
Pointing the hidden path of Providence,
And all around was darkness to be felt;
—Yet in that darkness light eternal dwelt:
They knew—and 'twas enough for them to know—
The still small voice that whisper'd them to go;
For He, who spake by that mysterious voice,
Inspired their will, and made His call their choice.

See the swift vessel, bounding o'er the tide,
That wafts, with Christian David for their guide,
Two young Apostles on their joyful way
To regions in the twilight verge of day:
Freely they quit the clime that gave them birth,
Home, kindred, friendship, all they loved on earth;
What things were gain before, accounting loss,
And, glorying in the shame, they bear the cross;
—Not as the Spaniard, on his flag unfurl'd,
A bloody omen through a Pagan world;
—Not the vain image, which the Devotee
Clasps as the God of his idolatry;—
But in their hearts, to Greenland's western shore,
That dear memorial of their Lord they bore;
Amidst the wilderness to lift the sign
Of wrath appeased by Sacrifice Divine;
And bid a serpent-stung and dying race
Look on their Healer, and be saved by grace.

CANTO SECOND.

Hopes and Fears. The Brethren pursue their Voyage. A Digression on Iceland.

What are thine hopes, Humanity!—thy fears,
Poor voyager, upon this flood of years,
Whose tide, unturning, hurries to the sea
Of dark unsearchable eternity,
The fragile skiffs, in which thy children sail
A day, an hour, a moment, with the gale,
Then vanish;—gone like eagles on the wind,
Or fish in waves, that yield and close behind?
Thine Hopes,—lost anchors buried in the deep,
That rust, through storm and calm, in iron sleep;
Whose cables, loose aloft and fix'd below,
Rot with the sea-weed, floating to and fro!
Thy Fears—are wrecks that strew the fatal surge,
Whose whirlpools swallow, or whose currents urge,
Adventurous barks on rocks, that lurk at rest,
Where the blue halcyon builds her foam-light nest;
Or strand them on illumined shoals, that gleam
Like drifted gold in summer's cloudless beam:
Thus would thy race, beneath their parent's eye,
Live without knowledge, without prospect die.

But when Religion bids her spirit breathe,
And opens bliss above and woe beneath;
When God reveals his march through Nature's night,
His steps are beauty, and his presence light,
His voice is life:—the dead in conscience start;
They feel a new creation in the heart.
Ah! then, Humanity, thy hopes, thy fears,
How changed, how wondrous!—On this tide of years,
Though the frail barks, in which thine offspring sail
Their day, their hour, their moment with the gale,
Must perish;—shipwreck only sets them free;
With joys unmeasured as eternity,
They ply on seas of glass their golden oars,
And pluck immortal fruits along the shores;
Nor shall their cables fail, their anchors rust,
Who wait the resurrection of the just:
Moor'd on the Rock of Ages, though decay
Moulder the weak terrestrial frame away,
The trumpet sounds,—and lo! wherever spread,
Earth, air, and ocean render back their dead;
And souls with bodies, spiritual and divine,
In the new heavens, like stars, for ever shine.
These are thine Hopes:—thy Fears what tongue can tell?
Behold them graven on the gates of Hell:
“The wrath of God abideth here: his breath
Kindled the flames:—this is the second death.”
'Twas Mercy wrote the lines of judgment there;
None who from earth can read them may despair!
Man!—let the warning strike presumption dumb;—
Awake! arise! escape the wrath to come!
No resurrection from that grave shall be;
The worm within, is—immortality.

The terrors of Jehovah, and his grace,
The Brethren bear to earth's remotest race.
And now, exulting on their swift career,
The northern waters narrowing in the rear,
They rise upon the' Atlantic flood, that rolls
Shoreless and fathomless between the poles,
Whose waves the east and western world divide,
Then gird the globe with one circumfluent tide;

For mighty Ocean, by whatever name
Known to vain man, is every where the same,
And deems all regions by his gulfs embraced
But vassal tenures of his sovereign waste.
Clear shines the sun; the surge, intensely blue,
Assumes by day heaven's own aërial hue:
Buoyant and beautiful, as through a sky,
On balanced wings, behold the vessel fly;
Invisibly impell'd, as though it felt
A soul, within its heart of oak that dwelt,
Which broke the billows with spontaneous force,
Ruled the free elements, and chose its course.
Not so:—and yet, along the trackless realm,
A hand unseen directs the' unconscious helm;
The Power that sojourn'd in the cloud by day,
And fire by night, on Israel's desert way;
That Power the obedient vessel owns:—His will,
Tempest and calm, and death and life, fulfil.

Day following day the current smoothly flows;
Labour is but refreshment from repose;
Perils are vanish'd; every fear resign'd;
Peace walks the waves, Hope carols on the wind;
And Time so sweetly travels o'er the deep,
They feel his motion like the fall of sleep
On weary limbs, that, stretch'd in stillness, seem
To float upon the eddy of a stream,
Then sink,—to wake in some transporting dream.
Thus, while the Brethren far in exile roam,
Visions of Greenland show their future home.
—Now a dark speck, but brightening as it flies,
A vagrant sea-fowl glads their eager eyes;
How lovely from the narrow deck to see
The meanest link of nature's family,
Which makes us feel, in dreariest solitude,
Affinity with all that breathe renew'd:
At once a thousand kind emotions start,
And the blood warms and mantles round the heart!
—O'er the ship's lee, the waves, in shadow seen,
Change from deep indigo to beryl green,
And wreaths of frequent weed, that slowly float,
Land to the watchful mariner denote:
Ere long the pulse beats quicker through his breast,
When, like a range of evening clouds at rest,
Iceland's gray cliffs and ragged coast he sees,
But shuns them, leaning on the southern breeze;
And, while they vanish far in distance, tells
Of lakes of fire and necromancers' spells.

Strange Isle! a moment to poetic gaze
Rise in thy majesty of rocks and bays,
Glens, fountains, caves that seem not things of earth,
But the wild shapes of some prodigious birth;
As if the kraken monarch of the sea,
Wallowing abroad in his immensity,
By polar storms and lightning shafts assail'd,
Wedged with ice-mountains, here had fought and fail'd;
Perish'd—and, in the petrifying blast,
His hulk became an island rooted fast;
—Rather, from Ocean's dark foundation hurl'd,
Thou art a type of his mysterious world,
Buoy'd on the desolate abyss, to show
What wonders of creation hide below.

Here Hecla's triple peaks, with meteor lights,
Nature's own beacons, cheer hybernal nights:
But when the orient flames in red array,
Like ghosts the spectral splendours flee the day;
Morn at her feet beholds supinely spread
The carcass of the old Chimera dead,
That wont to vomit flames and molten ore,
Now cleft asunder to the inmost core;
In smouldering heaps, wide wrecks and cinders strown,
Lie like the walls of Sodom overthrown,
(Ere from the face of blushing Nature swept,
And where the city stood the Dead Sea slept;)
While inaccessible, tradition feigns,
To human foot the guarded top remains,

Where birds of hideous shape and doleful note,
Fate's ministers, in livid vapours float.

Far off, amidst the placid sunshine, glow
Mountains with hearts of fire and crests of snow,
Whose blacken'd slopes with deep ravines entrench'd,
Their thunders silenced, and their lightnings quench'd,
Still the slow heat of spent eruptions breathe,
While embyro earthquakes swell their wombs beneath.

Hark! from yon caldron cave, the battle-sound
Of fire and water warring under ground:
Rack'd on the wheels of an ebullient tide,
Here might some spirit, fall'n from bliss, abide,—
Such fitful wailings of intense despair,
Such emanating splendours, fill the air.
—He comes, he comes; the' infuriate Geyser springs
Up to the firmament on vapoury wings;
With breathless awe the mounting glory view;
White whirling clouds his steep ascent pursue.
But lo! a glimpse;—refulgent to the gale,
He starts all naked through his riven veil;
A fountain-column, terrible and bright,
A living, breathing, moving form of light:
From central earth to heaven's meridian thrown,
The mighty apparition towers alone,
Rising, as though for ever he could rise,
Storm and resume his palace in the skies,
All foam, and turbulence, and wrath below;
Around him beams the reconciling bow;
(Signal of peace, whose radiant girdle binds,
Till nature's doom, the waters and the winds;)
While mist and spray, condensed to sudden dews,
The air illumine with celestial hues,
As if the bounteous sun were raining down
The richest gems of his imperial crown.
In vain the spirit wrestles to break free,
Foot-bound to fathomless captivity;
A power unseen, by sympathetic spell
For ever working, to his flinty cell
Recalls him from the ramparts of the spheres:
He yields, collapses, lessens, disappears;
Darkness receives him in her vague abyss,
Around whose verge light froth and bubbles hiss,
While the low murmurs of the refluent tide
Far into subterranean silence glide,
The eye still gazing down the dread profound,
When the bent ear hath wholly lost the sound.
—But is he slain and sepulchred?—Again
The deathless giant sallies from his den,
Scales with recruited strength the ethereal walls,
Struggles afresh for liberty—and falls.
Yes, and for liberty the fight renew'd,
By day, by night, undaunted, unsubdued,
He shall maintain, till Iceland's solid base
Fail, and the mountains vanish from its face.

And can these fail?—Of Alpine height and mould
Schapta's unshaken battlements behold;
His throne an hundred hills; his sun-crown'd head
Resting on clouds; his robe of shadow spread
O'er half the isle; he pours from either hand
An unexhausted river through the land,
On whose fair banks, through valleys warm and green,
Cattle and flocks, and homes, and spires are seen.
Here Nature's earthquake-pangs were never felt;
Here in repose hath man for ages dwelt:
The everlasting mountain seems to say,
“I am,—and I shall never pass away.”

Yet fifty winters, and, with huge uproar,
Thy pride shall perish;—thou shalt be no more!
Amidst chaotic ruins on the plain,
Those cliffs, these waters, shall be sought in vain!
—Through the dim vista of unfolding years,
A pageant of portentous woe appears.

Yon rosy groups, with golden locks, at play,
I see them,—few, decrepit, silent, gray;
Their fathers all at rest beneath the sod,
Whose flowerless verdure marks the House of God,
Home of the living and the dead;—where meet
Kindred and strangers, in communion sweet,
When dawns the Sabbath on the block-built pile;
The kiss of peace, the welcome, and the smile
Go round; till comes the Priest, a father there,
And the bell knolls his family to prayer:
Angels might stoop from thrones in heaven, to be
Co-worshippers in such a family,
Whom from their nooks and dells, where'er they roam,
The Sabbath gathers to their common home.
Oh! I would stand a keeper at this gate
Rather than reign with kings in guilty state;
A day in such serene enjoyment spent
Were worth an age of splendid discontent!
—But whither am I hurried from my theme?
Schapta returns on the prophetic dream.

From eve till morn strange meteors streak the pole;
At cloudless noon mysterious thunders roll,
As if below both shore and ocean hurl'd
From deep convulsions of the nether world:
Anon the river, boiling from its bed,
Shall leap its bounds and o'er the lowlands spread,
Then waste in exhalation,—leaving void
As its own channel, utterly destroy'd,
Fields, gardens, dwellings, churches, and their graves,
All wreck'd or disappearing with the waves.
The fugitives that 'scape this instant death
Inhale slow pestilence with every breath;
Mephitic steams from Schapta's mouldering breast
With livid horror shall the air infest;
And day shall glare so foully on the sight,
Darkness were refuge from the curse of light.
Lo! far among the glaciers, wrapt in gloom,
The red precursors of approaching doom,
Scatter'd and solitary founts of fire,
Unlock'd by hands invisible, aspire:
Ere long, more rapidly than eye can count,
Above, beneath, they multiply, they mount,
Converge, condense,—a crimson phalanx form,
And rage aloft in one unbounded storm;
From heaven's red roof the fierce reflections throw
A sea of fluctuating light below.
—Now the whole army of destroyers, fleet
As whirlwinds, terrible as lightnings, meet;
The mountains melt like wax along their course,
When, downward pouring with resistless force
Through the void channel where the river roll'd,
To ocean's verge their flaming march they hold;
While blocks of ice, and crags of granite rent,
Half-fluid ore, and rugged minerals blent,
Float on the gulf, till molten or immersed,
Or in explosive thunderbolts dispersed.
Thus shall the Schapta, towering on the brink
Of unknown jeopardy, in ruin sink;
And, this wild paroxysm of frenzy past,
At her own work shall Nature stand aghast.

Look on this desolation:—mark yon brow,
Once adamant, a cone of ashes now:
Here rivers swampt; there valleys levell'd, plains
O'erwhelm'd;—one black-red wilderness remains,
One crust of lava, through whose cinder-heat
The pulse of buried streams is felt to beat;
These from the frequent fissures, eddying white,
Sublimed to vapour, issue forth like light
Amidst the sulphury fumes, that, drear and dun,
Poison the atmosphere and blind the sun.
Above, as if the sky had felt the stroke
Of that volcano, and consumed to smoke,
One cloud appears in heaven, and one alone,
Hung round the dark horizon's craggy zone,
Forming at once the vast encircling wall,
And the dense roof, of some Tartarean hall,
Propt by a thousand pillars, huge and strange,
Fantastic forms that every moment change,
As, hissing, surging from the floor beneath,
Volumes of steam the' imprison'd waters breathe.
Then, should the sun, ere evening gloom ascend,
Quick from the west the murky curtain rend,
And pour the beauty of his beams between
These hideous arches, and light up the scene;
At the sweet touch of his transforming rays,
With amber lustre all the columns blaze,
And the thick folds of cumbrous fog aloof
Change to rich drapery of celestial woof:
With such enchantment air and earth were fraught,
Beyond the colouring of the wealthiest thought
That Iceland scalds, transported at the view,
Might deem the legends of their fathers true,
And here behold, illumining the waste,
The palace of immortal Odin placed;

Till rapt Imagination joy'd to hear
The neigh of steeds, the clank of armour near,
And saw, in barbarous state, the tables spread
With shadowy food, and compass'd with the dead,
Weary from conflicts,—still the fierce delight
Of spectre-warriors, in the daily fight:
Then while they quaff'd the mead from skulls of foes,
By whirlwind gusts the din of battle rose;
The strife of tongues, the tournament of words,
Following the shock of shields, the clash of swords;
Till, gorged and drunken at the' enormous feast,
Awhile their revels and their clamours ceased;
Ceased to the eye and ear;—yet where they lay,
Like sleeping lions, surfeited with prey,
In tawny groups, recumbent through the den,
In dreams the heroes drank and fought again.

Away with such Divinities! their birth
Man's brain-sick superstition, and their mirth
Lust, rapine, cruelty;—their fell employ
God's works and their own votaries to destroy.
—The Runic Bard to nobler themes shall string
His ancient harp, and mightier triumphs sing;
For glorious days are risen on Iceland:—clear
The Gospel-trumpet sounds to every ear,
And deep in many a heart the Spirit's voice
Bids the believing soul in hope rejoice.
O'er the stern face of this tempestuous isle,
Though briefly Spring, and Autumn never, smile,
Truth walks with naked foot the unyielding snows,
And the glad desert blossoms like the rose.
Though earthquakes heave, though torrents drown, his cot,
Volcanoes waste his fields,—the peasant's lot
Is blest beyond the destiny of kings:
—Lifting his eyes above sublunar things,
Like dying Stephen, when he saw in prayer
Heaven open'd, and his Saviour beckoning there,
He cries, and clasps his Bible to his breast,
“Let the earth perish,—here is not my rest.”

CANTO THIRD.

The Voyage to Greenland concluded. A Fog at Sea. Ice-Fields. Eclipse of the Sun. The Greenland Fable of Malina and Aninga. A Storm. The Ice-Blink. Northern Lights. The Brethren land.

How speed the faithful witnesses, who bore
The Bible and its hopes to Greenland's shore?
—Like Noah's ark, alone upon the wave,
(Of one lost world the' immeasurable grave,)
Yonder the ship, a solitary speck,
Comes bounding from the horizon; while on deck
Again Imagination rests her wing,
And smooths her pinions, while the Pilgrims sing
Their vesper oraisons. The Sun retires,—
Not as he wont, with clear and golden fires;
Bewilder'd in a labyrinth of haze,
His orb redoubled, with discolour'd rays,
Struggles and vanishes;—along the deep,
With slow array, expanding vapours creep,
Whose folds, in twilight's yellow glare uncurl'd,
Present the dreams of an unreal world;
Islands in air suspended; marching ghosts
Of armies, shapes of castles, winding coasts,
Navies at anchor, mountains, woods, and streams,
Where all is strange, and nothing what it seems;
Till deep-involving gloom, without a spark
Of star, moon, meteor, desolately dark,
Seals up the vision:—then, the pilot's fears
Slacken his arm; a doubtful course he steers,
Till morning comes, but comes not clad in light;
Uprisen day is but a paler night,
Revealing not a glimpse of sea or sky;
The ship's circumference bounds the sailor's eye.
So cold and dense the' impervious fog extends,
He might have touch'd the point where being ends;
His bark is all the universe; so void
The scene,—as though creation were destroy'd,
And he and his few mates, of all their race,
Were here becalm'd in everlasting space.

Silent and motionless, above, below,
The sails all struck, the waves unheard to flow,
In this drear blank of utter solitude,
Where life stands still, no faithless fears intrude;
Through that impervious veil the Brethren see
The face of omnipresent Deity:
Nor Him alone;—whate'er His hand hath made;
His glory in the firmament display'd;
The sun, majestic in his course, and sole;
The moon and stars, rejoicing round the pole;
Earth, o'er its peopled realms and wastes unknown,
Clad in the wealth of every varying zone;
Ocean, through all the' enchantment of his forms,
From breathing calms to devastating storms;
Heaven, in the vision of eternal bliss;
Death's terrors, hell's unsearchable abyss;
—Though rapt in secrecy from human eye,
These in the mind's profound sensorium lie,
And, with their Maker, by a glance of thought,
Are in a moment to remembrance brought;
Then most, when most restrain'd the' imperfect sight,
God and His works shine forth in His own light.
Yet clearest through that veil the Pilgrims trace
Their Father's image in their Saviour's face;
A sigh can waft them to His feet in prayer,
Not Gabriel bends with more acceptance there,
Nor to the throne from heaven's pure altar rise
The odours of a sweeter sacrifice,
Than when before the mercy-seat they kneel,
And tell Him all they fear, or hope, or feel;
Perils without, and enemies within,
Satan, the world, temptation, weakness, sin;
Yet rest unshaken on his sure defence,
Invincible through his omnipotence:
“Oh! step by step,” they cry, “direct our way,
And give Thy grace, like manna, day by day;
The store of yesterday will not suffice,
To-morrow's sun to us may never rise:
Safe only, when our souls are stay'd on Thee;
Rich only, when we know our poverty.”

And step by step the Lord those suppliants led;
He gave them daily grace like daily bread;
By sea, on shore, through all their pilgrimage,
In rest and labour, to their latest age,
Sharp though their trials, and their comforts scant,
God was their refuge, and they knew not want.

On rustling pinions, like an unseen bird,
Among the yards a stirring breeze is heard:
The conscious vessel wakes as from a trance.
Her colours float, the filling sails advance;
White from her prow the murmuring surge recedes:
—So the swan, startled from her nest of reeds,
Swells into beauty, and, with curving chest,
Cleaves the blue lake, with motion soft as rest.
Light o'er the liquid lawn the pageant glides;
Her helm the well-experienced pilot guides,
And, while he threads the mist-enveloped maze,
Turns to the magnet his inquiring gaze,
In whose mute oracle, where'er he steers,
The pointing hand of Providence appears;
With this, though months of gloom the main enrobe,
His keel might plough a furrow round the globe.

Again the night ascends without a star:
Low sounds come booming o'er the waves afar,

As if conflicting navies shook the flood,
With human thunders in the strife of blood,
That slay more victims in one brief campaign
Than heaven's own bolts through centuries have slain.
The seaman hearkens;—colour flies his cheek,
His stout heart throbs with fears he dare not speak.
No lightning-splendours streak the' unbroken gloom;
—His bark may shoot the gulf beyond the tomb,
And he, if e'er it come, may meet a light
Which never yet hath dawn'd on living sight.
Fresher and fresher blows the' insurgent gale;
He reefs his tops, he narrows sail by sail,
Yet feels the ship with swifter impulse sweep
O'er mightier billows, the recoiling deep;
While still, with doleful omen on his ear,
Come the deaf echoes of those sounds of fear,
Distant,—yet every volley rolls more near.

Oh! in that agony of thought forlorn,
How longs the impatient mariner for morn!
She wakes,—his eyes are wither'd to behold
The scene which her disastrous beams unfold:
The fog is vanish'd, but the welkin lowers,
Sharp hail descends, and sleet in blinding showers;
Ocean one bed of foam, with fury tost,
In undistinguishable whiteness lost,
Save where vast fields of ice their surface show,
Buoyant, but many a fathom sunk below:
Changing his station as the fragments pass,
Death stands the pilot of each ponderous mass;
Gathering his brow into the darkest frown,
He bolts his raft to run the victim down,
But shoots astern:—the shock the vessel feels,
A moment in the giddy whirlpool reels,
Then like an arrow soars, as through the air,
So high the salient waves their burden bear.

Quick skirmishes with floating batteries past,
Ruin inevitable threats at last:
Athwart the north, like ships of battle spread,
Winter's flotilla, by their captain led,
(Who boasts with these to make his prowess known,
And plant his foot beyond the arctic zone,)
Islands of ice, so wedged and grappled lie,
One moving continent appals the eye,
And to the ear renews those notes of doom
That brought portentous warnings through the gloom;
For loud and louder, with explosive shocks,
Sudden convulsions split the frost-bound rocks,
And launch loose mountains on the frothing ooze,
As pirate-barks, on summer seas to cruise.
In front this perilous array;—behind,
Borne on the surges, driven by the wind,
The vessel hurries to the brink of fate;
All efforts fail,—but prayer is not too late:
Then, in the imminent and ghastly fall
Foul on destruction, the disciples call
On Him, their Master, who, in human form,
Slept in the lap of the devouring storm;
On Him, who in the midnight watch was seen,
Walking the gulf, ineffably serene,
At whose rebuke the tempest ceased to roar,
The winds caress'd the waves, the waves the shore:
On Him they call;—their prayer, in faith preferr'd
Amidst the frantic hurricane, is heard;
He gives the sign, by none in earth or heaven
Known, but by him to whom the charge is given,
The Angel of the Waters;—he, whose wrath
Had hurl'd the vessel on that shipwreck path,
Becomes a minister of grace;—his breath
Blows,—and the enemies are scatter'd,—Death,
Reft of his quarry, plunges through the wave,
Buried himself where he had mark'd their grave.
The line of battle broken, and the chain
Of that armada, which oppress'd the main,
Snapt hopelessly asunder, quickly all
The' enormous masses in disruption fall,
And the weak vessel, through the chaos wild,
Led by the mighty Angel,—as a child,
Snatch'd from its crib, and in the mother's arms
Borne through a midnight tumult of alarms,—
Escapes the wrecks; nor slackens her career
Till sink the forms, and cease the sounds, of fear,
And He, who rules the universe at will,
Saith to the reinless elements, “Be still.”

Then rise sweet hymns of gratulation; praise
From hearts and voices, in harmonious lays;—
So Israel sang deliverance, when he stood
By the Red Sea, and saw the morning-flood,
That in its terrible embraces bore
The slain pursuers and their spoils on shore.

Light-breathing gales awhile their course propel,
The billows roll with pleasurable swell,
Till the seventh dawn; when o'er the pure expanse
The sun, like lightning, throws his earliest glance,

“Land! Land!” exclaims the ship-boy from the mast,
“Land! Land!” with one electric shock hath pass'd
From lip to lip, and every eye hath caught
The cheering glimpse so long, so dearly sought:
Yet must imagination half supply
The doubtful streak, dividing sea and sky;
Nor clearly known, till, in sublimer day,
From icy cliffs refracted splendours play,
And clouds of sea-fowl high in ether sweep,
Or fall like stars through sunshine on the deep.
'Tis Greenland! but so desolately bare,
Amphibious life alone inhabits there;
'Tis Greenland! yet so beautiful the sight,
The Brethren gaze with undisturb'd delight:
In silence (as before the Throne) they stand,
And pray, in prospect of that promised land,
That He, who sends them thither, may abide
Through the waste howling wilderness their guide;
And the Good Shepherd seek his straying flocks,
Lost on those frozen waves and herbless rocks,
By the still waters of his comforts lead,
And in the pastures of salvation feed.

Their faith must yet be tried:—the sun at noon
Shrinks from the shadow of the passing moon,
Till, ray by ray of all his pomp bereft
(Save one slight ring of quivering lustre left),
Total eclipse involves his peerless eye:
Portentous twilight creeps around the sky;
The frighted sea-birds to their haunts repair;
There is a freezing stillness in the air,
As if the blood through Nature's veins ran cold,
A prodigy so fearful to behold;
A few faint stars gleam through the dread serene,
Trembling and pale spectators of the scene;
While the rude mariners, with stern amaze,
As on some tragic execution gaze,
When calm but awful guilt is stretch'd to feel
The torturing fire, or dislocating wheel,
And life, like light from yonder orb, retires,
Spark after spark, till the whole man expires.
Yet may the darken'd sun and mourning skies
Point to a higher, holier sacrifice:
The Brethren's thoughts to Calvary's brow ascend,
Round the Redeemer's Cross their spirits bend,
And while heaven frowns, earth shudders, graves disclose
The forms of sleepers, startled from repose,
They catch the blessing of His latest breath,
Mark His last look, and, through the eclipse of death,
See lovelier beams than Tabor's vision shed,
Wreathe a meek halo round His sacred head.
To Greenland then, with quick compassion, turn
Their deepest sympathies; their bosoms burn,
To her barbarian race, with tongues of flame,
His love, His grief, His glory to proclaim.

O could they view, in this alarming hour,
Those wretched ones, themselves beneath the power
Of darkness, while the shadow clips the sun!
How to their dens the fierce sea-hunters run,
Who death in every shape of peril brave,
By storms and monsters, on the faithless wave,
But now in speechless horror lie aghast,
Till the malignant prodigy be past:
While bolder females, with tormenting spells,
Consult their household dogs as oracles,
And by the yelping of their curs divine,
That still the earth may stand, the sun may shine.
Then forth they creep, and to their offspring tell
What fate of old a youth and maid befell:

How, in the age of night, ere day was born
On the blue hills of undiscover'd morn;
Where one pale cresset twinkled through the shade,
Malina and her gay companions play'd
A thousand mimic sports, as children wont;
They hide, they seek, they shoot, harpoon, and hunt;
When lo! Aninga, passionate and young,
Keen as a wolf, upon his sister sprung,
And pounced his victim;—gentler way to woo
He knew not, or he scorn'd it if he knew:
Malina snatch'd her lamp, and in the dark
Dash'd on his felon-front a hideous mark,
Slipp'd from his foul embrace (and laugh'd aloud),
Soft as the rainbow melting from the cloud;
Then shot to heaven, and in her wondrous flight
Transform'd her image, sparkled into light,
Became the sun, and, through the firmament,
Forth in the glory of a goddess went.
Aninga, baffled, madden'd, unsubdued,
By her own beams the fugitive pursued,
And, when she set, his broad disfigured mien
As the dim moon among the stars was seen;
Thenceforward doom'd his sister's steps to chase,
But ne'er o'ertake in heaven's eternal race.
Yet when his vanish'd orb might seem to sleep,
He takes his monthly pastime on the deep,
Through storms, o'er cataracts, in his kayak sails,
Strikes with unerring dart the polar whales,
Or o'er ice-mountains, in his dog-drawn car,
Pursues the reindeer to the farthest star.
But when eclipse his baneful disk invades,
He prowls for prey among the Greenland maids,
Till roaring drums, belabouring sticks, and cries
Repel the errant Demon to the skies.

The sun hath cast aside his veil;—he shines
With purest splendour till his orb declines;
Then landward, marshalling in black array,
Eruptive vapours drive him from the day;
And night again, with premature control,
Binds light in chains of darkness o'er the pole;
Heaven in one ebon mass of horror scowls:
—Anon a universal whirlwind howls,
With such precipitation dash'd on high,
Not from one point, but from the whole dark sky,
The surges at the onset shrink aghast,
Borne down beneath the paralysing blast;
But soon the mad tornado slants its course,
And rolls them into mountains by main force,
Then, utterly embroil'd through clouds and waves,
As 'twixt two oceans met in conflict, raves.
Now to the passive bark, alternate tost,
Above, below, both sea and sky are lost
All but the giddy summit, where her keel
Hangs in light balance on the billowy wheel;
Then, as the swallow, in his windward flight,
Quivers the wing, returns, and darts down-right,
She plunges through the blind abyss, and o'er
Her groaning masts the cavern'd waters roar.
Ruled by the hurricane, no more the helm
Obeys the pilot;—seas on seas o'erwhelm
The deck; where oft embattled currents meet,
Foam in white whirlpools, flash to spray, retreat,
And rock the vessel with their huge turmoils,
Like the cork-float around the fisher's toils.
Three days of restless agony, that seem
Of one delirious night the waking dream,
The mariners in vain their labours ply,
Or sick at heart in pale despondence lie.
The Brethren, weak, yet firm as when they faced
Winter's ice-legions on his own bleak waste,
In patient hope, that utters no complaint,
Pray without ceasing; pray, and never faint;
Assured that He, who from the tempest's neck
Hath loosed his grasp, still holds it at his beck,
And, with a pulse too deep for mortal sense,
—The secret pulse of his omnipotence,
That beats through every motion of the storm,
—Can check destruction in its wildest form:
Bow'd to His will,—their lot how truly blest,
Who live to serve Him, and who die to rest!

To live and serve Him, is their Lord's decree;
He curbs the wind, He calms the' infuriate sea;
The sea and wind their Maker's yoke obey,
And waft his servants on their destined way.
Though many a league by that disaster driven
'Thwart from their course, with planks and cordage riven,
With hands disabled, and exhausted strength,
The active crew refit their bark at length;
Along the placid gulf, with heaving sails,
That catch from every point propitious gales,
Led like the moon, from infancy to age,
Round the wide zodiac of her pilgrimage,

Onward and smooth their voyage they pursue
Till Greenland's coast again salutes their view.

'Tis sunset: to the firmament serene
The' Atlantic wave reflects a gorgeous scene;
Broad in the cloudless west a belt of gold
Girds the blue hemisphere; above, unroll'd,
The keen clear air grows palpable to sight,
Embodied in a flush of crimson light,
Through which the evening star, with milder gleam,
Descends, to meet her image in the stream.
Far in the east, what spectacle unknown
Allures the eye to gaze on it alone?
—Amidst black rocks, that lift on either hand
Their countless peaks, and mark receding land;
Amidst a tortuous labyrinth of seas,
That shine around the arctic Cyclades;
Amidst a coast of dreariest continent,
In many a shapeless promontory rent;
—O'er rocks, seas, islands, promontories spread,
The Ice-Blink rears its undulated head,
On which the sun, beyond the' horizon shrined,
Hath left his richest garniture behind;
Piled on a hundred arches, ridge by ridge,
O'er fix'd and fluid strides the Alpine bridge,
Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye
Hewn from cerulean quarries of the sky;
With glacier-battlements, that crowd the spheres,
The slow creation of six thousand years,
Amidst immensity it towers sublime,
—Winter's eternal palace, built by Time:
All human structures by his touch are borne
Down to the dust;—mountains themselves are worn
With his light footsteps; here for ever grows,
Amid the region of unmelting snows,
A monument, where every flake that falls
Gives adamantine firmness to the walls.
The sun beholds no mirror, in his race,
That shows a brighter image of his face;
The stars, in their nocturnal vigils, rest
Like signal-fires on its illumined crest;
The gliding moon around the ramparts wheels,
And all its magic lights and shades reveals;
Beneath, the tide with idle fury raves
To undermine it through a thousand caves;
Rent from its roof, though thundering fragments oft
Plunge to the gulf; immovable aloft,
From age to age, in air, o'er sea, on land,
Its turrets heighten and its piers expand.

Midnight hath told his hour; the moon, yet young,
Hangs in the argent west her bow unstrung;
Larger and fairer, as her lustre fades,
Sparkle the stars amidst the deepening shades:
Jewels, more rich than night's regalia, gem
The distant Ice-Blink's spangled diadem;
Like a new morn from orient darkness, there
Phosphoric splendours kindle in mid-air,
As though from heaven's self-opening portals came
Legions of spirits in an orb of flame,
—Flame, that from every point an arrow sends
Far as the concave firmament extends:
Spun with the tissue of a million lines,
Glistening like gossamer the welkin shines:
The constellations in their pride look pale
Through the quick-trembling brilliance of that veil.
Then, suddenly converged, the meteors rush
O'er the wide south; one deep vermilion blush
O'erspreads Orion glaring on the flood,
And rabid Sirius foams through fire and blood;
Again the circuit of the pole they range,
Motion and figure every moment change,
Through all the colours of the rainbow run,
Or blaze like wrecks of a dissolving sun;
Wide ether burns with glory, conflict, flight,
And the glad ocean dances in the light.

The seaman's jealous eye askance surveys
This pageantry of evanescent rays,
While in the horror of misgiving fear
New storms already thunder on his ear:
But morning comes, and brings him sweet release;
Day shines and sets; at evening all is peace;
Another and another day is past;
The fourth appears,—the loveliest and the last!
The sails are furl'd; the anchor drags the sand;
The boat hath cross'd the creek;—the Brethren land.

CANTO FOURTH.

Retrospect of ancient Greenland:—The Discovery of Iceland, of Greenland, of Wineland. The Norwegian Colonies on the Eastern and Western Coasts of Greenland; the Appearance of the Skraellings, or modern Greenlanders, in the West, and the Destruction of the Norwegian Settlers in that quarter.

Here while in peace the weary Pilgrims rest,
Turn we our voyage from the new-found west,
Sail up the current of departed time,
And seek along its banks that vanish'd clime
By ancient scalds in Runic verse renown'd,
Now, like old Babylon, no longer found.
—“Oft was I weary when I toil'd at thee;”
This, on an oar abandon'd to the sea,
Some hand had graven:—From what founder'd boat
It fell;—how long on ocean's waves afloat;
—Who mark'd it with that melancholy line;
No record tells:—Greenland! such fate was thine;
Whate'er thou wast, of thee remains no more
Than a brief legend on a foundling oar;
And he, whose song would now revive thy fame,
Grasps but the shadow of a mighty name.

From Asia's fertile womb, when Time was young,
And earth a wreck, the sires of nations sprung;
In Shinar's land of rivers, Babel's tower
Stood the lorn relic of their scatter'd power;
A broken pillar, snapt as from the spheres,
Slow-wasting through the silent lapse of years,
While o'er the regions by the Flood destroy'd
The builders breathed new life throughout the void,
Soul, passion, intellect; till blood of man
Through every artery of Nature ran,
O'er eastern islands pour'd its quickening stream,
Caught the warm crimson of the western beam,
Beneath the burning line made fountains start
In the dry wilderness of Afric's heart,
And through the torpid north, with genial heat,
Taught love's exhilarating pulse to beat;
Till the great sun, in his perennial round,
Man, of all climes the restless native, found,
Pursuing folly in his vain career,
As if existence were immortal here;
While on the fathers' graves the sons, untaught
By their mischance, the same illusions sought,
By gleams and shadows measured woe and bliss,
As though unborn for any world but this.

Five thousand years, unvisited, unknown,
Greenland lay slumbering in the frozen zone,—
While heaven's resplendent host pursued their way
To light the wolf and eagle to their prey,
And tempests o'er the main their terrors spread
To rock Leviathan upon his bed;—
Ere Ingolf his undaunted flag unfurl'd,
To search the secrets of the polar world.
'Twas liberty, that fires the coldest veins,
And exile, famine, death, prefers to chains;
'Twas liberty, through floods unplough'd before,
That led his gallant crew from Norway's shore;
They cut their cable, and in thunder broke
With their departing oars the tyrant's yoke;
The deep their country, and their bark their home,
A floating isle, on which they joy'd to roam
Amidst immensity; with waves and wind
Now sporting and now wrestling;—unconfined,
Save by the blue surrounding firmament,
Full, yet for ever widening as they went;
Thus sail'd those mariners, unheeding where
They found a port, if Freedom anchor'd there.

By stars that never set their course they steer'd,
And northward with indignant impulse veer'd;
For sloth had lull'd, and luxury o'errun,
And bondage seized, the realms that loved the sun.

At length by mountain-ice, with perils strange,
Menaced, repell'd, and forced their track to change,
They bade the unimprison'd raven fly,
A living compass through the chartless sky:
Up to the zenith, swift as fire, he soar'd,
Through the clear boundless atmosphere explored
The dim horizon stretch'd beneath his sight;
Then to the west full-onward shot his flight:
Thither they follow; till, from Thule's rocks,
Around the bird of tempests rose the flocks
Of screaming sea-fowl, widening ring o'er ring,
Till heaven grew dark,—then, wheeling on the wing
Landward, they whiten all the rocks below,
Or, diving, melt into the gulf like snow.
Pleased with the proud discovery, Ingolf gave
His lintel and his doorposts to the wave,
Divining, as they drifted to the strand,
The will of destiny,—the place to land.
There on a homeless soil his foot he placed,
Framed his hut-palace, colonised the waste,
And ruled his horde with patriarchal sway;
—Where justice reigns, 'tis freedom to obey:
And there his race, in long succession blest,
(Like generations in the eagle's nest,
Upon their own hereditary rock,)
Flourish'd, invincible to every shock
Of time, chance, foreign force, or civil rage,—
A noble dynasty from age to age;
And Iceland shone for generous lore renown'd,
A northern light, when all was gloom around.

Ere long, by brave adventurers on the tide,
A new Hesperian region was descried,
Which fancy deem'd, or fable feign'd, so fair,
Fleets from old Norway pour'd their settlers there,
Who traced and peopled far that double shore,
Round whose repelling rocks two oceans roar,
Till, at the southern promontory, tost
By tempests, each is in its rival lost.
Thus Greenland (so that arctic world they named)
Was planted, and to utmost Calpe famed
For wealth exhaustless, which her seas could boast,
And prodigies of Nature on her coast;
Where, in the green recess of every glen,
The House of Prayer o'ertopt the' abodes of men,
And flocks and cattle grazed by summer-streams,
That track'd the valleys with meandering gleams.
While on the mountains ice eternal frown'd,
And growing glaciers deepen'd tow'rds the ground,
Year after year, as centuries roll'd away,
Nor lost one moment till that judgment-day
When eastern Greenland from the world was rent,
Ingulf'd,—or fix'd one frozen continent.

'Twere long and dreary to recount in rhyme
The crude traditions of that long-lost clime:
To sing of wars, by barbarous chieftains waged,
In which as fierce and noble passions raged,
Heroes as subtle, bold, remorseless, fought,
And deeds as dark and terrible were wrought,
As round Troy-walls became the splendid themes
Of Homer's song, and Jove's Olympian dreams;
When giant-prowess, in the iron field,
With single arm made phalanx'd legions yield;
When battle was but massacre,—the strife
Of murderers,—steel to steel, and life to life.
—Who follows Homer, takes the field too late;
Though stout as Hector, sure of Hector's fate,
A wound as from Achilles' spear he feels,
Falls, and adorns the Grecian's chariot-wheels.

Nor stay we monkish legends to rehearse;
To build their cloister-walls in Gothic verse;
Of groves and gardens, wine and music, tell;
Fresh roses breathing round the hermit's cell,
And baths, in which Diana's nymphs might lave,
—From earth's self-opening veins the blood-warm wave,
Whose genial streams, amidst disparted ice,
Made laps of verdure,—like those isles of spice
In eastern seas; or rich oases, graced
With flowers and fountains, in the Libyan waste.

Rather the muse would stretch a mightier wing,
Of a new world the earliest dawn to sing;

How,—long ere Science, in a dream of thought,
Earth's younger daughter to Columbus brought,
And sent him, like the Faerie Prince, in quest
Of that “bright vestal thronëd in the west.”
—Greenland's bold sons, by instinct, sallied forth
On barks, like icebergs drifting from the north,
Cross'd without magnet undiscover'd seas,
And, all surrendering to the stream and breeze,
Touch'd on the line of that twin-bodied land
That stretches forth to either pole a hand,
From arctic wilds that see no winter-sun
To where the oceans of the world are one,
And round Magellan's straits, Fuego's shore,
Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific roar.

Regions of beauty there these rovers found;
The flowery hills with emerald woods were crown'd;
Spread o'er the vast savannahs, buffalo herds
Ranged without master; and the bright-wing'd birds
Made gay the sunshine as they glanced along,
Or turn'd the air to music with their song.

Here from his mates a German youth had stray'd,
Where the broad river cleft the forest glade;
Swarming with alligator-shoals, the flood
Blazed in the sun, or moved in clouds of blood;
The wild boar rustled headlong through the brake;
Like a live arrow leap'd the rattle-snake;
The uncouth shadow of the climbing bear
Crawl'd on the grass, while he aspired in air;
Anon with hoofs, like hail, the greenwood rang,
Among the scattering deer a panther sprang:
The stripling fear'd not,—yet he trod with awe,
As if enchantment breathed o'er all he saw,
Till in his path uprose a wilding vine;
—Then o'er his memory rush'd the noble Rhine;
Home and its joys, with fulness of delight,
So rapt his spirit, so beguiled his sight,
That, in those glens of savage solitude,
Vineyards and corn-fields, towns and spires, he view'd,
And through the image-chamber of his soul
The days of other years like shadows stole:
All that he once had been, again he grew;
Through every stage of life he pass'd anew;
The playmates of his infancy were there,
With dimpled cheeks, blue eyes, and flaxen hair;
The blithe companions of his riper youth,
And one whose heart was love, whose soul was truth.
—When the quick-mingling pictures of that dream
(Like broken scenery on a troubled stream,
Where sky and landscape, light and darkness, run
Through widening circles,) harmonised in one,
His father's cot appear'd, with vine-leaves drest,
And clusters pendent round the swallow's nest;
In front the little garden, at whose gate,
Amidst their progeny, his parents sate,

He only absent;—but his mother's eye
Look'd through a tear,—she reach'd him with a sigh:
Then in a moment vanish'd time and space,
And with a shout he rush'd to her embrace.
Round hills and dales the joyful tidings spread;
All ran to welcome Tyrker from the dead.
With bliss inebriate, in that giddy trance,
He led his waltzing partner through the dance;
And, while he pluck'd the grapes that blush'd at hand,
Trod the rich wine-press in his native land,
Quaff'd the full flowing goblet, loosed his tongue,
And songs of vintage, harvest, battle, sung.
At length his shipmates came: their laughter broke
The gay delusion; in alarm he 'woke:
Transport to silent melancholy changed;
At once from love, and joy, and hope estranged,
O'er his blank mind, with cold bereaving spell,
Came that heart-sickness which no tongue can tell;
—Felt when, in foreign climes, 'midst sounds unknown,
We hear the speech or music of our own,
Roused to delight, from drear abstraction start,
And feel our country beating at our heart;
The rapture of a moment;—in its birth
It perishes for ever from the earth;
And dumb, like shipwreck'd mariners we stand,
Eyeing by turns the ocean and the land,
Breathless;—till tears the struggling thought release,
And the lorn spirit weeps itself to peace.

Wineland the glad discoverers call'd that shore,
And back the tidings of its riches bore;
But soon return'd with colonising bands,
—Men that at home would sigh for unknown lands;
Men of all weathers, fit for every toil,
War, commerce, pastime, peace, adventure, spoil;
Bold master-spirits, where they touch'd they gain'd
Ascendance; where they fix'd their foot they reign'd.
Both coasts they long inherited, though wide
Dissever'd; stemming to and fro the tide,
Free as the Syrian dove explores the sky,
Their helm their hope, their compass in their eye,
They found at will, where'er they pleased to roam,
The ports of strangers or their northern home,
Still 'midst tempestuous seas and zones of ice,
Loved as their own, their unlost Paradise.
—Yet was their Paradise for ever lost:
War, famine, pestilence, the power of frost,
Their woes combining, wither'd from the earth
This late creation, like a timeless birth,
The fruit of age and weakness, forced to light,
Breathing awhile,—relapsing into night.

Ages had seen the vigorous race, that sprung
From Norway's stormy forelands, rock'd when young
In ocean's cradle, hardening as they rose,
Like mountain-pines amidst perennial snows;
—Ages had seen these sturdiest sons of Time
Strike root and flourish in that ruffian clime,
Commerce with lovelier lands and wealthier hold,
Yet spurn the lures of luxury and gold;
Beneath the umbrage of the Gallic vine,
For moonlight snows and cavern-shelter pine;
Turn from Campanian fields a lofty eye
To gaze upon the glorious Alps, and sigh,
Remembering Greenland; more and more endear'd,
As far and farther from its shores they steer'd;
Greenland their world,—and all was strange beside;
Elsewhere they wander'd: here they lived and died.

At length a swarthy tribe, without a name,
Unknown the point of windward whence they came;
The power by which stupendous gulfs they cross'd,
Or compass'd wilds of everlasting frost,
Alike mysterious;—found their sudden way
To Greenland; pour'd along the western bay
Their straggling families; and seized the soil
For their domain, the ocean for their spoil.
Skraellings the Normans call'd these hordes in scorn,
That seem'd created on the spot,—though born
In trans-Atlantic climes, and thither brought
By paths as covert as the birth of thought;
They were at once;—the swallow-tribes in spring
Thus daily multiply upon the wing,
As if the air, their element of flight,
Brought forth new broods from darkness every night;
Slipt from the secret hand of Providence,
They come we see not how, nor know we whence.

A stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock,
Hewn from the living marble of the rock,
Or sprung from mermaids, and in ocean's bed,
With orcs and seals, in sunless caverns bred,
They might have held, from unrecorded time,
Sole patrimony in that hideous clime,
So lithe their limbs, so fenced their frames to bear
The intensest rigours of the polar air;
Nimble, and muscular, and keen to run
The rein-deer down a circuit of the sun;
To climb the slippery cliffs, explore their cells,
And storm and sack the sea-birds' citadels;
In bands, through snows, the mother-bear to trace,
Slay with their darts the cubs in her embrace,
And, while she lick'd their bleeding wounds, to brave
Her deadliest vengeance in her inmost cave:
Train'd with inimitable skill to float,
Each, balanced in his bubble of a boat,
With dexterous paddle steering through the spray,
With poised harpoon to strike his plunging prey,
As though the skiff, the seaman, oar, and dart
Were one compacted body, by one heart
With instinct, motion, pulse, empower'd to ride
A human nautilus upon the tide;
Or with a fleet of kayaks to assail
The desperation of the stranded whale,
When, wedged 'twixt jagged rocks, he writhes and rolls
In agony among the ebbing shoals,
Lashing the waves to foam, until the flood,
From wounds, like geysers, seems a bath of blood,
Echo all night dumb-pealing to his roar,
Till morn beholds him slain along the shore.

Of these,—hereafter should the lyre be strung
To arctic themes,—may glorious days be sung;
Now be our task the sad reverse to tell,
How in their march the nobler Normans fell;
—Whether by dire disease, that turn'd the breath
Of bounteous heaven to pestilence and death,
In number, strength, and spirit worn away,
Their lives became the cool assassin's prey;
—Or in the battle-field, as Skraellings boast,
These pigmies put to flight their giant-host,
When front to front on scowling cliffs they stood,
And shot their barbs athwart the parting flood;
Arrow smote arrow, dart encounter'd dart,
From hand to hand, impaling heart for heart;
Till spent their missiles: quick as in a dream
The images are changed; across the stream
The Skraellings rush'd, the precipices scaled;
—O'erwhelm'd by multitudes, the Normans fail'd:

A scatter'd remnant to the south retired,
But one by one along their route expired:
They perish'd;—History can no more relate
Of their obscure and unlamented fate:
They perish'd;—yet along that western shore,
Where Commerce spread her colonies of yore,
Ruins of temples and of homes are traced,
—Steps of magnificence amidst the waste
Where Time hath trod, and left those wrecks to show
That Life hath been, where all is Death below.

CANTO FIFTH.

The Depopulation of the Norwegian Colonies on the Eastern Coast of Greenland, and the Abandonment of Intercourse with it from Europe, in consequence of the Increase of the Arctic Ices, about the beginning of the Fifteenth Century.

Launch on the gulf, my little Greenland bark!
Bear me through scenes unutterably dark;
Scenes with the mystery of Nature seal'd,
Nor till the day of doom to be reveal'd.
What though the spirits of the arctic gales
Freeze round thy prow, or fight against thy sails,
Safe as Arion, whom the dolphin bore,
Enamour'd of his music, to the shore,
On thee adventuring o'er an unknown main,
I raise to warring elements a strain
Of kindred harmony:—O, lend your breath,
Ye tempests! while I sing this reign of death:
Utter dark sayings of the days of old;
In parables upon my harp unfold
Deeds perish'd from remembrance; truth, array'd,
Like heaven by night, in emblematic shade,
When shines the horoscope, and star on star
By what they are not lead to what they are;
Atoms, that twinkle in an infant's eye,
Are worlds, suns, systems in the' unbounded sky:
Thus the few fabled woes my strains create
Are hieroglyphics in a book of Fate;
And while the shadowy symbols I unroll,
Imagination reads a direr scroll.
Wake, ye wild visions! o'er the northern deep,
On clouds and winds, like warrior-spectres sweep;
Show by what plagues and hurricanes destroy'd,
A breathing realm became a torpid void!

The floods are raging, and the gales blow high,
Low as a dungeon-roof impends the sky;
Prisoners of hope, between the clouds and waves,
Six fearless sailors man yon boat, that braves
Peril redoubling upon peril past:
—From childhood nurslings of the wayward blast,
Aloft as o'er a buoyant arch they go,
Whose keystone breaks;—as deep they plunge below;
Unyielding, though the strength of man be vain;
Struggling, though borne like surf along the main;
In front, a battlement of rocks; in rear,
Billow on billow bounding: near, more near,
They verge to ruin;—life and death depend
On the next impulse;—shrieks and prayers ascend;
When, like the fish that mounts on drizzling wings,
Sheer from the gulf the' ejected vessel springs,
And grounds on inland ice, beyond the track
Of hissing foam-wreaths, whence the tide roll'd back;
Then ere that tide, returning to the charge,
Swallows the wreck, the captives are at large.
On either hand steep hills obstruct their path;
Behind, the ocean roaring in his wrath,
Mad as a Libyan wilderness by night,
With all its lions up, in chase or fight.
The fugitives right onward shun the beach,
Nor tarry till the inmost cove they reach;
Recluded in the labyrinthine dell,
Like the last hollow of a spiral shell.
There, with the axe or knife which haste could save,
They build a house;—perhaps they dig a grave:
Of solid snow, well-squared, and piled in blocks,
Brilliant as hewn from alabaster rocks,
Their palace rises, narrowing to the roof,
And freezes into marble, tempest-proof;
Night closing round, within its shade they creep,
And weary Nature sinks at once to sleep.

Oh! could we walk amidst their dreams, and see
All that they have been, are, or wish to be,
In fancy's world!—each at his own fire-side:
One greets a parent; one a new-made bride;
Another clasps his babe with fond embrace,
A smile in slumber mantling o'er his face;
All dangers are forgotten in a kiss,
Or but remember'd to exalt the bliss.
—One wounded sufferer wakes, with pain opprest,
Yet are his thoughts at home among the rest;
Then beams his eye, his heart dilated burns,
Till the dark vigil to a vision turns,
That vision to reality: and home
Is so endear'd, he vows no more to roam.

Ha! suddenly he starts: with trembling lips,
Salt shower drops, oozing through the roof, he sips:
Aware that instant, yet alarm'd too late,
—The sea hath burst its barrier, fix'd their fate;
Escape impossible: the tempests urge
Through the deep dell the inundating surge:
Nor wall nor roof the' impetuous flood controls;
Above, around, within, the deluge rolls:
He calls his comrades;—ere their doom be known,
'Tis past!—the snow-house utterly o'erthrown,
Its inmates vanish; never to be found,
Living or dead, on habitable ground.

There is a beauteous hamlet in the vale;
Green are the fields around it; sweetly sail
The twilight shadows o'er the darkening scene,
Earth, air, and ocean, all alike serene;
Dipp'd in the hues of sunset, wreathed in zones,
The clouds are resting on their mountain-thrones:
One peak alone exalts its glacier crest,
A golden paradise, above the rest;
Thither the day with lingering steps retires,
And in its own blue element expires:
Thus Aaron laid his gorgeous robes aside
On Horeb's consecrated top, and died.
The moon, meanwhile, o'er ocean's sombre bed,
New-risen, a thousand glow-worm lights hath spread;
From east to west the wildfire splendours glance,
And all the billows in her glory dance;
Till, in mid-heaven, her orb might seem the eye
Of Providence, wide-watching from the sky,
While Nature slumbers;—emblem of His grace
Whose presence fills the infinite of space.

The clouds have left the mountains; coldly bright,
Their icy summits shed cerulean light;
The steep declivities between assume
A horror of unfathomable gloom:
The village sleeps;—from house to house, the ear
Of yonder sentinel no sound can hear:
A maniac;—he, while calmer heads repose,
Takes his night-round, to tell the stars his woes;
Woes which his noble heart to frenzy stung;
—He hath no bard, and they remain unsung.
A warrior once, victorious arms he bore,
And bears them still, although his wars are o'er;
For 'tis his boast, with shield and sword in hand,
To be the guardian Angel of the land.
Mark with what stern solemnity he stalks,
And to himself, as to a legion, talks:
Now deep in council with his chiefs; anon
He starts, as at the trumpet; leads them on,
And wins the day;—his battle-shout alarms
None but the infant in the nurse's arms;
Soon hush'd, but closer to her side, it sleeps;
While he abroad his watch in silence keeps.

At every door he halts, and brings a sigh,
But leaves a blessing, when he marches by:
He stops; from that low roof a deadly groan
Hath made unutterable anguish known;
A spirit into eternity hath pass'd;
A spouse, a father, there hath breathed his last.
The widow and her little ones weep not;
In its excess their misery is forgot,
One dumb, dark moment;—then from all their eyes
Rain the salt tears, and loud their wailings rise:
Ah! little think that family forlorn
How brief the parting;—they shall meet ere morn!
For lo! the witness of their pangs hath caught
A sight that startles madness into thought:
Back from their gate unconsciously he reels;
A resurrection of his soul he feels.
There is a motion in the air: his eye
Blinks as it fear'd the falling of the sky.
The splendid peak of adamantine ice,
At sunset like an earthly paradise,
And in the moon of such empyrean hue,
It seem'd to bring the unseen world to view;
—That splendid peak, the Power (which to the spheres
Had piled its turrets through a thousand years)
Touches as lightly as the passing wind,
And the huge mass, o'erbalanced, undermined,
And dislocated from its base of snow,
Slides down the slope, majestically slow,
Till, o'er the precipice down headlong sent,
And in ten thousand thousand spangles rent,
It piles a hill where spread a vale before:
—From rock to rock the echoes round the shore
Tell with their deep artillery the fate
Of the whole village crush'd beneath its weight.
—The sleepers wake,—their homes in ruins hurl'd,—
They wake—from death into another world.
The gazing maniac, palsied into stone,
Amidst the wreck of ice, survives alone;
A sudden interval of reason gleams,
Steady and clear, amidst his wildering dreams,
But shows reality in such a shape,
'Twere rapture back to frenzy to escape.

Again the clouds of desolation roll,
Blotting all old remembrance from his soul:
Whate'er his sorrows or his joys have been,
His spirit grows embodied through this scene;
With eyes of agony, and clenching hands,
Fix'd in recoil, a frozen form he stands,
And, smit with wonder at his people's doom,
Becomes the monument upon their tomb.

Behold a scene, magnificent and new;
Nor land nor water meet the' excursive view;
The round horizon girds one frozen plain,
The mighty tombstone of the buried main,
Where, dark and silent, and unfelt to flow,
A dead sea sleeps with all its tribes below.
But heaven is still itself; the deep-blue sky
Comes down with smiles to meet the glancing eye,
Though, if a keener sight its bound would trace,
The arch recedes through everlasting space.
The sun, in morning glory, mounts his throne,
Nor shines he here in solitude unknown;
North, south, and west, by dogs or reindeer drawn,
Careering sledges cross the' unbroken lawn,
And bring, from bays and forelands round the coast,
Youth, beauty, valour, Greenland's proudest boast,
Who thus, in winter's long and social reign,
Hold feasts and tournaments upon the main,
When, built of solid floods, his bridge extends
A highway o'er the gulf to meeting friends,
Whom rocks impassable, or winds and tide,
Fickle and false, in summer months divide.

The scene runs round with motion, rings with mirth,
—No happier spot upon the peopled earth;
The drifted snow to dust the travellers beat,
The' uneven ice is flint beneath their feet.
Here tents, a gay encampment, rise around,
Where music, song, and revelry resound;
There the blue smoke upwreathes a hundred spires,
Where humbler groups have lit their pine-wood fires.
Ere long they quit the tables; knights and dames
Lead the blithe multitude to boisterous games.
Bears, wolves, and lynxes yonder head the chase;
Here start the harness'd reindeer in the race;
Borne without wheels, a flight of rival cars
Track the ice-firmament, like shooting stars,
Right to the goal,—converging as they run,
They dwindle through the distance into one.
Where smoother waves have form'd a sea of glass,
With pantomimic change the skaters pass;
Now toil like ships 'gainst wind and stream; then wheel
Like flames blown suddenly asunder; reel
Like drunkards; then, dispersed in tangents wide,
Away with speed invisible they glide.
Peace in their hearts, death-weapons in their hands,
Fierce in mock-battle meet fraternal bands,
Whom the same chiefs erewhile to conflict led,
When friends by friends, by kindred kindred, bled.
Here youthful rings with pipe and drum advance,
And foot the mazes of the giddy dance;
Gray-beard spectators, with illumined eye,
Lean on their staves, and talk of days gone by;
Children, who mimic all, from pipe and drum
To chase and battle, dream of years to come.
Those years to come, the young shall ne'er behold;
The days gone by, no more rejoice the old.

There is a boy, a solitary boy,
Who takes no part in all this whirl of joy,
Yet, in the speechless transport of his soul,
He lives, and moves, and breathes throughout the whole:
Him should destruction spare, the plot of earth,
That forms his play-ground, gave a poet birth,
Who, on the wings of his immortal lays,
Thine heroes, Greenland! to the stars shall raise.
It must not be:—abruptly from the show
He turns his eyes; his thoughts are gone below
To sound the depths of ocean, where his mind
Creates the wonders which it cannot find.
Listening, as oft he listens in a shell
To the mock tide's alternate fall and swell,
He kneels upon the ice,—inclines his ear,
And hears,—or does he only seem to hear?—
A sound, as though the Genius of the deep
Heaved a long sigh, awaking out of sleep.
He starts;—'twas but a pulse within his brain!
No;—for he feels it beat through every vein;
Groan following groan, (as from a giant's breast,
Beneath a burying mountain, ill at rest,)
With awe ineffable his spirit thrills,
And rapture fires his blood, while terror chills.
The keen expression of his eye alarms
His mother; she hath caught him in her arms,
And learn'd the cause;—that cause no sooner known,
From lip to lip o'er many a league is flown;

Voices to voices, prompt as signals, rise
In shrieks of consternation to the skies:
Those skies, meanwhile, with gathering darkness scowl;
Hollow and winterly the bleak winds howl.
—From morn till noon had ether smiled serene,
Save one black-belted cloud, far eastward seen,
Like a snow-mountain;—there in ambush lay
The' undreaded tempest, panting for his prey:
That cloud by stealth hath through the welkin spread,
And hangs in meteor-twilight over-head;
At foot, beneath the adamantine floor,
Loose in their prison-house the surges roar:
To every eye, ear, heart, the' alarm is given,
And landward crowds, (like flocks of sea-fowl driven,
When storms are on the wing,) in wild affright,
On foot, in sledges, urge their panic flight,
In hope the refuge of the shore to gain
Ere the disruption of the struggling main,
Foretold by many a stroke, like lightning sent
In thunder, through the' unstable continent,
Which now, elastic on the swell below,
Rolls high in undulation to and fro.
Men, reindeer, dogs, the giddy impulse feel,
And, jostling headlong, back and forward reel:
While snow, sleet, hail, or whirling gusts of wind,
Exhaust, bewilder, stop the breath, and blind.
All is dismay and uproar; some have found
Death for deliverance, as they leap'd on ground
Swept back into the flood:—but hope is vain:
Ere half the fugitives the beach can gain,
The fix'd ice, severing from the shore, with shocks
Of earthquake violence, bounds against the rocks;
Then suddenly, while on the verge they stand,
The whole recoils for ever from the land,
And leaves a gulf of foam along the shore,
In which whoever plunge are seen no more.

Ocean, meanwhile, abroad hath burst the roof
That sepulchred his waves; he bounds aloof.
In boiling cataracts, as volcanoes spout
Their fiery fountains, gush the waters out;
The frame of ice with dire explosion rends,
And down the' abyss the mingled crowd descends.
Heaven! from this closing horror hide thy light;
Cast thy thick mantle o'er it, gracious Night!
These screams of mothers with their infants lost,
These groans of agony from wretches tost
On rocks and whirlpools,—in thy storms be drown'd,
The crash of mountain-ice to atoms ground,
And rage of elements!—while winds, that yell
Like demons, peal the universal knell,
The shrouding waves around their limbs shall spread,
“And Darkness be the burier of the dead.”
Their pangs are o'er:—at morn the tempests cease,
And the freed ocean rolls himself to peace;
Broad to the sun his heaving breast expands,
He holds his mirror to a hundred lands;
While cheering gales pursue the eager chase
Of billows round immeasurable space.

Where are the multitudes of yesterday?
At morn they came; at eve they pass'd away.
Yet some survive;—yon castellated pile
Floats on the surges, like a fairy isle:
Pre-eminent upon its peak, behold,
With walls of amethyst and roofs of gold,
The semblance of a city; towers and spires
Glance in the firmament with opal fires:
Prone from those heights pellucid fountains flow
O'er pearly meads, through emerald vales below.
No lovelier pageant moves beneath the sky,
Nor one so mournful to the nearer eye;
Here, when the bitterness of death had pass'd
O'er others, with their sledge and reindeer cast,
Five wretched ones, in dumb despondence wait
The lingering issue of a nameless fate;
A bridal party:—mark yon reverend sage
In the brown vigour of autumnal age;
His daughter in her prime; the youth, who won
Her love by miracles of prowess done;

With these, two meet companions of their joy,
Her younger sister, and a gallant boy,
Who hoped, like him, a gentle heart to gain
By valorous enterprise on land or main.
—These, when the ocean-pavement fail'd their feet,
Sought on a glacier's crags a safe retreat;
But in the shock, from its foundation torn,
That mass is slowly o'er the waters borne,
An iceberg!—on whose verge all day they stand,
And eye the blank horizon's ring for land.
All night around a dismal flame they weep;
Their sledge, by piecemeal, lights the hoary deep.
Morn brings no comfort: at her dawn expire
The latest embers of their latest fire;
For warmth and food the patient reindeer bleeds,
Happier in death than those he warms and feeds.
—How long, by that precarious raft upbuoy'd,
They blindly drifted on a shoreless void;
How long they suffer'd, or how soon they found
Rest in the gulf, or peace on living ground;
—Whether, by hunger, cold, and grief consumed,
They perish'd miserably—and, unentomb'd,
(While on that frigid bier their corses lay,)
Became the sea-fowl's or the sea-bear's prey;
—Whether the wasting mound, by swift degrees,
Exhaled in mist and vanish'd from the seas,
While they, too weak to struggle even in death,
Lock'd in each other's arms resign'd their breath,
And their white skeletons, beneath the wave,
Lie intertwined in one sepulchral cave;
—Or meeting some Norwegian bark at sea,
They deem'd its deck a world of liberty;
—Or, sunward sailing, on green Erin's sod
They kneel'd, and worshipp'd a delivering God,
Where yet the blood they brought from Greenland runs
Among the noblest of our sister's sons,
—Is all unknown:—their iceberg disappears
Amidst the flood of unreturning years.

Ages are fled; and Greenland's hour draws nigh;
Seal'd is the judgment; all her race must die:
Commerce forsakes the' unvoyageable seas,
That year by year with keener rigour freeze;
The embargoed waves in narrower channels roll
To blue Spitzbergen and the utmost pole:
A hundred colonies, erewhile that lay
On the green marge of many a shelter'd bay,
Lapse to the wilderness; their tenants throng
Where streams in summer, turbulent and strong,
With molten ice from inland Alps supplied,
Hold free communion with the breathing tide,
That from the heart of ocean sends the flood
Of living water round the world, like blood:
But Greenland's pulse shall slow and slower beat,
Till the last spark of genial warmth retreat,
And, like a palsied limb of Nature's frame,
Greenland be nothing but a place and name.
That crisis comes: the wafted fuel fails;
The cattle perish; famine long prevails;
With torpid sloth, intenser seasons bind
The strength of muscle and the spring of mind;
Man droops, his spirits waste, his powers decay,
—His generation soon shall pass away.

At moonless midnight, on this naked coast,
How beautiful in heaven the starry host!
With lambent brilliance o'er these cloister-walls,
Slant from the firmament a meteor falls;
A steadier flame from yonder beacon streams,
To light the vessel, seen in golden dreams
By many a pining wretch, whose slumbers feign
The bliss for which he looks at morn in vain.
Two years are gone, and half expired a third,
(The nation's heart is sick with hope deferr'd,)
Since last for Europe sail'd a Greenland prow,
Her whole marine,—so shorn is Greenland now,
Though once, like clouds in ether unconfined,
Her naval wings were spread to every wind.
The monk who sits, the weary hours to count,
In the lone block-house on the beacon-mount,
Watching the east, beholds the morning star
Eclipsed at rising o'er the waves afar,
As if—for so would fond expectance think—
A sail had cross'd it on the' horizon's brink.
His fervent soul, in ecstasy outdrawn,
Glows with the shadows kindling through the dawn,

Till every bird that flashes through the brine
Appears an arm'd and gallant brigantine;
And every sound along the air that comes,
The voice of clarions and the roll of drums.
—'Tis she! 'tis she! the well-known keel at last,
With Greenland's banner streaming at the mast;
The full-swoln sails, the spring-tide, and the breeze,
Waft on her way the pilgrim of the seas.
The monks at matins, issuing from their cells,
Spread the glad tidings; while their convent-bells
Wake town and country, sea and shore, to bliss
Unknown for years on any morn but this.
Men, women, children, throng the joyous strand,
Whose mob of moving shadows o'er the sand
Lengthen to giants, while the hovering sun
Lights up a thousand radiant points from one.
The pilots launch their boasts:—a race! a race!
The strife of oars is seen in every face;
Arm against arm puts forth its might to reach,
And guide the welcome stranger to the beach.
—Shouts from the shore, the cliffs, the boats, arise;
No voice, no signal, from the ship replies;
Nor on the deck, the yards, the bow, the stern,
Can keenest eye a human form discern.
Oh! that those eyes were open'd, there to see
How, in serene and dreadful majesty,
Sits the destroying Angel at the helm!
—He, who hath lately march'd from realm to realm,
And, from the palace to the peasant's shed,
Made all the living kindred to the dead:
Nor man alone,—dumb nature felt his wrath,
Drought, mildew, murrain, strew'd his carnage-path;
Harvest and vintage cast their timeless fruit,
Forests before him wither'd from the root.
To Greenland now, with unexhausted power,
He comes commission'd; and in evil hour
Propitious elements prepare his way;
His day of landing is a festal day.

A boat arrives;—to those who scale the deck,
Of life appears but one disastrous wreck!
Fall'n from the rudder, which he fain had grasp'd,
But stronger Death his wrestling hold unclasp'd,
The film of darkness freezing o'er his eyes,
A lukewarm corpse, the brave commander lies;
Survivor sole of all his buried crew,
Whom one by one the rife contagion slew,
Just when the cliffs of Greenland cheer'd his sight,
Even from their pinnacle his soul took flight.
Chill'd at the spectacle, the pilots gaze
One on another, lost in blank amaze;
But, from approaching boats when rivals throng,
They seize the helm, in silence steer along,
And cast their anchor, 'midst exulting cries,
That make the rocks the echoes of the skies,
Till the mysterious signs of woes to come,
Circled by whispers, strike the uproar dumb.
Rumour affirms, that by some heinous spell
Of Lapland witches, crew and captain fell;
None guess the secret of perfidious fate,
Which all shall know too soon,—yet know too late.

The monks, who claim the ship, divide the stores
Of food and raiment at their convent-doors.
—A mother, hastening to her cheerless shed,
Breaks to her little ones untasted bread;
Clamorous as nestling-birds, the hungry band
Receive a mortal portion at her hand:
On each would equal love the best confer,
Each by distinct affection dear to her;
One the first pledge that to her spouse she gave,
And one unborn till he was in his grave;
This was his darling, that to her most kind;
A fifth was once a twin, the sixth is blind:
In each she lives;—in each by turns she dies;
Smitten by pestilence before her eyes,
Three days, and all are slain;—the heaviest doom
Is hers: their ice-barr'd cottage is their tomb.
—The wretch whose limbs are impotent with cold,
In the warm comfort of a mantle roll'd,
Lies down to slumber on his soul's desire;
But wakes at morn, as wrapt in flames of fire:
Not Hercules, when from his breast he tore
The cloak envenom'd with the Centaur's gore,
Felt sharper pangs than he, who, mad with rage,
Dives in the gulf, or rolls in snow, to' assuage
His quenchless agony; the rankling dart
Within him burns till it consumes his heart.
From vale to vale the' affrighted victims fly,
But catch or give the plague with every sigh;
A touch contaminates the purest veins,
Till the Black Death through all the region reigns.

Comes there no ship again to Greenland's shore?
There comes another:—there shall come no more;
Nor this shall reach an haven:—What are these
Stupendous monuments upon the seas?
Works of Omnipotence, in wondrous forms,
Immovable as mountains in the storms?
Far as Imagination's eye can roll,
One range of Alpine glaciers to the pole
Flanks the whole eastern coast; and, branching wide,
Arches o'er many a league the indignant tide,
That works and frets, with unavailing flow,
To mine a passage to the beach below;
Thence from its neck that winter-yoke to rend,
And down the gulf the crashing fragments send.
There lies a vessel in this realm of frost,
Not wreck'd, nor stranded, yet for ever lost:
Its keel embedded in the solid mass;
Its glistening sails appear expanded glass;
The transverse ropes with pearls enormous strung,
The yards with icicles grotesquely hung,
Wrapt in the topmost shrouds there rests a boy,
His old sea-faring father's only joy:
Sprung from a race of rovers, ocean-born,
Nursed at the helm, he trod dry land with scorn;
Through fourscore years from port to port he veer'd,
Quicksand, nor rock, nor foe, nor tempest fear'd;
Now cast ashore, though like a hulk he lie,
His son at sea is ever in his eye,
And his prophetic thought, from age to age,
Esteems the waves his offspring's heritage:
He ne'er shall know, in his Norwegian cot,
How brief that son's career, how strange his lot;
Writhed round the mast, and sepulchred in air,
Him shall no worm devour, no vulture tear;
Congeal'd to adamant, his frame shall last,
Though empires change, till time and tide be past.

On deck, in groups embracing as they died,
Singly, erect, or slumbering side by side,
Behold the crew!—They sail'd, with hope elate,
For eastern Greenland; till, ensnared by fate,
In toils that mock'd their utmost strength and skill,
They felt, as by a charm, their ship stand still:
The madness of the wildest gale that blows
Were mercy to that shudder of repose,
When withering horror struck from heart to heart
The blunt rebound of Death's benumbing dart,
And each, a petrifaction at his post,
Look'd on yon father, and gave up the ghost:
He, meekly kneeling, with his hands upraised,
His beard of driven snow, eyes fix'd and glazed,
Alone among the dead shall yet survive,
—The' imperishable dead, that seem alive;
—The' immortal dead, whose spirits, breaking free,
Bore his last words into eternity,
While with a seraph's zeal, a Christian's love,
Till his tongue fail'd, he spoke of joys above.
Now motionless, amidst the icy air,
He breathes from marble lips unutter'd prayer.
The clouds condensed, with dark unbroken hue
Of stormy purple, overhang his view,
Save in the west, to which he strains his sight,
One golden streak, that grows intensely bright,
Till thence the' emerging sun, with lightning blaze,
Pours the whole quiver of his arrowy rays;
The smitten rocks to instant diamond turn,
And round the' expiring saint such visions burn
As if the gates of Paradise were thrown
Wide open to receive his soul;—'tis flown:
The glory vanishes, and over all
Cimmerian darkness spreads her funeral pall!

Morn shall return, and noon, and eve, and night
Meet here with interchanging shade and light:
But from this bark no timber shall decay,
Of these cold forms no feature pass away;
Perennial ice around the' encrusted bow,
The peopled deck, and full-rigg'd masts, shall grow,
Till from the sun himself the whole be hid,
Or spied beneath a crystal pyramid;
As in pure amber, with divergent lines,
A rugged shell emboss'd with sea-weed shines.
From age to age increased with annual snow,
This new Mont Blanc among the clouds may glow,
Whose conic peak, that earliest greets the dawn,
And latest from the sun's shut eye withdrawn,

Shall from the zenith, through incumbent gloom,
Burn like a lamp upon this naval tomb.
But when the' archangel's trumpet sounds on high,
The pile shall burst to atoms through the sky,
And leave its dead, upstarting at the call,
Naked and pale, before the Judge of all.

Once more to Greenland's long-forsaken beach,
Which foot of man again shall never reach,
Imagination wings her flight, explores
The march of Pestilence along the shores,
And sees how Famine in his steps hath paced,
While Winter laid the soil for ever waste.
Dwellings are heaps of fall'n or falling stones,
The charnel-houses of unburied bones,
On which obscene and prowling monsters fed,
But, with the ravin in their jaws, fell dead.
Thus while Destruction, blasting youth and age,
Raged till it wanted victims for its rage,—
Love, the last feeling that from life retires,
Blew the faint sparks of his unfuell'd fires.
In the cold sunshine of yon narrow dell
Affection lingers;—there two lovers dwell,
Greenland's whole family: nor long forlorn;
There comes a visitant,—a babe is born.
O'er his meek helplessness the parents smiled;
'Twas Hope;—for Hope is every mother's child:
Then seem'd they, in that world of solitude,
The Eve and Adam of a race renew'd.
Brief happiness! too perilous to last;
The moon hath wax'd and waned, and all is past:
Behold the end:—one morn, athwart the wall,
They mark'd the shadow of a reindeer fall,
Bounding in tameless freedom o'er the snow;
The father track'd him, and with fatal bow
Smote down the victim; but before his eyes,
A rabid she-bear pounced upon the prize;
A shaft into the spoiler's flank he sent,
She turn'd in wrath, and limb from limb had rent
The hunter,—but his dagger's plunging steel
With riven bosom made the monster reel;
Unvanquish'd, both to closer combat flew,
Assailants each, till each the other slew:
Mingling their blood from mutual wounds, they lay
Stretch'd on the carcass of their antler'd prey.

Meanwhile his partner waits, her heart at rest,
No burden but her infant on her breast.
With him she slumbers, or with him she plays,
And tells him all her dreams of future days,
Asks him a thousand questions, feigns replies,
And reads whate'er she wishes in his eyes.
—Red evening comes; no husband's shadow falls
Where fell the reindeer's o'er the latticed walls:
'Tis night; no footstep sounds towards her door:
The day returns,—but he returns no more.
In frenzy, forth she sallies; and with cries,
To which no voice except her own replies
In frightful echoes, starting all around,
Where human voice again shall never sound,
She seeks him, finds him not: some angel-guide
In mercy turns her from the corpse aside;
Perhaps his own freed spirit, lingering near,
Who waits to waft her to a happier sphere,
But leads her first, at evening, to their cot,
Where lies the little one, all day forgot;
Imparadised in sleep she finds him there,
Kisses his cheek, and breathes a mother's prayer.
Three days she languishes, nor can she shed
One tear, between the living and the dead:
When her lost spouse comes o'er the widow's thought,
The pangs of memory are to madness wrought;
But when her suckling's eager lips are felt,
Her heart would fain—but oh! it cannot—melt;
At length it breaks, while on her lap he lies,
With baby-wonder gazing in her eyes.
Poor orphan! mine is not a hand to trace
Thy little story, last of all thy race!
Not long thy sufferings; cold and colder grown,
The arms that clasp thee chill thy limbs to stone.
—'Tis done:—from Greenland's coast, the latest sigh
Bore infant innocence beyond the sky.

100

THE PELICAN ISLAND:

A POEM, IN NINE CANTOS.

101

CANTO FIRST.

Methought I lived through ages, and beheld
Their generations pass so swiftly by me,
That years were moments in their flight, and hours
The scenes of crowded centuries reveal'd;
While Time, Life, Death, the world's great actors, wrought
New and amazing changes:—these I sing.
Sky, sun, and sea, were all the universe;—
The sky, one blue interminable arch,
Without a breeze, a wing, a cloud: the sun
Sole in the firmament, but in the deep
Redoubled; where the circle of the sea,
Invisible with calmness, seem'd to lie
Within the hollow of a lower heaven.
I was a Spirit in the midst of these,
All eye, ear, thought; existence was enjoyment;
Light was an element of life, and air
The clothing of my incorporeal form,—
A form impalpable to mortal touch,
And volatile as fragrance from the flower,
Or music in the woodlands. What the soul
Can make itself at pleasure, that I was;
A child in feeling and imagination,
Learning new lessons still, as Nature wrought
Her wonders in my presence. All I saw
(Like Adam when he walk'd in Paradise)
I knew and named by secret intuition.
Actor, spectator, sufferer, each in turn,
I ranged, explored, reflected. Now I sail'd,
And now I soar'd; anon expanding, seem'd
Diffused into immensity, yet bound
Within a space too narrow for desire;
The mind, the mind, perpetual themes must task,
Perpetual power impel, and hope allure.
I and the silent sun were here alone,
But not companions; high and bright he held
His course; I gazed with admiration on him,—
There all communion ended; and I sigh'd,
In loneliness unutterable sigh'd,
To feel myself a wanderer without aim,
An exile amidst splendid desolation,
A prisoner with infinity surrounded.
The sun descended, dipp'd, and disappear'd;
Then sky and sea were all the universe,
And I the only being in existence!
So thought I, and the thought, like ice and fire,
Went freezing, burning, withering, thrilling through me;
Annihilation then had been deliverance,
While that eternity of solitude
Lay on my heart, hard struggling to break free,
As from a dream when mountains press the sleeper.
Darkness, meanwhile, disguised in twilight, crept
O'er air and ocean; drearier gloom involved
My fainting senses, till a sudden ray
Of pensile lustre sparkled from the west;
I flew to meet it, but drew never nearer,
While, vanishing and re-appearing oft,
At length it trembled out into a star.
My soul revived, and could I then have wept
(Methought I did), with tears of fond delight,
How had I hail'd the gentle apparition,
As second life to me; so sweetly welcome

102

The faintest semblance of society,
Though but a point to rest the eye upon,
To him who hath been utterly bereaved!
—Star after star, from some unseen abyss,
Came through the sky, like thoughts into the mind,
We know not whence; till all the firmament
Was throng'd with constellations, and the sea
Strown with their images. Amidst a sphere
Of twinkling lights, like living eyes, that look'd
At once on me from every side, I stood
(Motion and rest with me were mere volition),
Myself perhaps a star among the rest!
But here again I found no fellowship;
Sight could not reach, nor keenest thought conceive
Their nature or their offices. To me
They were but what they seem'd, and yet I felt
They must be more; the mind hath no horizon,
It looks beyond the eye, and seeks for mind
In all it sees, or all it sees o'erruling.
Low in the east, ere long, the morning dawn
Shot upward, onward, and around the pole,
With arrowy glimpses traversing the shade.
Night's train, as they had kindled one by one,
Now one by one withdrew, reversing order,
Where those that came the latest, earliest went:
Day rose triumphant, and again to me
Sky, sun, and sea were all the universe;
But ah! the glory had departed, and I long'd
For some untried vicissitude:—it came.
A breeze sprang up, and with careering wing
Play'd like an unseen being on the water.
Slowly from slumber 'woke the unwilling main,
Curling and murmuring, till the infant waves
Leap'd on his lap, and laugh'd in air and sunshine.
Then all was bright and beautiful emotion,
And sweet accordance of susurrant sounds.
I felt the gay delirum of the scene;
I felt the breeze and billow chase each other,
Like bounding pulses in my human veins:
For, though impassive to the elements,
The form I wore was exquisitely tuned
To Nature's sympathies; joy, fear, hope, sorrow,
(As though I yet were in the body,) moved,
Elated, shook, or tranquillised my soul.

Thus pass'd the day: night follow'd, deck'd with stars
Innumerable, and the pale new moon,
Beneath her feet, a slight inverted crescent,
Soon disappearing.

Time flew on, and brought
Alternate morn and eve. The sun, the stars,
The moon through all her phases, waxing, waning,
The planets seeking rest, and finding none,
—These were the only objects in mine eye,
The constant burden of my thoughts, perplex'd
With vain conjectures why they were created.

Once, at high noon, amidst a sultry calm,
Looking around for comfort, I descried,
Far on the green horizon's utmost verge,
A wreath of cloud; to me a glad discovery,
For each new image sprang a new idea,
The germ of thoughts to come, that could not die.
The little vapour rapidly expanded,
Lowering and thickening till it hid the sun,
And threw a starless night upon the sea.
Eagerly, tremblingly, I watch'd the end.
Faint gleam'd the lightning, follow'd by no peal;
Dreary and hollow moans foretold a gale;
Nor long the issue tarried: then the wind,
Unprison'd, blew its trumpet loud and shrill;
Out flash'd the lightnings gloriously; the rain
Came down like music, and the full-toned thunder
Roll'd in grand harmony throughout high heaven;
Till ocean, breaking from his black supineness,
Drown'd in his own stupendous uproar all
The voices of the storm beside: meanwhile
A war of mountains raged upon his surface;
Mountains each other swallowing, and again
New Alps and Andes, from unfathom'd valleys
Upstarting, join'd the battle; like those sons
Of earth,—Giants, rebounding as new-born
From every fall on their unwearied mother.
I glow'd with all the rapture of the strife:
Beneath, was one wild whirl of foaming surges;
Above, the array of lightnings, like the swords
Of cherubim, wide-brandish'd to repel
Aggression from heaven's gates; their flaming strokes
Quench'd momentarily in the vast abyss.
The voice of Him who walks upon the wind,
And sets his throne upon the floods, rebuked
The headlong tempest in its mid-career,
And turn'd its horrors to magnificence,
The evening sun broke through the embattled clouds,
And threw round sky and sea, as by enchantment,

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A radiant girdle, binding them to peace,
In the full rainbow's harmony of beams;
No brilliant fragment, but one sevenfold circle,
That spann'd the horizon, meted out the heavens,
And underarch'd the ocean. 'Twas a scene
That left itself for ever on my mind.
Night, silent, cool, transparent, crown'd the day;
The sky receded further into space,
The stars came lower down to meet the eye,
Till the whole hemisphere, alive with light,
Twinkled from east to west by one consent.
The constellations round the arctic pole,
That never set to us, here scarcely rose,
But, in their stead, Orion through the north
Pursued the Pleiads; Sirius, with his keen
Quick scintillations, in the zenith reign'd.
The south unveil'd its glories;—there the Wolf,
With eyes of lightning, watch'd the Centaur's spear;
Through the clear hyaline the Ship of Heaven
Came sailing from eternity; the Dove,
On silver pinions, wing'd her peaceful way:
There, at the footstool of Jehovah's throne,
The Altar, kindled from His presence, blazed;
There, too, all else excelling, meekly shone
The Cross, the symbol of redeeming love:
The Heavens declared the glory of the Lord,
The firmament display'd his handy-work.
With scarce inferior lustre gleam'd the sea,
Whose waves were spangled with phosphoric fire,
As though the lightnings there had spent their shafts,
And left the fragments glittering on the field.
Next morn, in mockery of a storm, the breeze
And waters skirmish'd; bubble-armies fought
Millions of battles on the crested surges,
And where they fell, all cover'd with their glory,
Traced, in white foam on the cerulean main,
Paths, like the milky-way among the stars.
Charm'd with the spectacle, yet deeply touch'd
With a forlorn and not untender feeling—
“Why,” said my thoughts within me, “why this waste
Of loveliness and grandeur unenjoy'd?
Is there no life throughout this fair existence?
Sky, sun, and sea; the moon, the stars, the clouds;
Wind, lightning, thunder,—are but ministers;
They know not what they are, nor what they do:
O for the beings for whom these were made!”
Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
Keel upward, from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is fill'd;
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark
Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appear'd this lonely Nautilus,
My fellow-being, like myself alive.
Entranced in contemplation vague yet sweet,
I watch'd its vagrant course and rippling wake,
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.
It closed, sunk, dwindled to a point, then nothing:
While the last bubble crown'd the dimpling eddy
Through which mine eye still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air,—
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,
On long light wings, that flung a diamond shower
Of dew-drops round its evanescent form,
Sprang into light, and instantly descended.
Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend,
Or mourn his quick departure,—on the surge,
A shoal of Dolphins, tumbling in wild glee,
Glow'd with such orient tints, they might have been
The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstasy o'er these I hung,
With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,
As though the conscious colours came and went
At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes,—
Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan
Look'd forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent
Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.
These were but preludes to the revelry
That reign'd at sunset: then the deep let loose
Its blithe adventurers to sport at large,
As kindly instinct taught them; buoyant shells,
On stormless voyages, in fleets or single,
Wherried their tiny mariners; aloof,

104

On wing-like fins, in bow-and-arrow figures,
The flying fishes darted to and fro;
While spouting Whales projected wat'ry columns,
That turn'd to arches at their height, and seem'd
The skeletons of crystal palaces
Built on the blue expanse, then perishing,
Frail as the element which they were made of:
Dolphins, in gambols, lent the lucid brine
Hues richer than the canopy of eve,
That overhung the scene with gorgeous clouds,
Decaying into gloom more beautiful
Than the sun's golden liveries which they lost:
Till light that hides, and darkness that reveals,
The stars,—exchanging guard, like sentinels
Of day and night,—transform'd the face of nature:
Above was wakefulness, silence around,
Beneath repose,—repose that reach'd even me.
Power, will, sensation, memory, fail'd in turn;
My very essence seem'd to pass away,
Like a thin cloud that melts across the moon,
Lost in the blue immensity of heaven.

CANTO SECOND.

Life's intermitting pulse again went on:
I woke amidst the beauty of a morn
That shone as bright within me as around.
The presence-chamber of the soul was full
Of flitting images and rapturous thoughts;
For eye and mind were open'd to explore
The secrets of the abyss erewhile conceal'd.
The floor of ocean, never trod by man,
Was visible to me as heaven's round roof,
Which man hath never touch'd; the multitude
Of living things in that new hemisphere
Gleam'd out of darkness, like the stars at midnight,
When moon nor clouds, with light or shade, obscure them.
For, as in hollows of the tide-worn reef,
Left at low water glistening in the sun,
Pellucid pools and rocks in miniature,
With their small fry of fishes, crusted shells,
Rich mosses, tree-like sea-weed, sparkling pebbles,
Enchant the eye, and tempt the eager hand
To violate the fairy paradise,
—So to my view the deep disclosed its wonders.

In the free element beneath me swam,
Flounder'd, and dived, in play, in chase, in battle,
Fishes of every colour, form, and kind,
(Strange forms, resplendent colours, kinds unnumber'd,)
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Hath never seen; from dread Leviathan,
To insect millions peopling every wave;
And nameless tribes, half-plant, half-animal,
Rooted and slumbering through a dream of life.
The livelier inmates to the surface sprang,
To taste the freshness of heaven's breath, and feel
That light is pleasant, and the sunbeam warm.
Most in the middle region sought their prey,
Safety, or pastime; solitary some,
And some in pairs affectionately join'd;
Others in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instinct through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
—Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.
While ravening Death of slaughter ne'er grew weary,
Life multiplied the immortal meal as fast.
War, reckless, universal war, prevail'd:
All were devourers, all in turn devour'd;
Yet every unit in the uncounted sum
Of victims had its share of bliss, its pang,
And but a pang, of dissolution; each
Was happy till its moment came, and then
Its first, last suffering, unforeseen, unfear'd,
Closed, with one struggle, pain and life for ever.
So He ordain'd, whose way is in the sea,
His path amidst great waters, and His steps
Unknown;—whose judgments are a mighty deep,
Where plummet of archangel's intellect
Could never yet find soundings, but from age
To age let down, drawn up, then thrown again,
With lengthen'd line and added weight, still fails;
And still the cry in Heaven is, “O the depth!”

Thus, while bewilder'd with delight I gazed
On life in every shape it here assumed,
Congenial feeling made me follow it,
And try to be whatever I beheld:
By mental transmigration thus I pass'd
Through many a body, and in each assay'd
New instincts, powers, enjoyments, death itself;
Till, weary with the fanciful pursuit,
I started from that idle reverie.
Then grew my heart more desolate than ever;

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Here had I found the beings which I sought,
—Beings for whom the universe was made,
Yet none of kindred with myself. In vain
I strove to waken sympathy in breasts
Cold as the element in which they moved,
And inaccessible to fellowship
With me, as sun and stars, as winds and vapours:
Sense had they, but no more; mind was not there.
They roam'd, they fed, they slept, they died, and left
Race after race to roam, feed, sleep, then die,
And leave their like through endless generations;
—Incessant change of actors, none of scene,
Through all that boundless theatre of strife!
Shrinking into myself again, I cried,
In bitter disappointment,—“Is this all?”

I sent a glance at random, from the cloud
In which I then lay floating through mid-heaven,
To ocean's innermost recess;—when lo!
Another seal of Nature's book was open'd,
Which held transported thought so deep entranced,
That Time, though borne through mightiest revolutions,
Seem'd, like the earth in motion, to stand still.
The works of ages grew beneath mine eye:
As rapid intellect calls up events,
Combines, compresses, moulds them, with such power,
That in a little page of memory
An empire's annals lie,—a nation's fortunes
Pass in review, as motes through sunbeams pass,
Glistening and vanishing in quick succession,
Yet each distinct as though there were but one;
—So, thrice a thousand years, with all their issues,
Hurried before me, through a gleam of time,
Between the clouds of two eternities,—
That whence they came, and that to which they tended.

Immeasurable continents beneath
The expanse of animated waters lay,
Not strown—as I have since discern'd the tracks
Of voyagers—with shipwrecks and their spoils,
The wealth of merchants, the artillery
Of war, the chains of captives, and the gems
That glow'd upon the brow of beauty; crowns
Of monarchs, swords of heroes, anchors lost,
That never had let go their hold in storms;
Helms, sunk in port, that steer'd adventurous barks
Round the wide world; bones of dead men, that made
A hidden Golgotha where they had fallen,
Unseen, unsepulchred, but not unwept
By lover, friend, relation, far away,
Long waiting their return to home and country,
And going down into their fathers' graves
With their gray hairs or youthful locks in sorrow,
To meet no more till seas give up their dead:
Some, too—ay, thousands—whom none living mourn'd,
None miss'd—waifs in the universe, the last
Lorn links of kindred chains for ever sunder'd.

Not such the spectacle I now survey'd:
No broken hearts lay here; no aching heads,
For whose vast schemes the world was once too small,
And life too short, in Death's dark lap found rest
Beneath the unresting wave;—but skeletons
Of whales and krakens here and there were scatter'd,
The prey when dead of tribes, their prey when living;
And,—seen by glimpses, but awakening thoughts
Too sad for utterance,—relics huge and strange
Of the whole world that perish'd by the flood,
Kept under chains of darkness till the judgment.
—Save these, lay ocean's bed, as from the hand
Of its Creator, hollow'd and prepared
For His unfathomable counsels there,
To work slow miracles of power divine,
From century to century,—nor less
Incomprehensible than heaven and earth
Form'd in six days by His commanding word.
With God a thousand years are as one day;
He in one day can sum a thousand years:
All acts with Him are equal; for no more
It costs Omnipotence to build a world,
And set a sun amidst the firmament,
Than mould a dew-drop, and light up its gem.

This was the landscape stretch'd beneath the flood:
—Rocks branching out like chains of Alpine mountains;
Gulfs intervening, sandy wildernesses,
Forests of growth enormous, caverns, shoals;
Fountains up-springing, hot and cold, and fresh
And bitter, as on land; volcanic fires
Fiercely out-flashing from earth's central heart,
Nor soon extinguish'd by the rush of waters
Down the rent crater to the unknown abyss
Of Nature's laboratory, where she hides
Her deeds from every eye except her Maker's:

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—Such were the scenes which ocean open'd to me;
Mysterious regions, the recluse abode
Of unapproachable inhabitants,
That dwelt in everlasting darkness there.
Unheard by them the roaring of the wind,
The elastic motion of the wave unfelt;
Still-life was theirs, well pleasing to themselves,
Nor yet unuseful, as my song shall show.

Here, on a stony eminence, that stood,
Girt with inferior ridges, at the point
Where light and darkness meet in spectral gloom,
Midway between the height and depth of ocean,
I mark'd a whirlpool in perpetual play,
As though the mountain were itself alive,
And catching prey on every side, with feelers
Countless as sunbeams, slight as gossamer:
Ere long transfigured, each fine film became
An independent creature, self-employ'd,
Yet but an agent in one common work,
The sum of all their individual labours.
Shapeless they seem'd, but endless shapes assumed;
Elongated like worms, they writhed and shrunk
Their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions;
Compress'd like wedges, radiated like stars,
Branching like sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings;
Subtle and variable as flickering flames,
Sight could not trace their evanescent changes,
Nor comprehend their motions, till minute
And curious observations caught the clue
To this live labyrinth,—where every one,
By instinct taught, perform'd its little task;
—To build its dwelling and its sepulchre,
From its own essence exquisitely modell'd;
There breed, and die, and leave a progeny,
Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers,
To frame new cells and tombs; then breed and die
As all their ancestors had done,—and rest,
Hermetically seal'd, each in its shrine,
A statue in this temple of oblivion!
Millions of millions thus, from age to age,
With simplest skill, and toil unweariable,
No moment and no movement unimproved,
Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread,
To swell the heightening, brightening gradual mound,
By marvellous structure climbing tow'rds the day.
Each wrought alone, yet all together wrought,
Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments,
By which a hand invisible was rearing
A new creation in the secret deep.
Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them;
Hence what Omnipotence alone could do,
Worms did. I saw the living pile ascend,
The mausoleum of its architects,
Still dying upwards as their labours closed:
Slime the material, but the slime was turn'd
To adamant by their petrific touch;
Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives,
Their masonry imperishable. All
Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest,
By nice economy of Providence
Were overruled to carry on the process
Which out of water brought forth solid rock.

Atom by atom thus the burden grew,
Even like an infant in the womb, till Time
Deliver'd ocean of that monstrous birth,
—A coral island, stretching east and west,
In God's own language to its parent saying,
“Thus far, nor farther, shalt thou go; and here
Shall thy proud waves be stay'd:”—A point at first,
It peer'd above those waves; a point so small,
I just perceived it, fix'd where all was floating;
And when a bubble cross'd it, the blue film
Expanded, like a sky above the speck;
That speck became a hand-breadth; day and night
It spread, accumulated, and ere long
Presented to my view a dazzling plain,
White as the moon amid the sapphire sea;
Bare at low water, and as still as death;
But when the tide came gurgling o'er the surface,
'Twas like a resurrection of the dead:
From graves innumerable, punctures fine
In the close coral, capillary swarms
Of reptiles, horrent as Medusa's snakes,
Cover'd the bald-pate reef; then all was life,
And indefatigable industry;
The artisans were twisting to and fro,
In idle-seeming convolutions; yet
They never vanish'd with the ebbing surge,
Till pellicle on pellicle, and layer
On layer, was added to the growing mass.
Ere long the reef o'ertopt the spring-flood's height,
And mock'd the billows when they leap'd upon it,
Unable to maintain their slippery hold,
And falling down in foam-wreaths round its verge.
Steep were the flanks, with precipices sharp,
Descending to their base in ocean-gloom.
Chasms few, and narrow, and irregular,

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Form'd harbours safe at once and perilous,—
Safe for defence, but perilous to enter.
A sea-lake shone amidst the fossil isle,
Reflecting in a ring its cliffs and caverns,
With heaven itself seen like a lake below.

Compared with this amazing edifice,
Raised by the weakest creatures in existence,
What are the works of intellectual man?
Towers, temples, palaces, and sepulchres;
Ideal images in sculptured forms,
Thoughts hewn in columns, or in domes expanded,
Fancies through every maze of beauty shown;
Pride, gratitude, affection, turn'd to marble
In honour of the living or the dead;
What are they?—fine-wrought miniatures of art,
Too exquisite to bear the weight of dew,
Which every morn lets fall in pearls upon them,
Till all their pomp sinks down in mouldering relics,
Yet in their ruin lovelier than their prime!
—Dust in the balance, atoms in the gale,
Compared with these achievements in the deep,
Were all the monuments of olden time,
In days when there were giants on the earth:
—Babel's stupendous folly, though it aim'd
To scale heaven's battlements, was but a toy,
The plaything of the world in infancy:—
The ramparts, towers, and gates of Babylon,
Built for eternity,—though, where they stood,
Ruin itself stands still for lack of work,
And Desolation keeps unbroken sabbath;—
Great Babylon, in its full moon of empire,
Even when its “head of gold” was smitten off,
And from a monarch changed into a brute;—
Great Babylon was like a wreath of sand,
Left by one tide, and cancell'd by the next:—
Egypt's dread wonders, still defying Time,
Where cities have been crumbled into sand,
Scatter'd by winds beyond the Libyan desert,
Or melted down into the mud of Nile,
And cast in tillage o'er the corn-sown fields,
Where Memphis flourish'd, and the Pharaohs reign'd;—
Egypt's gray piles of hieroglyphic grandeur,
That have survived the language which they speak,
Preserving its dead emblems to the eye,
Yet hiding from the mind what these reveal;
—Her pyramids would be mere pinnacles,
Her giant statues, wrought from rocks of granite,
But puny ornaments, for such a pile
As this stupendous mound of catacombs,
Fill'd with dry mummies of the builder-worms.

Thus far, with undiverted thought, and eye
Intensely fix'd on ocean's concave mirror,
I watch'd the process to its finishing stroke:
Then starting suddenly, as from a trance,
Once more to look upon the blessed sun,
And breathe the gladdening influence of the wind,
Darkness fell on me; giddily my brain
Whirl'd like a torch of fire that seems a circle,
And soon to me the universe was nothing.

CANTO THIRD.

Nine times the age of man that coral reef
Had bleach'd beneath the torrid noon, and borne
The thunder of a thousand hurricanes,
Raised by the jealous ocean to repel
That strange encroachment on his old domain.
His rage was impotent; his wrath fulfill'd
The counsels of eternal Providence,
And 'stablish'd what he strove to overturn:
For every tempest threw fresh wrecks upon it;
Sand from the shoals, exuviæ from the deep,
Fragments of shells, dead sloughs, sea-monsters' bones,
Whales stranded in the shallows, hideous weeds
Hurl'd out of darkness by the uprooting surges;
These, with unutterable relics more,
Heap'd the rough surface, till the various mass,
By Nature's chemistry combined and purged,
Had buried the bare rock in crumbling mould,
Not unproductive, but from time to time
Impregnated with seeds of plants, and rife
With embryo animals, or torpid forms
Of reptiles, shrouded in the clefts of trees
From distant lands, with branches, foliage, fruit,
Pluck'd up and wafted hither by the flood.
Death's spoils, and life's hid treasures, thus enrich'd
And colonised the soil; no particle
Of meanest substance but in course was turn'd
To solid use or noble ornament.
All seasons were propitious; every wind,
From the hot Siroc to the wet Monsoon,
Temper'd the crude materials; while heaven's dew
Fell on the sterile wilderness as sweetly
As though it were a garden of the Lord:
Nor fell in vain; each drop had its commission,
And did its duty, known to Him who sent it.

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Such time had pass'd, such changes had transfigured
The aspect of that solitary isle,
When I again, in spirit as before,
Assumed mute watch above it. Slender blades
Of grass were shooting through the dark brown earth,
Like rays of light, transparent in the sun,
Or after showers with liquid gems illumined;
Fountains through filtering sluices sallied forth,
And led fertility where'er they turn'd;
Green herbage graced their banks, resplendent flowers
Unlock'd their treasures, and let flow their fragrance.
Then insect legions, prank'd with gaudiest hues,
Pearl, gold, and purple, swarm'd into existence;
Minute and marvellous creations these!
Infinite multitudes on every leaf,
In every drop, by me discern'd at pleasure,
Were yet too fine for unenlighten'd eye,
—Like stars, whose beams have never reach'd our world,
Though science meets them midway in the heaven
With prying optics, weighs them in her scale,
Measures their orbs, and calculates their courses:—
Some barely visible, some proudly shone,
Like living jewels; some grotesque, uncouth,
And hideous,—giants of a race of pigmies;
These burrow'd in the ground, and fed on garbage,
Those lived deliciously on honey-dews,
And dwelt in palaces of blossom'd bells;
Millions on millions, wing'd, and plumed in front,
And arm'd with stings for vengeance or assault,
Fill'd the dim atmosphere with hum and hurry;
Children of light, and air, and fire they seem'd,
Their lives all ecstasy and quick cross motion.
Thus throve this embryo universe, where all
That was to be was unbegun, or now
Beginning; every day, hour, instant, brought
Its novelty, though how or whence I knew not;
Less than omniscience could not comprehend
The causes of effects that seem'd spontaneous,
And sprang in infinite succession, link'd
With kindred issues infinite as they,
For which Almighty skill had laid the train
Even in the elements of chaos,—whence
The unravelling clue not for a moment lost
Hold of the silent hand that drew it out.
Thus He who makes and peoples worlds still works
In secrecy, behind a veil of light;
Yet, through that hiding of his power, such glimpses
Of glory break as strike presumption blind,
But humble and exalt the humbled soul,
Whose faith the things invisible discerns,
And God informing, guiding, ruling all:—
He speaks, 'tis done; commands, and it stands fast.
He calls an island from the deep,—it comes;
Ordains it culture,—soil and seed are there;
Appoints inhabitants,—from climes unknown,
By undiscoverable paths, they flock
Thither; like passage-birds to us in spring;
They were not yesterday,—and, lo! to-day
They are,—but what keen eye beheld them coming?

Here was the infancy of life, the age
Of gold in that green isle, itself new-born,
And all upon it in the prime of being,
Love, hope, and promise; 'twas in miniature
A world unsoil'd by sin; a Paradise
Where Death had not yet enter'd; Bliss had newly
Alighted, and shut close his rainbow wings,
To rest at ease, nor dread intruding ill.
Plants of superior growth now sprang apace,
With moon-like blossoms crown'd, or starry glories;
Light flexile shrubs among the greenwood play'd
Fantastic freaks,—they crept, they climb'd, they budded,
And hung their flowers and berries in the sun;
As the breeze taught, they danced, they sung, they twined
Their sprays in bowers, or spread the ground with network.
Through the slow lapse of undivided time,
Silently rising from their buried germs,
Trees lifted to the skies their stately heads,
Tufted with verdure, like depending plumage,
O'er stems unknotted, waving to the wind:
Of these, in graceful form and simple beauty,
The fruitful cocoa and the fragrant palm
Excell'd the wilding daughters of the wood,
That stretch'd unwieldy their enormous arms,
Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk,
Like the old eagle, feather'd to the heel;
While every fibre, from the lowest root
To the last leaf upon the topmost twig,
Was held by common sympathy, diffusing
Through all the complex frame unconscious life.
Such was the locust with his hydra boughs,
A hundred heads on one stupendous trunk;
And such the mangrove, which, at full-moon flood,

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Appear'd itself a wood upon the waters,—
But when the tide left bare its upright roots,
A wood on piles suspended in the air;
Such too the Indian fig, that built itself
Into a sylvan temple arch'd aloof
With airy aisles and living colonnades,
Where nations might have worshipp'd God in peace.
From year to year their fruits ungather'd fell;
Not lost, but, quickening where they lay, they struck
Root downward, and brake forth on every hand,
Till the strong saplings, rank and file, stood up,
A mighty army, which o'erran the isle,
And changed the wilderness into a forest.

All this appear'd accomplish'd in the space
Between the morning and the evening star:
So, in his third day's work, Jehovah spake,
And Earth, an infant, naked as she came
Out of the womb of chaos, straight put on
Her beautiful attire, and deck'd her robe
Of verdure with ten thousand glorious flowers,
Exhaling incense; crown'd her mountain-heads
With cedars, train'd her vines around their girdles,
And pour'd spontaneous harvests at their feet.

Nor were those woods without inhabitants
Besides the ephemera of earth and air:
—Where glid the sunbeams through the latticed boughs,
And fell like dew-drops on the spangled ground,
To light the diamond-beetle on his way;
—Where cheerful openings let the sky look down
Into the very heart of solitude,
On little garden-plots of social flowers,
That crowded from the shades to peep at daylight;
—Or where impermeable foliage made
Midnight at noon, and chill damp horror reign'd
O'er dead fall'n leaves and slimy funguses;
—Reptiles were quicken'd into various birth.
Loathsome, unsightly, swoln to obscene bulk,
Lurk'd the dark toad beneath the infected turf;
The slow-worm crawl'd, the light chameleon climb'd,
And changed his colour as his place he changed;
The nimble lizard ran from bough to bough,
Glancing through light, in shadow disappearing;
The scorpion, many-eyed, with sting of fire,
Bred there,—the legion-fiend of creeping things:
Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay,
Wreath'd like a coronet of gold and jewels,
Fit for a tyrant's brow; anon he flew
Straight as an arrow shot from his own rings,
And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went
Down his strain'd throat, that open sepulchre.

Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon:
The hippopotamus, amidst the flood,
Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer;
But on the bank, ill-balanced and infirm,
He grazed the herbage, with huge head declined,
Or lean'd to rest against some ancient tree:
The crocodile, the dragon of the waters,
In iron panoply, fell as the plague,
And merciless as famine, cranch'd his prey,
While from his jaws, with dreadful fangs all serried,
The life-blood dyed the waves with deadly streams:
The seal and the sea-lion, from the gulf,
Came forth, and, couching with their little ones,
Slept on the shelving rocks that girt the shore,
Securing prompt retreat from sudden danger:
The pregnant turtle, stealing out at eve,
With anxious eye, and trembling heart, explored
The loneliest coves, and in the loose warm sand
Deposited her eggs, which the sun hatch'd;—
Hence the young brood, that never knew a parent,
Unburrow'd and by instinct sought the sea;
Nature herself, with her own gentle hand,
Dropping them one by one into the flood,
And laughing to behold their antic joy
When launch'd in their maternal element.

The vision of that brooding world went on:
Millions of beings, yet more admirable
Than all that went before them, now appear'd,
Flocking from every point of heaven, and filling
Eye, ear, and mind with objects, sounds, emotions
Akin to livelier sympathy and love
Than reptiles, fishes, insects, could inspire:
—Birds, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
In plumage, delicate and beautiful,
Thick without burden, close as fishes' scales,
Or loose as full-blown poppies to the breeze;
With wings that might have had a soul within them,
They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment;
—Birds, small and great, of endless shapes and colours,
Here flew and perch'd, there swam and dived at pleasure;
Watchful and agile, uttering voices wild
And harsh, yet in accordance with the waves

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Upon the beach, the winds in caverns moaning,
Or winds and waves abroad upon the water.
Some sought their food among the finny shoals,
Swift darting from the clouds, emerging soon
With slender captives glittering in their beaks;
These in recesses of steep crags constructed
Their eyries inaccessible, and train'd
Their hardy broods to forage in all weathers:
Others, more gorgeously apparell'd, dwelt
Among the woods, on Nature's dainties feeding,
Herbs, seeds, and roots; or, ever on the wing,
Pursuing insects through the boundless air:
In hollow trees or thickets these conceal'd
Their exquisitely woven nests; where lay
Their callow offspring, quiet as the down
On their own breasts, till from her search the dam
With laden bill return'd, and shared the meal
Among her clamorous suppliants, all agape;
Then, cowering o'er them with expanded wings,
She felt how sweet it is to be a mother.
Of these, a few, with melody untaught,
Turn'd all the air to music within hearing,
Themselves unseen; while bolder quiristers
On loftiest branches strain'd their clarion-pipes,
And made the forest echo to their screams
Discordant,—yet there was no discord there,
But temper'd harmony; all tones combining,
In the rich confluence of ten thousand tongues,
To tell of joy and to inspire it. Who
Could hear such concert, and not join in chorus?
Not I:—sometimes entranced, I seem'd to float
Upon a buoyant sea of sounds; again
With curious ear I tried to disentangle
The maze of voices, and with eye as nice
To single out each minstrel, and pursue
His little song through all its labyrinth,
Till my soul enter'd into him, and felt
Every vibration of his thrilling throat,
Pulse of his heart, and flutter of his pinions.
Often, as one among the multitude,
I sang from very fulness of delight;
Now like a winged fisher of the sea,
Now a recluse among the woods,—enjoying
The bliss of all at once, or each in turn.

In storm and calm, through every change of season,
Long flourish'd thus that era of our isle.
It could not last for ever: mark the end.

A cloud arose amid the tranquil heaven,
Like a man's hand, but held a hurricane
Within its grasp. Compress'd into a point,
The tempest struggled to break loose. No breath
Was stirring, yet the billows roll'd aloof,
And the air moan'd portentously; ere long
The sky was hidden, darkness to be felt
Confounded all things; land and water vanish'd,
And there was silence through the universe,—
Silence, that made my soul as desolate
As the blind solitude around. Methought
That I had pass'd the bitterness of death
Without the agony,—had, unaware,
Enter'd the unseen world, and, in the gap
Between the life that is and that to come,
Awaited judgment. Fear and trembling seized
All that was mortal or immortal in me:
A moment, and the gates of Paradise
Might open to receive, or Hell be moved
To meet me. Strength and spirit fail'd;
Eternity enclosed me, and I knew not,
Knew not, even then, my destiny. To doubt
Was to despair;—I doubted and despair'd.
Then horrible delirium whirl'd me down
To ocean's nethermost recess; the waves,
Disparting freely, let me fall, and fall,
Lower and lower, passive as a stone,
Yet rack'd with miserable pangs, that gave
The sense of vain but violent resistance:
And still the depths grew deeper; still the ground
Receded from my feet as I approach'd it.
O how I long'd to light on rocks, that sunk
Like quicksands ere I touch'd them; or to hide
In caverns ever open to ingulf me,
But, like the horizon's limit, never nearer!

Meanwhile, the irrepressible tornado
Burst and involved the elements in chaos;
Wind, rain, and lightning, in one vast explosion,
Rush'd from the firmament upon the deep:
Heaven's adamantine arch seem'd rent asunder,
And following in a cataract of ruins
My swift descent through bottomless abysses,
Where ocean's bed had been absorb'd in nothing.
I know no farther. When again I saw
The sun, the sea, the island, all was calm,
And all was desolation: not a tree,
Of thousands flourishing erewhile so fair,
But now was split, uprooted, snapt in twain,
Or hurl'd with all its honours to the dust.

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Heaps upon heaps, the forest giants lay,
Even like the slain in battle, fall'n to rise
No more, till heaven, and earth, and sea, with all
Therein, shall perish, as to me they seem'd
To perish in that ruthless hurricane.

CANTO FOURTH.

Nature and Time were twins. Companions still,
Their unretarded, unreturning flight
They hold together. Time, with one sole aim,
Looks ever onward, like the moon through space,
With beaming forehead, dark and bald behind,
Nor ever lost a moment in his course.
Nature looks all around her, like the sun,
And keeps her works, like his dependent worlds,
In constant motion. She hath never miss'd
One step in her victorious march of change,
For chance she knows not; He who made her, gave
His daughter power o'er all except Himself.
—Power in whate'er she does to do his will,
Behold the true, the royal law of Nature!
Hence failures, hinderances, and devastations
Are turn'd to trophies of exhaustless skill,
That out of ruin brings forth strength and beauty,
Yea, life and immortality from death.

I gazed in consternation on the wreck
Of that fair island, strown with prostrate trees,
The soil plough'd up with horrid inundations,
The surface black with sea-weed, not a glimpse
Of verdure peeping; stems, boughs, foliage, lay
Rent, broken, clotted, perishing in slime.
“How are the mighty fallen!” I exclaim'd;
“Surely the feller hath come up among ye,
And with a stroke invisible hewn down
The growth of centuries in one dark hour!
Is this the end of all perfection? This
The abortive issue of a new creation,
Erewhile so fruitful in abounding joys,
And hopes fulfilling more than all they promised?
Ages to come can but repair this ravage;
The past is lost for ever. Reckless Time
Stays not; astonied Nature stands aghast,
And wrings her hands in silent agony,
Amidst the annihilation of her works!”

Thus raved I; but I wrong'd thee, glorious Nature!
With whom adversity is but transition.
Thou never didst despair, wert never foil'd,
Nor weary with exhaustion, since the day
When, at the word “Let there be light,” light sprang,
And show'd thee rising from primeval darkness,
That fell back like a veil from thy young form,
And Chaos fled before the apparition.

While yet mine eye was mourning o'er the scene,
Nature and Time were working miracles:
The isle was renovated; grass and flowers
Crept quietly around the fallen trees;
A deeper soil embedded them, and o'er
The common sepulchre of all their race
Threw a rich covering of embroider'd turf,
Lovely to look on as the tranquil main,
When, in his noonward track, the unclouded sun
Tints the green waves with every hue of heaven,
More exquisitely brilliant and aërial
Than morn or evening's gaudier pageantry.
Amidst that burial of the mighty dead,
There was a resurrection from the dust
Of lowly plants, impatient for the light,
Long interrupted by o'ershadowing woods,
While in the womb of earth their embryos tarried,
Unfructifying, yet imperishable.
Huge remnants of the forest stood apart,
Like Tadmor's pillars in the wilderness
Startling the traveller 'midst his thoughts of home;
—Bare trunks of broken trees, that gave their heads
To the wind's axe, but would not yield their roots
To the uptearing violence of the floods.
From these a slender race of scions sprang,
Which with their filial arms embraced and shelter'd
The monumental relics of their sires;
But, limited in number, scatter'd wide,
And slow of growth, they overran no more
The Sun's dominions in that open isle.

Meanwhile the sea-fowl, that survived the storm,
Whose rage had fleck'd the waves with shatter'd plumes
And weltering carcases, the prey of sharks,
Came from their fastnesses among the rocks,
And multiplied like clouds when rains are brooding,
Or flowers when clear warm sunshine follows rain.
The inland birds had perish'd, nor again,
By airy voyages from shores unknown,
Was silence broken on the unwooded plains:

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Another race of wing'd inhabitants
Ere long possess'd and peopled all the soil.

The sun had sunk where sky and ocean meet,
And each might seem the other: sky below,
With richest garniture of clouds inlaid;
Ocean above, with isles and continents
Illumined from a source no longer seen.
Far in the east, through heaven's intenser blue,
Two brilliant sparks, like sudden stars, appear'd:
Not stars, indeed, but birds of mighty wing,
Retorted neck, and javelin-pointed bill,
That made the air sigh as they cut it through.
They gain'd upon the eye, and, as they came,
Enlarged, grew brighter, and display'd their forms,
Amidst the golden evening; pearly white,
But ruby-tinctured. On the loftiest cliff
They settled, hovering ere they touch'd the ground,
And uttering, in a language of their own,
Yet such as every ear might understand,
And every bosom answer, notes of joy,
And gratulation for that resting-place.
Stately and beautiful they stood, and clapp'd
Their van-broad pinions, streak'd their ruffled plumes,
And ever and anon broke off to gaze,
With yearning pleasure, told in gentle murmurs,
On that strange land their destined home and country.
Night round them threw her brown transparent gloom,
Through which their lonely images yet shone
Like things unearthly, while they bow'd their heads
On their full bosoms, and reposed till morn.
I knew the Pelicans, and cried—“All hail!
Ye future dwellers in the wilderness!”

At early dawn I mark'd them in the sky,
Catching the morning colours on their plumes;
Not in voluptuous pastime revelling there,
Among the rosy clouds, while orient heaven
Flamed like the opening gates of Paradise,
Whence issued forth the Angel of the sun,
And gladden'd Nature with returning day:
—Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd
On ocean's unroll'd volume, from an height
That brought immensity within their scope;
Yet with such power of vision look'd they down,
As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding
O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral.
On indefatigable wing upheld,
Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them:
They were as pictures painted on the sky;
Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,
Like meteors, changed from stars to gleams of lightning,
And struck upon the deep, where in wild play
Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm.
With terrible voracity, they plunged
Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat
A tempest on the surges with their wings,
Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them.
Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
Alive and wriggling in the elastic net
Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;
Till, swoln with captures, the unwieldy burden
Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land
These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.
There on the cragged cliffs they perch'd at ease,
Gorging their hapless victims one by one;
Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,
Till evening roused them to the chase again.

Harsh seems the ordinance, that life by life
Should be sustain'd: and yet, when all must die,
And be like water spilt upon the ground,
Which none can gather up, the speediest fate,
Though violent and terrible, is best.
O! with what horrors would creation groan,—
What agonies would ever be before us,
Famine and pestilence, disease, despair,
Anguish and pain in every hideous shape,—
Had all to wait the slow decay of nature!
Life were a martyrdom of sympathy;
Death, lingering, raging, writhing, shrieking torture;
The grave would be abolish'd; this gay world
A valley of dry bones, a Golgotha,
In which the living stumbled o'er the dead,
Till they could fall no more, and blind perdition
Swept frail mortality away for ever.
'Twas wisdom, mercy, goodness, that ordain'd
Life in such infinite profusion,—Death
So sure, so prompt, so multiform to those,
That never sinn'd, that know not guilt, that fear
No wrath to come, and have no heaven to lose.

Love found that lonely couple on their isle,
And soon surrounded them with blithe companions.
The noble birds, with skill spontaneous, framed
A nest of reeds among the giant-grass,

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That waved in lights and shadows o'er the soil.
There, in sweet thraldom, yet unweening why,
The patient dam, who ne'er till now had known
Parental instinct, brooded o'er her eggs,
Long ere she found the curious secret out
That life was hatching in their brittle shells.
Then, from a wild rapacious bird of prey,
Tamed by the kindly process, she became
That gentlest of all living things—a mother;
Gentlest while yearning o'er her naked young,
Fiercest when stirr'd by anger to defend them.
Her mate himself the softening power confess'd,
Forgot his sloth, restrain'd his appetite,
And ranged the sky and fish'd the stream for her;
Or when o'erwearied nature forced her off
To shake her torpid feathers in the breeze,
And bathe her bosom in the cooling flood,
He took her place, and felt through every nerve,
While the plump nestlings throbb'd against his heart,
The tenderness that makes the vulture mild;
Yea, half unwillingly his post resign'd,
When, home-sick with the absence of an hour,
She hurried back, and drove him from her seat
With pecking bill and cry of fond distress,
Answer'd by him with murmurs of delight,
Whose gutturals harsh to her were love's own music.
Then, settling down, like foam upon the wave,
White, flickering, effervescent, soon subsiding,
Her ruffled pinions smoothly she composed;
And, while beneath the comfort of her wings,
Her crowded progeny quite fill'd the nest:
The halcyon sleeps not sounder, when the wind
Is breathless, and the sea without a curl,
—Nor dreams the halcyon of serener days,
Or nights more beautiful with silent stars,
Than, in that hour, the mother Pelican,
When the warm tumults of affection sunk
Into calm sleep, and dreams of what they were,
Dreams more delicious than reality.
—He sentinel beside her stood, and watch'd
With jealous eye the raven in the clouds,
And the rank sea-mews wheeling round the cliffs.
Woe to the reptile then that ventured nigh;
The snap of his tremendous bill was like
Death's scythe, down-cutting every thing it struck.
The heedless lizard, in his gambols, peep'd
Upon the guarded nest, from out the flowers,
But paid the instant forfeit of his life;
Nor could the serpent's subtilty elude
Capture, when gliding by nor in defence
Might his malignant fangs and venom save him.

Erelong the thriving brood outgrew their cradle,
Ran through the grass, and dabbled in the pools;
No sooner denizens of earth, than made
Free both of air and water: day by day,
New lessons, exercises, and amusements
Employ'd the old to teach, the young to learn.
Now floating on the blue lagoon behold them;
The Sire and Dam in swan-like beauty steering,
Their Cygnets following through the foamy wake,
Picking the leaves of plants, pursuing insects,
Or catching at the bubbles as they broke:
Till on some minor fry, in reedy shallows,
With flapping pinions and unsparing beaks,
The well-taught scholars plied their double art,
To fish in troubled waters, and secure
The petty captives in their maiden pouches;
Then hurry with their banquet to the shore,
With feet, wings, breast, half-swimming and half-flying.
But when their pens grew strong to fight the storm,
And buffet with the breakers on the reef,
The Parents put them to severer proof:
On beetling rocks the little ones were marshall'd:
There, by endearments, stripes, example, urged
To try the void convexity of heaven,
And plough the ocean's horizontal field.
Timorous at first, they flutter'd round the verge,
Balanced and furl'd their hesitating wings,
Then put them forth again with steadier aim;
Now, gaining courage as they felt the wind
Dilate their feathers, fill their airy frames
With buoyancy that bore them from their feet,
They yielded all their burden to the breeze,
And sail'd and soar'd where'er their guardians led:
Ascending, hovering, wheeling, or alighting,
They search'd the deep in quest of nobler game
Than yet their inexperience had encounter'd;
With these they battled in that element
Where wings or fins were equally at home,
Till, conquerors in many a desperate strife,
They dragg'd their spoils to land, and gorged at leisure.

Thus perfected in all the arts of life
That simple Pelicans require,—save one,
Which mother-bird did never teach her daughter,
—The inimitable art to build a nest;

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Love, for his own delightful school, reserving
That mystery which novice never fail'd
To learn infallibly when taught by him:
—Hence that small masterpiece of Nature's art,
Still unimpair'd, still unimproved, remains
The same in site, material, shape, and texture.
While every kind a different structure frames,
All build alike of each peculiar kind:
The nightingale, that dwelt in Adam's bower,
And pour'd her stream of music through his dreams;
The soaring lark, that led the eye of Eve
Into the clouds, her thoughts into the heaven
Of heavens, where lark nor eye can penetrate;
The dove, that perch'd upon the Tree of Life,
And made her bed among its thickest leaves;
All the wing'd habitants of Paradise,
Whose songs once mingled with the songs of Angels,
Wove their first nests as curiously and well
As the wood-minstrels in our evil day,
After the labours of six thousand years,
In which their ancestors have fail'd to add,
To alter, or diminish, any thing
In that, of which Love only knows the secret,
And teaches every mother for herself,
Without the power to impart it to her offspring:
—Thus, perfected in all the arts of life
That simple Pelicans require, save this,
Those Parents drove their young away: the young
Gaily forsook their parents. Soon enthrall'd
With love-alliances among themselves,
They built their nests, as happy instinct wrought
Within their bosoms, wakening powers unknown,
Till sweet necessity was laid upon them:
They bred, and rear'd their little families,
As they were train'd and disciplined before.

Thus wings were multiplied from year to year;
And here the patriarch-twain, in good old age,
Resign'd their breath beside that ancient nest
In which themselves had nursed a hundred broods,
The isle was peopled with their progeny.

CANTO FIFTH.

Meanwhile, not idle, though unwatch'd by me,
The coral architects in silence rear'd
Tower after tower beneath the dark abyss.
Pyramidal in form the fabrics rose,
From ample basements narrowing to the height,
Until they pierced the surface of the flood,
And dimpling eddies sparkled round their peaks.
Then (if great things with small may be compared)
They spread like water-lilies, whose broad leaves
Make green and sunny islets on the pool,
For golden flies, on summer-days, to haunt,
Safe from the lightning-seizure of the trout;
Or yield their laps to catch the minnow springing
Clear from the stream to 'scape the ruffian pike,
That prowls in disappointed rage beneath,
And wonders where the little wretch found refuge.

One headland topt the waves, another follow'd;
A third, a tenth, a twentieth soon appear'd,
Till the long barren gulf in travail lay
With many an infant struggling into birth.
Larger they grew and lovelier, when they breathed
The vital air, and felt the genial sun;
As though a living spirit dwelt in each,
Which, like the inmate of a flexile shell,
Moulded the shapeless slough with its own motion,
And painted it with colours of the morn.
Amidst that group of younger sisters stood
The Isle of Pelicans, as stands the moon
At midnight, queen among the minor stars,
Differing in splendour, magnitude, and distance.
So look'd that archipelago: small isles,
By interwinding channels link'd yet sunder'd;
All flourishing in peaceful fellowship,
Like forest-oaks that love society:
—Of various growth and progress; here, a rock
On which a single palm-tree waved its banner;
There, sterile tracts unmoulder'd into soil;
Yonder, dark woods whose foliage swept the water,
Without a speck of turf, or line of shore,
As though their roots were anchor'd in the ocean.
But most were gardens redolent with flowers,
And orchards bending with Hesperian fruit,
That realised the dreams of olden time.

Throughout this commonwealth of sea-sprung lands,
Life kindled in ten thousand happy forms;
Earth, air, and ocean, were all full of life,
Still highest in the rank of being soar'd
The fowls amphibious, and the inland tribes
Of dainty plumage or melodious song
In gaudy robes of many-colour'd patches,
The parrots swung like blossoms on the trees,
While their harsh voices undeceived the ear.

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More delicately pencill'd, finer drawn
In shape and lineament—too exquisite
For gross delights—the Birds of Paradise
Floated aloof, as though they lived on air,
And were the orient progeny of heaven,
Or spirits made perfect veil'd in shining raiment.
From flower to flower, where wild bees flew and sung,
As countless, small, and musical as they,
Showers of bright humming-birds came down, and plied
The same ambrosial task, with slender bill
Extracting honey, hidden in those bells
Whose richest blooms grew pale beneath the blaze
Of twinkling winglets hovering o'er their petals,
Brilliant as rain-drops when the western sun
Sees his own miniature of beams in each.

High on the cliffs, down on the shelly reef,
Or gliding like a silver-shaded cloud
Through the blue heaven, the mighty albatross
Inhaled the breezes, sought his humble food,
Or, where his kindred like a flock reposed,
Without a shepherd, on the grassy downs,
Smooth'd his white fleece, and slumber'd in their midst.

Wading through marshes, where the rank seaweed
With spongy moss and flaccid lichens strove,
Flamingos, in their crimson tunics, stalk'd
On stately legs, with far-exploring eye;
Or fed and slept, in regimental lines,
Watch'd by their sentinels, whose clarion-screams
All in an instant woke the startled troop,
That mounted like a glorious exhalation,
And vanish'd through the welkin far away,—
Nor paused, till, on some lonely coast alighting,
Again their gorgeous cohort took the field.

The fierce sea-eagle, humble in attire,
In port terrific, from his lonely eyrie
(Itself a burden for the tallest tree)
Look'd down o'er land and sea as his dominions:
Now, from long chase, descending with his prey,
Young seal or dolphin, in his deadly clutch,
He fed his eaglets in the noonday sun:
Nor less at midnight ranged the deep for game;
At length entrapp'd with his own talons, struck
Too deep to be withdrawn, where a strong shark,
Roused by the anguish, with impetuous plunge,
Dragg'd his assailant down into the abyss,
Struggling in vain for liberty and life:
His young ones heard their parent's dying shrieks,
And watch'd in vain for his returning wing.

Here ran the stormy-petrels on the waves,
As though they were the shadows of themselves
Reflected from a loftier flight through space.
The stern and gloomy raven haunted here,
A hermit of the atmosphere, on land
Among vociferating crowds a stranger,
Whose hoarse, low, ominous croak disclaim'd communion
With those upon the offal of whose meals
He gorged alone, or tore their own rank corses.
The heavy penguin, neither fish nor fowl,
With scaly feathers and with finny wings,
Plump'd stone-like from the rock into the gulf,
Rebounding upward swift as from a sling.
Through yielding water as through limped air,
The cormorant, Death's living arrow, flew,
Nor ever miss'd a stroke, or dealt a second,
So true the infallible destroyer's aim.

Millions of creatures such as these, and kinds
Unnamed by man, possess'd those busy isles;
Each, in its brief existence, to itself
The first, last being in the universe,
With whom the whole began, endured, and ended:
Blest ignorance of bliss not made for them!
Happy exemption from the fear of death,
And that which makes the pangs of death immortal,
The undying worm, the fire unquenchable,
—Conscience, the bosom-hell of guilty man!
The eyes of all look'd up to Him whose hand
Had made them, and supplied their daily need;
Although they knew Him not, they look'd to Him;
And He, whose mercy is o'er all his works,
Forgot not one of his large family,
But cared for each as for an only child.
They plough'd not, sow'd not, gather'd not in barns,
Thought not of yesterday, nor knew to-morrow;
Yet harvests inexhaustible they reap'd
In the prolific furrows of the main;
Or from its sunless caverns brought to light
Treasures for which contending kings might war,—
Gems for which queens would yield their hands to slaves,—
By them despised as valueless and nought:

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From the rough shell they pick'd the luscious food,
And left a prince's ransom in the pearl.

Nature's prime favourites were the Pelicans;
High-fed, long-lived, and sociable and free,
They ranged in wedded pairs, or martial bands,
For play or slaughter. Oft have I beheld
A little army take the wat'ry field,
With outstretch'd pinions form a spacious ring,
Then, pressing to the centre, through the waves,
Enclose thick shoals within their narrowing toils,
Till multitudes entangled fell a prey:
Or, when the flying-fish, in sudden clouds,
Burst from the sea, and flutter'd through the air,
These giant fowlers snapp'd them like musquitos
By swallows hunted through the summer sky.

I turn'd again to look upon that isle,
Whence from one pair those colonies had issued
That through these Cyclades at freedom roved,
Fish'd every stream, and fed on every shore;
When, lo! a spectacle of strange extremes
Awaken'd sweet and melancholy thoughts:
All that is helpless, beautiful, endearing
In infancy, in prime of youth, in love;
All that is mournful in decay, old age,
And dissolution; all that awes the eye,
And chills the bosom, in the sad remains
Of poor mortality, which last awhile,
To show that life hath been, but is no longer;
—All these in blended images appear'd,
Exulting, brooding, perishing before me.

It was a land of births.—Unnumber'd nests,
Of reeds and rushes, studded all the ground:
A few were desolate and fallen to ruin;
Many were building from those waste materials;
On some the dams were sitting, till the stroke
Of their quick bills should break the prison-shells,
And let the little captives forth to light,
With their first breath demanding food and shelter.
In others I beheld the brood new-fledged,
Struggling to clamber out, take wing and fly
Up to the heavens, or fathom the abyss:
Meanwhile the parent from the sea supplied
A daily feast, and from the pure lagoon
Brought living water in her sack, to cool
The impatient fever of their clamorous throats:
No need had she, as hieroglyphics feign.
(A mystic lesson of maternal love,)
To pierce her breast, and with the vital stream,
Warm from its fountain, slake their thirst in blood,
—The blood which nourish'd them ere they were hatch'd,
While the crude egg within herself was forming.

It was a land of death.—Between those nests
The quiet earth was feather'd with the spoils
Of aged Pelicans, that hither came
To die in peace, where they had spent in love
The sweetest periods of their long existence.
Where they were wont to build, and breed their young,
There they lay down to rise no more for ever,
And close their eyes upon the dearest sight
On which their living eyes had loved to dwell,
—The nest where every joy to them was centred.
There, rife corruption tainted them so lightly,
The moisture seem'd to vanish from their relics
As dew from gossamer, that leaves the net-work
Spread on the ground, and glistening in the sun:
Thus when a breeze the ruffled plumage stirr'd,
That lay like drifted snow upon the soil,
Their slender skeletons were seen beneath,
So delicately framed, and half transparent,
That I have marvell'd how a bird so noble
When in his full magnificent attire,
With pinions wider than the king of vultures',
And down elastic thicker than the swan's,
Should leave so small a cage of ribs to mark
Where vigorous life had dwelt a hundred years.

Such was that scene: the dying and the dead
Next neighbours to the living and the unborn.
O how much happiness was here enjoy'd!
How little misery had been suffer'd here!
Those humble Pelicans had each fulfill'd
The utmost purpose of its span of being,
And done its duty in its narrow circle,
As surely as the sun, in his career,
Accomplishes the glorious end of his.

CANTO SIXTH.

“And thus,” methought, “ten thousand suns may lead
The stars to glory in their annual courses;
Moons without number thus may wax and wane,
And winds alternate blow in cross-monsoons,

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While here,—through self-beginning rounds, self-ending,
Then self-renew'd, without advance or failure,—
Existence fluctuates only like the tide,
Whose everlasting changes bring no change,
But billow follows billow to the shore,
Recoils, and billow out of billow swells;
An endless whirl of ebbing, flowing foam,
Where every bubble is like every other,
And Ocean's face immutable as Heaven's.
Here is no progress to sublimer life;
Nature stands still,—stands at the very point
Whence from a vantage-ground her bolder steps
Might rise resplendent on the scale of being;
Rank over rank, awakening with her tread,
Inquisitive, intelligent; aspiring
Each above other, all above themselves,
Till every generation should transcend
The former, as the former all the past.

“Such, such alone, were meet inhabitants
For these fair isles, so wonderfully form'd
Amidst the solitude of sea and sky,
On which my wandering spirit first was cast,
And still beyond whose girdle eye nor wing
Can carry me to undiscover'd climes,
Where many a nobler race may dwell; whose waifs
And exiles, toss'd by tempests on the flood,
Hither might drift upon their native trees;
Or, like their own free birds, on fearless pinions,
Make voyages amidst the pathless heaven,
And, lighting, colonise these fertile tracts,
Recover'd from the barrenness of ocean,
Whose wealth might well repay the brave adventure.
—Hath Nature spent her strength? Why stopp'd she here?
Why stopp'd not lower, if to rise no higher?
Can she not summon from more ancient regions,
Beyond the rising or the setting sun,
Creatures as far above the mightiest here
As yonder eagle, flaming at high noon,
Outsoars the bat that flutters through the twilight;
Or as the tender Pelican excels
The anomalous abortion of the rock,
In which plant, fossil, animal, unite?

“But changes here may happen—changes must!
What hinders that new shores should yet ascend
Out of the bosom of the deep, and spread
Till all converge, from one circumference,
Into a solid breadth of table-land,
Bound by the horizon, canopied with heaven,
And ocean in his own abyss absorb'd?”

While these imaginations cross'd the mind,
My thoughts fulfill'd themselves before mine eyes:
The islands moved like circles upon water,
Expanding till they touch'd each other, closed
The interjacent straits, and thus became
A spacious continent which fill'd the sea.
That change was total, like a birth, a death;
—Birth, that from native darkness brings to light
The young inhabitant of this gay world;
Death, that from seen to unseen things removes,
And swallows time up in eternity.
That which had been, for ever ceased to be;
And that which follow'd, was a new creation
Wrought from the disappearance of the old.
So fled that pageant universe away,
With all its isles and waters. So I found
Myself translated to that other world,
By sleight of fancy, like the unconscious act
Of waking from a pleasant dream, with sweet
Relapse into a more transporting vision.

The nursery of brooding Pelicans,
The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd,
And all the minor spots of rock and verdure,
The abodes of happy millions, were no more;—
But in their place a shadowy landscape lay,
On whose extremest western verge a gleam
Of living silver, to the downward sun
Intensely glittering, mark'd the boundary line,
Which ocean, held by chains invisible,
Fretted and foam'd in vain to overleap.
Woods, mountains, valleys, rivers, glens, and plains
Diversified the scene:—that scene was wild,
Magnificent, deform'd, or beautiful,
As framed expressly for all kinds of life,
With all life's labours, sufferings, and enjoyments,
Untouch'd as yet by any meaner hand
Than His who made it, and pronounced it good.
And good it was;—free as light, air, fire, water,
To every thing that breathed upon its surface,
From the small worm that crept abroad at midnight
To sip cool dews, and feed on sleeping flowers,
Then slunk into its hole, the little vampire!
Through every species which I yet had seen,
To animals of tribes and forms unknown
In the lost islands;—beasts that ranged the forests,

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Grazed in the valleys, bounded o'er the hills,
Reposed in rich savannas, from gray rocks
Pick'd the thin herbage sprouting through their fissures;
Or in waste howling deserts found oases,
And fountains pouring sweeter streams than nectar,
And more melodious than the nightingale,
—So to the faint and perishing they seem'd.

I gazed on ruminating herds of kine,
And sheep for ever wandering; goats that swung
Like spiders on the crags, so slight their hold;
Deer playful as their fawns in peace, but fell
As battling bulls in wars of jealousy:
Through flowery champaigns roam'd the fleet gazelles,
Of many a colour, size, and shape,—all graceful;
In every look, step, attitude, prepared,
Even at the shadow of a cloud, to vanish,
And leave a solitude where thousands stood,
With heads declined, and nibbling eagerly,
As locusts when they light on some new soil,
And move no more till they have shorn it bare.
On these, with famine unappeasable,
Lithe, muscular, huge-boned, and limb'd for leaping,
The brindled tyrants of brute nature prey'd:
The weak and timid bow'd before the strong,
The many by the few were hourly slaughter'd,
Where power was right, and violence was law.

Here couch'd the panting tiger, on the watch;
Impatient, but unmoved, his fire-ball eyes
Made horrid twilight in the sunless jungle,
Till on the heedless buffalo he sprang,
Dragg'd the low-bellowing monster to his lair,
Crash'd through the ribs at once into its heart,
Quaff'd the hot blood, and gorged the quivering flesh,
Till drunk he lay as powerless as the carcass.

There to the solitary lion's roar
So many echoes answer'd, that there seem'd
Ten in the field for one;—where'er they turn'd,
The flying animals from cave to cave
Heard his voice issuing, and recoil'd, aghast,
Only to meet it nearer than before,
Or, ere they saw his shadow or his face,
Fall dead beneath his thunder-striking paw.

Calm amidst scenes of havoc, in his own
Huge strength impregnable, the elephant
Offended none, but led his quiet life
Among his old contemporary trees,
Till Nature laid him gently down to rest
Beneath the palm which he was wont to make.
His prop in slumber; there his relics lay
Longer than life itself had dwelt within them.
Bees in the ample hollow of his skull
Piled their wax-citadels, and stored their honey;
Thence sallied forth to forage through the fields,
And swarm'd in emigrating legions thence:
There little burrowing animals threw up
Hillocks beneath the overarching ribs;
While birds, within the spinal labyrinth,
Contrived their nests:—so wandering Arabs pitch
Their tents amidst Palmyra's palaces;
So Greek and Roman peasants build their huts
Beneath the shadow of the Parthenon
Or on the ruins of the Capitol.

But unintelligent creation soon
Fail'd to delight; the novelty departed,
And all look'd desolate; my eye grew weary
Of seeing that which it might see for ever,
Without a new idea or emotion;
The mind within me panted after mind,
The spirit sigh'd to meet a kindred spirit,
And in my human heart there was a void,
Which nothing but humanity could fill.
At length, as though a prison-door were open'd,
Chains had fall'n off, and, by an angel-guide
Conducted, I escaped that desert-bourne;
And instantaneously I travell'd on,
Yet knew not how, for wings nor feet I plied,
But, with a motion like the lapse of thought,
O'er many a vale and mountain I was carried,
Till in the east, above the ocean's brim,
I saw the morning sun, and stay'd my course,
Where vestiges of rude but social life
Arrested and detain'd attention long.

Amidst the crowd of grovelling animals,
A being more majestic stood before me:
I met an eye that look'd into my soul,
And seem'd to penetrate mine inmost thoughts:
Instinctively I turn'd away to hide them,
For shame and quick compunction came upon me,
As though detected on forbidden ground,
Gazing on things unlawful;—but my heart
Relented quickly, and my bosom throbb'd
With such unutterable tenderness,

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That every sympathy of human nature
Was by the beating of a pulse enkindled,
And flash'd at once throughout the mind's recesses,
As in a darken'd chamber objects start
All round the walls the moment light breaks in.
The sudden tumult of surprise awoke
My spirit from that trance of vague abstraction,
Wherein I lived through ages, and beheld
Their generations pass so swiftly by me,
That years were moments in their flight, and hours
The scenes of crowded centuries reveal'd;
I sole spectator of the wondrous changes,
Spell-bound as in a dream, and acquiescing
In all that happen'd, though perplex'd with strange
Conceit of something wanting through the whole.
That spell was broken, like the vanish'd film
From eyes born blind, miraculously open'd;—
'Twas gone, and I became myself again,
Restored to memory of all I knew
From books or schools, the world or sage experience;
With all that folly or misfortune taught me,—
Each hath her lessons,—wise are they that learn.
Still the mysterious reverie went on,
And I was still sole witness of its issues,—
But with clear mind and disenchanted sight,
Beholding, judging, comprehending all;
Not passive and bewilder'd as before.

What was the being which I then beheld?
—Man going forth amidst inferior creatures:
Not as he rose in Eden out of dust,
Fresh from the moulding hand of Deity;
Immortal breath upon his lips; the light
Of uncreated glory in his soul;
Lord of the nether universe, and heir
Of all above him,—all above the sky,
The sapphire pavement of his future palace:
Not so;—but rather like that morning-star
Which from the highest empyrean fell
Into the bottomless abyss of darkness;
There flaming only with malignant beams
Among the constellations of his peers,
The third part of heaven's host, with him cast down
To irretrievable perdition,—thence,
Amidst the smoke of unillumined fires,
Issuing like horrid sparks to blast creation:
—Thus, though in dim eclipse, before me stood,
As from a world invisible call'd up,
Man, in the image of his Maker form'd,—
Man, to the image of his tempter fall'n;
Yet still as far above infernal fiends,
As once a little lower than the angels.
I knew him, own'd him, loved him, and exclaim'd,
“Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, my Brother!
Hail in the depth of thy humiliation;
For dear thou art, amidst unconscious ruin,—
Dear to the kindliest feelings of my soul,
As though one womb had borne us, and one mother
At her sweet breasts had nourish'd us as twins.”

I saw him sunk in loathsome degradation,
A naked, fierce, ungovernable savage,
Companion to the brutes, himself more brutal;
Superior only in the craft that made
The serpent subtlest beast of all the field,
Whose guile unparadised the world, and brought
A curse upon the earth which God had bless'd.
That curse was here, without the mitigation
Of healthful toil, that half redeems the ground
Whence man was taken, whither he returns,
And which repays him bread for patient labour,
—Labour, the symbol of his punishment,
—Labour, the secret of his happiness.
The curse was here; for thorns and briars o'erran
The tangled labyrinths,—yet briars bare roses,
And thorns threw out their annual snow of blossoms:
The curse was here; and yet the soil untill'd
Pour'd forth spontaneous and abundant harvests,
Pulse and small berries, maize in strong luxuriance,
And slender rice that grew by many waters;
The forests cast their fruits, in husk or rind,
Yielding sweet kernels or delicious pulp,
Smooth oil, cool milk, and unfermented wine,
In rich and exquisite variety.
On these the indolent inhabitants
Fed without care or forethought, like the swine
That grubb'd the turf, and taught them where to look
For dainty earth-nuts and nutritious roots;
Or the small monkeys, capering on the boughs,
And rioting on nectar and ambrosia,
The produce of that Paradise run wild:—
No,—these were merry, if they were not wise;
While man's untutor'd hordes were sour and sullen,
Like those abhorr'd baboons, whose gluttonous taste
They follow'd safely in their choice of food;
And whose brute semblance of humanity
Made them more hideous than their prototypes,
That bore the genuine image and inscription,
Defaced indeed, but yet indelible.

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—From ravening beasts, and fowls that fish'd the ocean,
Men learn'd to prey on meaner animals,
But found a secret out which birds or beasts,
Most cruel, cunning, treacherous, never knew,
—The luxury of devouring one another.

Such were my kindred in their lost estate,
From whose abominations while I turn'd,
As from a pestilence, I mourn'd and wept
With bitter lamentation o'er their ruin;
Sunk as they were in ignorance of all
That raises man above his origin,
And elevates to heaven the spirit within him,
To which the Almighty's breath gave understanding.

Large was their stature, and their frames athletic;
Their skins were dark, their locks like eagles' feathers;
Their features terrible;—when roused to wrath,
All evil passions lighten'd through their eyes,
Convulsed their bosoms like possessing fiends,
And loosed what sets on fire the course of nature,
—The tongue of malice, set on fire of hell,
Which then, in cataracts of horrid sounds,
Raged through their gnashing teeth and foaming lips,
Making the ear to tingle, and the soul
Sicken, with spasms of strange revolting horror,
As if the blood changed colour in the veins,
While hot and cold it ran about the heart,
And red to pale upon the cheek it show'd.
Their visages at rest were winter-clouds,
Fix'd gloom, whence sun nor shower could be foretold:
But in high revelry, when full of prey,
Cannibal prey, tremendous was their laughter;
Their joy, the shock of earthquakes overturning
Mountains, and swamping rivers in their course;
Or subterranean elements embroil'd,—
Wind, fire, and water, till the cleft volcano
Gives to their devastating fury vent:
That joy was lurking hatred in disguise,
And not less fatal in its last excess:
They danced,—like whirlwinds in the Libyan waste
When the dead sand starts up in living pillars,
That mingle, part, and cross, then burst in ruin
On man and beast;—they danced to shouts and screams,
Drums, gongs, and horns, their deafening din inflicting
On nerves and ears enraptured with such clangour;
Till mirth grew madness, and the feast a fray,
That left the field strown with unnatural carnage,
To furnish out a more unnatural feast,
And lay the train to inflame a bloodier fray.

They dwelt in dens and caverns of the earth
Won by the valiant from their brute possessors,
And held in hourly peril of reprisals
From the ferocious brigands of the woods:
The lioness, benighted with her whelps,
There seeking shelter from the drenching storm,
Met with unseen resistance on the threshold,
And perish'd ere she knew by what she fell;
Or, finding all within asleep, surprised
The inmates in their dreams, from which no more
Her deadly vengeance suffer'd them to wake.
—On open plains they framed low narrow huts
Of boughs, the wreck of windfalls or of Time,
Wattled with canes, and thatch'd with reeds and leaves;
There from afflictive noon sought twilight shadow,
Or slumber'd in the smoke of greenwood fires,
To drive away the pestilent musquitos.
—Some built unwieldy nests among the trees,
In which to doze by night, or watch by day
The joyful moment from that ambuscade
To slay the passing antelope, or wound
The jackal chasing it, with sudden arrows
From bows that task'd a giant's strength to bend.
In flight or combat, on the champaign field,
They ran atilt with flinty-headed spears;
Or launch'd the lighter javelin through the air,
Follow'd its motion with a basilisk's eye,
And shriek'd with gladness when a life was spill'd:
They sent the pebble hissing from the sling,
Hot as the curse from lips that would strike dead,
If words were stones; here stones, as swift as words
Can reach the ear, the unwary victim smote.
In closer conflict, breast to breast, when one
Or both must perish on the spot, they fought
With clubs of iron-wood and ponderous force,
Wielded with terrible dexterity,
And, falling down like thunderbolts, which nought
But counter-thunderbolts could meet or parry.
Rude-fashion'd weapons! yet the lion's jaws,
The tiger's grasp, the eagle's beak and talons,

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The serpent's fangs, were not more formidable,
More sure to hit, or, hitting, sure to kill.

They knew not shame nor honour, yet knew pride:
—The pride of strength, skill, speed, and subtilty;
The pride of tyranny and violence;—
Not o'er the mighty only, whom their arm
Had crush'd in battle, or had basely slain
By treacherous ambush, or more treacherous smiles,
Embracing while they stabb'd the heart that met
Their specious seeming with unguarded breast;
—The reckless savages display'd their pride
By vile oppression in its vilest forms,—
Oppression of the weak and innocent;
Infancy, womanhood, old age, disease,
The lame, the halt, the blind, were wrong'd, neglected,
Exposed to perish by wild beasts in woods,
Cast to the crocodiles in rivers; murder'd,
Even by their dearest kindred, in cold blood,
To rid themselves of Nature's gracious burdens,
In mercy laid on man to teach him mercy.

But their prime glory was insane debauch,
To inflict and bear excruciating tortures:
The unshrinking victim, while the flesh was rent
From his live limbs, and eaten in his presence,
Still in his death-pangs taunted his tormentors
With tales of cruelty more diabolic,
Wreak'd by himself upon the friends of those
Who now their impotence of vengeance wasted
On him, and drop by drop his life extorted
With thorns and briars of the wilderness,
Or the slow violence of untouching fire.

Vanity, too, pride's mannikin, here play'd
Satanic tricks to ape her master-fiend.
The leopard's beauteous spoils, the lion's mane,
Engirt the loins and waved upon the shoulders
Of those whose wiles or arms had won such trophies:
Rude-punctured figures of all loathsome things,
Toads, scorpions, asps, snakes' eyes and double tongue,
In flagrant colours on their tattoo'd limbs,
Gave proof of intellect, not dead, but sleeping,
And in its trance enacting strange vagaries.
Bracelets of human teeth, fangs of wild beasts,
The jaws of sharks, and beaks of ravenous birds,
Glitter'd and tinkled round their arms and ankles;
While skulls of slaughter'd enemies, in chains
Of natural elf-locks, dangled from the necks
Of those whose own bare skulls and cannibal teeth
Ere long must deck more puissant fiends than they.

On ocean, too, they exercised dominion:—
Of hollow trees composing slight canoes,
They paddled o'er the reefs, cut through the breakers,
And rode the untamed billows far from shore;
Amphibious from their infancy, and fearing
Nought in the deepest waters save the shark;—
Even him, well arm'd, they gloried to encounter,
And when he turn'd to ope those gates of death
That led into the Hades of his gorge,
Smote with such stern decision to his vitals,
And vanish'd through the blood-beclouded waves,
That, blind and desperate in his agony,
Headlong he plunged, and perish'd in the abyss.

Woman was here the powerless slave of man:
Thus fallen Adam tramples fallen Eve,
Through all the generations of his sons,
In whose barbarian veins the old serpent's venom
Turns pure affection into hideous lust,
And wrests the might of his superior arm
(Given to defend and bless his meek companion)
Into the very yoke and scourge of bondage;
Till limbs by beauty moulded, eyes of gladness,
And the full bosom of confiding truth,—
Made to delight and comfort him in toil,
And change Care's den into a halcyon's nest,—
Are broke with drudgery, quench'd with stagnant tears,
Or wrung with lonely unimparted woe.
Man is beside himself, not less than fall'n
Below his dignity, who owns not woman
As nearer to his heart than when she grew
A rib within him,—as his heart's own heart.

He slew the game with his unerring arrow,
But left it in the bush for her to drag
Home, with her feeble hands, already burden'd
With a young infant clinging to her shoulders.
Here she fell down in travail by the way,
Her piteous groans unheard, or, heard, unanswer'd;
There, with her convoy, she—mother, and child,
And slaughter'd deer—became some wild beast's prey;
Though spoils so rich not one could long enjoy,—

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Soon the woods echoed with the huge uproar
Of savage throats contending for the bodies,
Till not a bone was left for farther quarrel.
—He chose the spot; she piled the wood, she wove
The supple withes, and bound the thatch that form'd
The ground-built cabin or the tree-swung nest.
—He brain'd the drowsy panther in his den,
At noon o'ercome by heat, and with closed lids
Fearing assaults from none but vexing flies,
Which, with his ring-streak'd tail he switch'd away:
The citadel thus storm'd, the monster slain,
By the dread prowess of his daring arm,
She roll'd the stones, and planted the stockade,
To fortify the garrison for him
Who scornfully look'd on, at ease reclined,
Or only rose to beat her to the task.

Yet, midst the gall and wormwood of her lot,
She tasted joys which none but woman knows,
—The hopes, fears, feelings, raptures of a mother,
Well-nigh compensating for his unkindness,
Whom yet with all her fervent soul she loved.
Dearer to her than all the universe,
The looks, the cries, the embraces of her babes;
In each of whom she lived a separate life,
And felt the fountain, whence their veins were fill'd,
Flow in perpetual union with the streams
That swell'd their pulses, and throbb'd back through hers.
Oh! 'twas benign relief when my vex'd eye
Could turn from man, the sordid, selfish savage,
And gaze on woman in her self-denial,
To him and to their offspring all alive,
Dead only to herself,—save when she won
His unexpected smile; then, then she look'd
A thousand times more beautiful, to meet
A glance of aught like tenderness from him;
And sent the sunshine of her happy heart
So warm into the charnel-house of his,
That Nature's genuine sympathies awoke,
And he almost forgot himself in her.
O man! lost man! amidst the desolation
Of goodness in thy soul there yet remains
One spark of Deity,—that spark is love.

CANTO SEVENTH.

Ages again, with silent revolution,
Brought morn and even, noon and night, with all
The old vicissitudes of Nature's aspect:
Rains in their season fertilised the ground,
Winds sow'd the seeds of every kind of plant
On its peculiar soil; while suns matured
What winds had sown, and rains in season water'd,
Providing nourishment for all that lived:
Man's generations came and went like these,
—The grass and flowers that wither where they spring;
—The brutes that perish wholly where they fall.

Thus while I mused on these in long succession,
And all remain'd as all had been before,
I cried, as I was wont, though none did listen,
—'Tis sweet sometimes to speak and be the hearer;
For he is twice himself who can converse
With his own thoughts, as with a living throng
Of fellow-travellers in solitude;
And mine too long had been my sole companions:
—“What is this mystery of human life?
In rude or civilised society,
Alike, a pilgrim's progress through this world
To that which is to come, by the same stages;
With infinite diversity of fortune
To each distinct adventurer by the way!

“Life is the transmigration of a soul
Through various bodies, various states of being;
New manners, passions, tastes, pursuits, in each;
In nothing, save in consciousness, the same.
Infancy, adolescence, manhood, age,
Are alway moving onward, alway losing
Themselves in one another, lost at length,
Like undulations, on the strand of death.
The sage of threescore years and ten looks back,—
With many a pang of lingering tenderness,
And many a shuddering conscience-fit,—on what
He hath been, is not, cannot be again;
Nor trembles less with fear and hope, to think
What he is now, but cannot long continue,
And what he must be through uncounted ages.
—The Child;—we know no more of happy childhood
Than happy childhood knows of wretched eld;
And all our dreams of its felicity
Are incoherent as its own crude visions:
We but begin to live from that fine point
Which memory dwells on, with the morning-star,
The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing,
Or the first daisy that we ever pluck'd,

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When thoughts themselves were stars, and birds, and flowers,
Pure brilliance, simplest music, wild perfume.
Thenceforward mark the metamorphoses!
—The Boy, the Girl;—when all was joy, hope, promise;
Yet who would be a Boy, a Girl, again,
To bear the yoke, to long for liberty,
And dream of what will never come to pass?
—The Youth, the Maiden;—living but for love,
Yet learning soon that life hath other cares,
And joys less rapturous, but more enduring:
—The Woman;—in her offspring multiplied;
A tree of life, whose glory is her branches,
Beneath whose shadow, she (both root and stem)
Delights to dwell in meek obscurity,
That they may be the pleasure of beholders:
—The Man;—as father of a progeny,
Whose birth requires his death to make them room,
Yet in whose lives he feels his resurrection,
And grows immortal in his children's children:
—Then the gray Elder;—leaning on his staff,
And bow'd beneath a weight of years, that steal
Upon him with the secrecy of sleep,
(No snow falls lighter than the snow of age,
None with such subtilty benumbs the frame,)
Till he forgets sensation, and lies down
Dead in the lap of his primeval mother;
She throws a shroud of turf and flowers around him,
Then calls the worms, and bids them do their office:
—Man giveth up the ghost,—and where is he?”

That startling question broke my lucubration:
I saw those changes realised before me;
Saw them recurring in perpetual line,
The line unbroken, while the thread ran on,
Failing at this extreme, at that renew'd,
—Like buds, leaves, blossoms, fruits on herbs and trees;
Like mites, flies, reptiles; birds, and beasts, and fishes,
Of every length of period here,—all mortal,
And all resolved into those elements
Whence they had emanated, whence they drew
Their sustenance, and which their wrecks recruited,
To generate and foster other forms
As like themselves as were the lights of heaven,
For ever moving in serene succession,
—Not like those lights unquenchable by time,
But ever changing, like the clouds that come,
Who can tell whence? and go, who can tell whither?
Thus the swift series of man's race elapsed,
As for no higher destiny created
Than aught beneath them,—from the elephant
Down to the worm, thence to the zoophyte,
That link which binds Prometheus to his rock,
The living fibre to insensate matter.
They were not, then they were; the unborn, the living!
They were, then were not; they had lived and died;
No trace, no record, of their date remaining,
Save in the memory of kindred beings,
Themselves as surely hastening to oblivion;
Till, where the soil had been renew'd by relics,
And earth, air, water, were one sepulchre,
Earth, air, and water might be search'd in vain,
Atom by atom scrutinised with eyes
Of microscopic power, that could discern
The population of a dew-drop, yet
No particle bertay the buried secret
Of what they had been, or of what they were:
Life thus was swallow'd by mortality,
Mortality thus swallow'd up of life,
And man remain'd the world's unmoved possessor,
Though every moment men appear'd and vanish'd.

Oh! 'twas heart-sickness to behold them thus
Perishing without knowledge;—perishing
As though they were but things of dust and ashes.
They lived unconscious of their noblest powers,
As were the rocks and mountains which they trod
Of gold and jewels hidden in their bowels;
They lived unconscious of what lived within them,
The deathless spirit, as were the stars that shone
Above their heads of their own emanations.
And did it live within them? did there dwell
Fire brought from heaven in forms of miry clay,
Untemper'd as the slime of Babel's builders,
And left unfinish'd like their monstrous work?
To me, alas! they seem'd but living bodies,
With still-born souls which never could be quicken'd,
Till death brought immortality to light,
And from the darkness of their earthly prison
Placed them at once before the bar of God;
Then first to learn, at their eternal peril,
The fact of his existence and their own.
Imagination durst not follow them,
Nor stand one moment at that dread tribunal.
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’
I trembled while I spake. I could not bear

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The doubt, fear, horror, that o'erhung the fate
Of millions, millions, millions,—living, dying,
Without a hope to hang a hope upon,
That of the whole it might not be affirm'd,
—“'Twere better that they never had been born.”
I turn'd away, and look'd for consolation,
Where Nature else had shrunk with loathing back,
Or imprecated curses, in her wrath,
Even on the fallen creatures of my race,
O'er whose mysterious doom my heart was breaking.

I saw an idiot with long haggard visage,
And eye of vacancy, trolling his tongue
From cheek to cheek; then muttering syllables
Which all the learn'd on earth could not interpret;
Yet were they sounds of gladness, tones of pleasure,
Ineffable tranquillity expressing,
Or pure and buoyant animal delight:
For bright the sun shone round him; cool the breeze
Play'd in the floating shadow of the palm,
Where he lay rolling in voluptuous sloth:
And he had fed deliciously on fruit
That fell into his lap, and virgin honey
That melted from the hollow of the rock
Whither the hum and stir of bees had drawn him.
He knew no bliss beside, save sleep when weary,
Or reveries like this, when, broad awake,
Glimpses of thought seem'd flashing through his brain,
Like wild-fires flitting o'er the rank morass,
Snares to the night-bewilder'd traveller!
Gently he raised his head, and peep'd around,
As if he hoped to see some pleasant object,
—The wingless squirrel jet from tree to tree,
—The monkey pilfering a parrot's nest;
But, ere he bore the precious spoil away,
Surprised behind by beaks, and wings, and claws,
That made him scamper gibbering away;
—The sly opossum dangle by her tail,
To snap the silly birds that perch'd too near;
Or, in the thicket, with her young at play,
Start when the rustling grass announced a snake,
And secrete them within her second womb,
Then stand alert to give the intruder battle,
Who rear'd his crest, and hiss'd, and glid away:—
—These with the transport of a child he view'd,
Then laugh'd aloud, and crack'd his fingers, smote
His palms, and clasp'd his knees, convulsed with glee;
A sad, sad spectacle of merriment!
Yet he was happy; happy in this life;
And could I doubt that death to him would bring
Intelligence, which he had ne'er abused,—
A soul, which he had never lost by sin?

I saw a woman, panting from her throes,
Stretch'd in a lonely cabin on the ground,
Pale with the anguish of her bitter hour,
Whose sorrow she forgat not in the joy
Which mothers feel when a man-child is born;
Hers was an infant of her own scorn'd sex:
It lay upon her breast;—she laid it there
By the same instinct which taught it to find
The milky fountain, fill'd to meet its wants
Even at the gate of life,—to drink and live.
Awhile she lay all-passive to the touch
Of those small fingers, and the soft, soft lips
Soliciting the sweet nutrition thence,
While yearning sympathy crept round her heart:
She felt her spirit yielding to the charm
That wakes the parent in the fellest bosom,
And binds her to her little one for ever,
If once completed;—but she broke, she broke it,
For she was brooding o'er her sex's wrongs,
And seem'd to lie amidst a nest of scorpions,
That stung remorse to frenzy:—forth she sprang,
And with collected might a moment stood,
Mercy and misery struggling in her thoughts,
Yet both impelling her to one dire purpose.
There was a little grave already made,
But two spans long, in the turf-floor beside her,
By him who was the father of that child:
Thence he had sallied, when the work was done,
To hunt, to fish, or ramble on the hills,
Till all was peace again within that dwelling,
—His haunt, his den, his anything but home!
Peace?—no, till the new-comer were despatch'd
Whence it should ne'er return to break to the stupor
Of unawaken'd conscience in himself.

She pluck'd the baby from her flowing breast,
And o'er its mouth, yet moist with Nature's beverage,
Bound a thick lotus-leaf to still its cries;
Then laid it down in that untimely grave
As tenderly as though 'twere rock'd to sleep
With songs of love, and she afraid to wake it:
Soon as she felt it touch the ground she started,
Hurried the damp earth over it; then fell
Flat on the heaving heap, and crush'd it down
With the whole burden of her grief; exclaiming,
“O that my mother had done so to me!”

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Then in a swoon forgot a little while
Her child, her sex, her tyrant, and herself.

Amazement wither'd up all human feeling;
I wonder'd how I could look on so calmly,
As though I were but animated stone,
And not kneel down upon the spot, and pray
That earth might open to devour that mother,
Or heaven shoot lightning to avenge that daughter:
But horror soon gave way to hope and pity,
—Hope for the dead, and pity for the living.
Thenceforth when I beheld troops of wild children
Frolicking round the tents of wickedness,
Though my heart danced within me to the music
Of their loud voices and unruly mirth,
The blithe exuberance of beginning life!
I could not weep when they went out like sparks,
That glitter, creep, and dwindle out, on tinder.
Happy, thrice happy, were they thus to die,
Rather than grow into such men and women,
—Such fiends incarnate as that felon-sire,
Who dug its grave before his child was born;
Such miserable wretches as that mother,
Whose tender mercies were so deadly cruel!

I saw their infant's spirit rise to heaven,
Caught from its birth up to the throne of God:
There, thousands and ten thousands I beheld
Of innocents like this, that died untimely,
By violence of their unnatural kin,
Or by the mercy of that gracious Power
Who gave them being, taking what He gave
Ere they could sin or suffer like their parents.
I saw them in white raiment, crown'd with flowers,
On the fair banks of that resplendent river
Whose streams make glad the city of our God;
—Water of life, as clear as crystal, welling
Forth from the throne itself, and visiting
Fields of a Paradise that ne'er was lost;
Where yet the tree of life immortal grows,
And bears its monthly fruits, twelve kinds of fruit,
Each in its season, food of saints and angels;
Whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
Beneath the shadow of its blessed boughs,
I mark'd those rescued infants, in their schools,
By spirits of just men made perfect, taught
The glorious lessons of Almighty love,
Which brought them thither by the readiest path
From the world's wilderness of dire temptations,
Securing thus their everlasting weal.

Yea, in the rapture of that hour, though songs
Of cherubim to golden lyres and trumpets,
And the redeem'd upon the sea of glass,
With voices like the sound of many waters,
Came on mine ear, whose secret cells were open'd
To entertain celestial harmonies,
—The small, sweet accents of those little children,
Pouring out all the gladness of their souls
In love, joy, gratitude, and praise to Him,
—Him, who had lov'd and wash'd them in his blood,—
These were to me the most transporting strains
Amidst the hallelujahs of all heaven.
Though lost awhile in that amazing chorus
Around the throne,—at happy intervals,
The shrill hosannas of the infant-choir,
Singing in that eternal temple, brought
Tears to mine eye, which seraphs had been glad
To weep, could they have felt the sympathy
That melted all my soul when I beheld
How condescending Deity thus deign'd
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings here
To perfect his high praise:—the harp of heaven
Had lack'd its least, but not its meanest, string,
Had children not been taught to play upon it,
And sing, from feelings all their own, what men
Nor angels can conceive of creatures born
Under the curse, yet from the curse redeem'd,
And placed at once beyond the power to fall,
—Safety which men nor angels ever knew,
Till ranks of these and all of those had fallen.

CANTO EIGHTH.

'Twas but the vision of an eye-glance, gone
Ere thought could fix upon it,—gone like lightning
At midnight, when the expansive flash reveals
Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenees in one
Glorious horizon, suddenly lit up,—
Rocks, rivers, forests,—quench'd as suddenly:
A glimpse that fill'd the mind with images
Which years cannot obliterate, but stamp'd
With instantaneous everlasting force
On memory's more than adamantine tablet;—
A glimpse of that which eye hath never seen,
Ear heard, nor heart of man conceived.—It pass'd
But what it show'd can never pass.—It pass'd,
And left me wandering through that land of exile,
Cut off from intercourse with happier lands;

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Abandon'd, as it seem'd, by its Creator;
Unvisited by Him who came from heaven
To seek and save the lost of every clime;
And where God, looking down in wrath, had said,
“My Spirit shall no longer strive with man:”
—So ignorance or unbelief might deem.

Was it thus outlaw'd? No; God left himself
Not without witness of his presence there;
He gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons,
Filling unthankful hearts with food and gladness.
He gave them kind affections, which they strangled,
Turning his grace into lasciviousness.
He gave them powers of intellect, to scale
Heaven's height; to name and number all the stars;
To penetrate earth's depths for hidden riches,
Or clothe its surface with fertility;
Amidst the haunts of dragons, dens of satyrs,
To call up hamlets, villages, and towns,
The abode of peace and industry; to build
Cities and palaces amid waste places;
To sound the ocean, combat with the winds,
Travel the waves, and compass every shore,
On voyages of commerce or adventure;
To shine in civil and refining arts;
With tranquil science elevate the soul;
To explore the universe of mind; to trace
The Nile of thinking to its secret source,
And thence pursue its infinite meanders,
Not lost amidst the labyrinths of Time,
But o'er the cataract of death down rolling,
To flow for ever, and for ever, and for ever,
Where time nor space can limit its expansion.

He gave the ideal, too, of truth and beauty;—
To look on Nature with a poet's eye,
And live, amidst the daylight of this world,
In regions of enchantment;—with the force
Of song, as with a spirit, to possess
The souls of those that hearken, till they feel
But what the minstrel feels, and do but that
Which his strange inspiration makes them do:
Thus with his breath to kindle war, and bring
The array of battle to electric issue;
Or, while opposing legions, front to front,
Wait the dread signal for the work of havoc,
Step in between, and with the healing voice
Of harmony and concord win them so,
That, hurling down their weapons of destruction,
They rush into each other's arms, with shouts
And tears of transport; till inveterate foes
Are friends and brethren, feasting on the field
Where vultures else had feasted, and gorged wolves
Howl'd in convulsive slumber o'er their corses.

Such powers to these were given, but given in vain;
They knew them not, or, as they learn'd to know,
Perverted them to more pernicious evil
Than ignorance had skill to perpetrate.
Yet the great Father gave a richer portion
To these, the most impoverish'd of his children;
He sent the light that lighteth every man
That comes into the world,—the light of truth:
But Satan turn'd that light to darkness; turn'd
God's truth into a lie, and they believed
His lie, who led them captive at his will,
Usurp'd the throne of Deity on earth,
And claim'd allegiance in all hideous forms,
—The abominable emblems of himself,
The legion-fiend, who takes whatever shape
Man's crazed imagination can devise
To body forth his notion of a god,
And prove how low immortal minds can fall
When from the living God they fall to serve
Dumb idols. Thus they worshipp'd stocks and stones
Which hands unapt for sculpture executed,
In their egregious folly, like themselves,
Though not more like, even in barbarian eyes,
Than antic clouds resemble animals.
To these they offer'd flowers and fruits; to those,
Reptiles; to others, birds, and beasts, and fishes:
To some they sacrificed their enemies,
To more their children, and themselves to all.

So had the god of this apostate world
Blinded their eyes. But the true God had placed
Yet further witness of his grace among them,
When all remembrance of himself was lost:
—Knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong;
But knowledge was confounded, till they call'd
Good evil, evil good; refused the right,
And chose and loved the wrong for its own sake.
One witness more, his own ambassador
On earth, the Almighty left to be their prophet,
Whom Satan could not utterly beguile,
Nor always hold with his ten thousand fetters,
Lock'd in the dungeon of the obdurate breast,
And trampled down by all its atheist inmates;

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—Conscience, tremendous conscience, in his fits
Of inspiration,—whencesoe'er it came,—
Rose like a ghost, inflicting fear of death
On those who fear'd not death in fiercest battle,
And mock'd him in their martyrdoms of torments:
That secret, swift, and silent messenger
Broke on them in their lonely hours,—in sleep,
In sickness; haunting them with dire suspicions
Of something in themselves that would not die,
Of an existence elsewhere, and hereafter,
Of which tradition was not wholly silent,
Yet spake not out; its dreary oracles
Confounded superstition to conceive,
And baffled scepticism to reject:
—What fear of death is like the fear beyond it?

But pangs like these were lucid intervals
In the delirium of the life they led,
And all unwelcome as returning reason
Which through the chaos of a maniac's brain
Shoots gleams of light more terrible than darkness.
These sad misgivings of the smitten heart,
Wounded unseen by conscience from its ambush;
These voices from eternity, that spake
To an eternity of soul within,—
Were quickly lull'd by riotous enjoyment,
Or lost in hurricanes of headlong passion.
They knew no higher, sought no happier, state;
Had no fine instinct of superior joys
Than those of sense; no taste for sense refined
Above the gross necessities of nature,
Or outraged Nature's most unnatural cravings.
Why should they toil to make the earth bring forth,
When without toil she gave them all they wanted?
The bread-fruit ripen'd, while they lay beneath
Its shadow in luxurious indolence;
The cocoa fill'd its nuts with milk and kernels,
While they were sauntering on the shores and mountains;
And while they slumber'd, from their heavy meals,
In dead forgetfulness of life itself,
The fish were spawning in unsounded depths,
The birds were breeding in adjacent trees,
The game was fattening in delicious pastures,
Unplanted roots were thriving under ground,
To spread the tables of their future banquets!

Thus what the sires had been, the sons became;
And generations rose, continued, went,
Without memorial,—like the Pelicans
On that lone island, where they built their nests,
Nourish'd their young, and then lay down to die:
Hence, through a thousand and a thousand years,
Man's history in that region of oblivion
Might be recorded in a page as small
As the brief legend of those Pelicans,—
With one appalling, one sublime distinction,
(Sublime with horror, with despair appalling,)
—That Pelicans were not transgressors;—Man,
Apostate from the womb, by blood a traitor.
Thus, while he rose by dignity of birth,
He sunk in guilt and infamy below
Creatures whose being was but lent, not given,
And, when the debt was due, reclaim'd for ever.
O enviable lot of innocence!
Their bliss and woe were only of this world:
Whate'er their lives had been, though born to suffer
Not less than to enjoy, their end was peace.
Man was immortal, yet he lived and died
As though there were no life nor death but this:
Alas! what life or death may be hereafter,
He only knows who hath ordain'd them both;
And they shall know who prove their truth for ever.

The thought was agony beyond endurance:
“O thou, my brother Man!” again I cried,
“Would God that I might live, might die, for thee!
O could I take a form to meet thine eyes,
Invent a voice with words to reach thine ears;
Or if my spirit might converse with thine,
And pour my thoughts, fears, feelings, through thy breast,
Unknown to thee whence came the strange intrusion!
How would my soul rejoice, rejoice with trembling,
To tell thee who thou art, and bring thee home,
—Poor prodigal, here watching swine, and fain
To glut thy hunger with the husks they feed on,—
Home to our Father's house, our Father's heart!
Both, both are open to receive thee,—come;
O come!—He hears not, heeds not: O my brother!
That I might prophesy to thee,—to all
The millions of dry bones that fill this valley
Of darkness and despair!—Alas! alas!
Can these bones live? Lord God, Thou knowest.—Come
From the four winds of heaven, almighty breath!
Blow on these slain and they shall live.”

I spake;
And, turning from the mournful contemplation,

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To seek refreshment for my weary spirit,
Amidst that peopled continent, the abode
Of misery which reach'd beyond this world,
I lighted on a solitary glen
(A peaceful refuge in a land of discord)
Crown'd with steep rocks, whose hoary summits shone,
Amid the blue unclouded element,
O'er the green woods, that, stretching down the hills,
Border'd the narrow champaign glade between,
Through which a clear and pebbly rill meander'd.
The song-birds caroll'd in the leafy shades,
Those of resplendent plumage flaunted round;
High o'er the cliffs the sea-fowl soar'd or perch'd;
The Pelican and Albatross were seen
In groups reposing on the northern ridge:
There was entire serenity above;
Beauty, tranquillity, delight, below;
And every motion, sound, and sight, were pleasing.
Rhinoceros nor wild bull pastured here;
Lion nor tiger here shed innocent blood;
The antelopes were grazing void of fear,
Their young in antic gambols ramping by;
While goats from precipice to precipice
Clamber'd, or hung, or vaulted through the air,
As if a thought convey'd them to and fro.
Harmony reign'd, as once ere man's creation,
When brutes were yet earth's sole inhabitants.
There were no human tracks nor dwellings there,
For 'twas a sanctuary from hurtful creatures,
And in the precincts of that happy dell
The absence of my species was a mercy:
Thence the declining sun withdrew his beams,
But left it lighted by a hundred peaks,
Glittering and golden, round the span of sky,
That seem'd the sapphire roof of one great temple,
Whose floor was emerald, and whose walls the hills;
Where those that worshipp'd God might worship Him
In spirit and in truth, without distraction.

Man's absence pleased me; yet on man alone,
Man fallen, helpless, miserable man,
My thoughts, prayers, wishes, tears, and sorrows turn'd,
Howe'er I strove to drive away remembrance:
Then I refrain'd no longer, but brake out,
—“Lord God! why hast Thou made all men in vain?”

CANTO NINTH.

The countenance of one advanced in years,
The shape of one created to command,
The step of one accustom'd to be seen,
And follow'd with the reverence of all eyes,
Yet conscious here of utter solitude,
Came on me like an apparition,—whence
I knew not:—halfway down the vale already
Had he proceeded ere I caught his eye,
And, in that mirror of intelligence,
By the sure divination of mine art,
Read the mute history of his former life,
And all the untold secrets of his bosom.
He was a chieftain of renown; from youth
To green old age, the glory of his tribe,
The terror of their enemies: in war
An Alexander, and in peace an Alfred,
From morn till night he wont to wield the spear
With indefatigable arm, or watch
From eve till dawn in ambush for his quarry,
Human or brute; not less in chase than fight,
For strength, skill, prowess, enterprise, unrivall'd.
Fearless he grappled with the fell hyæna,
And held him strangling in the grasp of fate;
He seized the she-bear's whelps; and when the dam,
With miserable cries and insane rage,
Pursued to rescue them, would turn and strike
One blow, but one, to break her heart for ever:
From sling and bow he sent upon death-errands
The stone or arrow through the trackless air,
To overtake the fleetest foot, or lay
The loftiest pinion fluttering in the dust.
On the rough waves he eagerly embark'd,
Assail'd the stranded whale among the breakers,
Dart after dart with such sure aim implanting
In the huge carcass of the helpless victim,
That soon in blood and foam the monster breathed
His last, and lay a hulk upon the reef;
Thence floated by the rising tide, and tow'd
By a whole navy of canoes ashore.
But 'twas the hero's mind that made him great:
His eye, his lip, his hand, were clothed with thunder;
Thrones, crowns, and sceptres give not more ascendence,
Back'd with arm'd legions, fortified with towers,
Than this imperial savage, all alone,

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From Nature's pure beneficence derived.
Yet, when the hey-day of hot youth was over,
His soul grew gentle as the halcyon breeze
Sent from the evening-sea to bless the shore
After the fervours of a tropic noon;
Nor less benign his influence than fresh showers
Upon the fainting wilderness, where bands
Of pilgrims bound for Mecca, with their camels,
Lie down to die together in despair,
When the deceitful mirage, that appear'd
A pool of water trembling in the sun,
Hath vanish'd from the bloodshot eye of thirst.
Firm in defence as valiant in the battle,
Assailing none, but all assaults repelling
With such determined chastisement, that foes
No longer dared to forage on his borders,
War shrunk from his dominions; simple laws,
Yet wise and equitable, he ordain'd
To rule a willing and obedient people.
Blood ceased to flow in sacrifice,—no more
The parents' hands were raised against their children,—
Children no longer slew their aged parents,—
Man prey'd not on his fellow-man,—within
The hallow'd circle of his patriarch-sway,
That seem'd, amidst barbarian clans around,
A garden in a waste of briar and hemlock.
Ere life's meridian, thus that chief had reach'd
The utmost pinnacle of savage grandeur,
And stood the envy of ignoble eyes.
The awe of humbler mortals, the example
Of youth's sublime ambition: but to him
It was not given to rest at any height;
The thoughts that travel to eternity
Already had begun their pilgrimage,
Which time, nor change, nor life, nor death, could stop.
All that he saw, heard, felt, or could conceive,
Open'd new scenes of mental enterprise,
Imposed new tasks for arduous contemplation.
On the steep eminence which he had scaled,
To rise or fall were sole alternatives;
He might not stand, and he disdain'd to fall:
Innate magnificence of mind upheld,
And buoyancy of genius bore him on.
Heaven, earth, and ocean, were to him familiar
In all their motions, aspects, changes; each
To him paid tribute of the knowledge hid
From uninquiring ignorance; to him
Their gradual secrets, though with slow reserve,
Yet sure accumulation, all reveal'd.
But whence they came, even more than what they were,
Awaken'd wonder, and defied conjecture:
Blank wonder could not satisfy his soul,
And resolute conjecture would not yield,
Though foil'd a thousand times, in speculation
On themes that open'd immortality.
The gods whom his deluded countrymen
Acknowledged, were no gods to him; he scorn'd
The impotence of skill that carved such figures,
And pitied the fatuity of those
Who saw not in the abortions of their hands
The abortions of their minds.—'Twas the Creator
He sought through every volume open to him,
From the small leaf that holds an insect's web,
From which ere long a colony shall issue
With wings and limbs as perfect as the eagle's,
To the stupendous ocean, that gives birth
And nourishment to everlasting millions
Of creatures, great and small, beyond the power
Of man to comprehend how they exist.
One thought amidst the multitude within him
Press'd with perpetual, with increasing, weight;
And yet the elastic soul beneath its burden
Wax'd strong and stronger, was enlarged, exalted,
With the necessity of bearing up
Against annihilation,—for that seem'd
The only refuge were this hope foregone.
It was as though he wrestled with an angel,
And would not let him go without a blessing,
If not extort the secret of his name.
This was that thought, that hope:—dumb idols,
And the vain homage of their worshippers,
Were proofs to him, not less than sun and stars,
That there were beings mightier far than man,
Or man had never dream'd of aught above him.
'Twas clear to him as was his own existence,
In which he felt the fact personified,
That man himself was for this world too mighty,
Possessing powers which could not ripen here,
But ask'd infinity to bring them forth,
And find employ for their unbounded scope.
Tradition told him that, in ancient time,
Sky, sun, and sea, were all the universe:
The sun grew tired of gazing on the sea
Day after day; then, with descending beams,

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Day after day he pierced the dark abyss
Till he had reach'd its diamantine floor,—
Whence he drew up an island; as a tree
Grows in the desert from some random seed
Dropt by a wild bird. Grain by grain it rose,
And touch'd at length the surface; there expanding
Beneath the fostering influence of his eye,
Prolific seasons, light, and showers, and dew,
Aided by earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanos,
(All agents of the universal sun,)
Conspired to form, advance, enrich, and break
The level reef, till hills and dales appear'd,
And the small isle became a continent,
Whose bounds his ancestors had never traced.
Thither in time, by means inscrutable,
Plants, animals, and man himself, were brought;
And with the idolaters the gods they served.
These tales tradition told him: he believed,
Though all were fables, yet they shadow'd truth;
That truth, with heart, soul, mind, and strength, he sought.
O 'twas a spectacle for angels, bound
On embassies of mercy to this earth,
To gaze on with compassion and delight,—
Yea, with desire that they might be his helpers,—
To see a dark endungeon'd spirit roused,
And struggling into glorious liberty,
Though Satan's legions watch'd at every portal,
And held him by ten thousand manacles!
Such was the being whom I here descried,
And fix'd my earnest expectation on him;
For now or never might my hope be proved,
How near, by searching, man might find out God.
Thus, while he walk'd along that peaceful valley,
Though rapt in meditation far above
The world which met his senses, but in vain
Would charm his spirit within its magic circle,
—Still with benign and meek simplicity
He hearken'd to the prattle of a babe,
Which he was leading by the hand; but scarce
Could he restrain its eagerness to break
Loose, and run wild with joy among the bushes.
It was his grandson, now the only stay
Of his bereaved affections; all his kin
Had fall'n before him, and his youngest daughter
Bequeath'd this infant with her dying lips:
“O take this child, my father! take this child,
And bring it up for me; so may it live
To be the latest blessing of thy life.”
He took the child; he brought it up for her:
It was the latest blessing of his life;
And while his soul explored immensity,
In search of something undefinedly great,
This infant was the link which bound that soul
To this poor world, where he had not a wish
Or hope, beyond the moment, for himself.
The little one was dancing at his side,
And dragging him with petty violence
Hither and thither from the onward path,
To find a bird's nest or to hunt a fly:
His feign'd resistance and unfeign'd reluctance
But made the boy more resolute to rule
The grandsire with his fond caprice. The sage,
Though dallying with the minion's wayward will,
His own premeditated course pursued,
And while, in tones of sportive tenderness,
He answer'd all its questions, and ask'd others
As simple as its own, yet wisely framed
To wake and prove an infant's faculties,—
As though its mind were some sweet instrument,
And he, with breath and touch, were finding out
What stops or keys would yield the richest music,—
All this was by-play to the scene within
The busy theatre of his own breast:
Keen and absorbing thoughts were working there,
And his heart travail'd with unutter'd pangs;
Sigh after sigh, escaping to his lips,
Was check'd or turn'd into some lively word,
To hide the bitter conflict from his child.
At length they struck into the woods, and thence
Climb'd the grey rocks aloof. There from his crag,
At their abrupt approach, the startled eagle
Took wing above their heads; the boy, alarm'd,—
Nor less delighted when no peril came,—
Follow'd its flight with eyes and hands upraised,
And, bounding forward on the verdant slope,
Watch'd it diminish, till a gnat, that cross'd
His sight, eclipsed it: when he look'd again
'Twas gone, and for an instant he felt sad,
Till some new object won his gay attention.
His grandsire stepp'd to take the eagle's stand,
And gaze at freedom on the boundless prospect,
But started back, and held his breath with awe,
So suddenly, so gloriously, it broke
From heaven, earth, sea, and air, at once upon him.
The tranquil ocean roll'd beneath his feet;

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The shores on each hand lessen'd from the view;
The landscape glow'd with tropical luxuriance;
The sky was fleck'd with gold and crimson clouds,
That seem'd to emanate from nothing there,
Born in the blue and infinite expanse,
Where just before the eye might seek in vain
An evening shadow as a daylight star.
There stood the patriarch amidst a scene
Of splendour and beatitude, himself
A diadem of glory o'er the whole;
For none but he could comprehend the beauty,
The bliss, diffused throughout the universe:
Yet holier beauty, higher bliss, he sought,
Of which that universe was but the veil,
Wrought with inexplicable hieroglyphics.
Here then he stood, alone, but not forsaken
Of Him without whose leave a sparrow falls not.
Wide open lay the Book of Deity;
The page was Providence: but none, alas!
Had taught him letters; when he look'd, he wept
To feel himself forbidden to peruse it.
—“O for a messenger of mercy now,
Like Philip when he join'd the Eunuch's chariot!
O for the privilege to burst upon him,
And show the blind, the dead, the light of life!”
I hush'd the exclamation, for he seem'd
To hear it; turn'd his head, and look'd all round,
As if an eye invisible beheld him,
A voice had spoken out of solitude:
—Yea, such an eye beheld him, such a voice
Had spoken; but they were not mine: his life
He would have yielded on the spot to see
That eye, to hear that voice, and understand it:
It was the eye of God, the voice of Nature.
All in a moment on his knees he fell;
And, with imploring arms outstretch'd to heaven,
And eyes no longer wet with hopeless tears,
But beaming forth sublime intelligence,
In words through which his heart's pulsation throbb'd,
And made mine tremble to their accents, pray'd:
—“Oh! if there be a Power above all power,
A Light above all light, a Name above
All other names, in heaven and earth; that Power,
That Light, that Name, I call upon!”—He paused,
Bow'd his hoar head with reverence, closed his eyes,
And, with clasp'd hands upon his breast, began
In under tones, that rose in fervency,
Like incense kindled on a holy altar,
Till his whole soul became one tongue of fire,
Of which these words were faint and poor expressions:
—“Oh! if Thou art, Thou knowest that I am:
Behold me, hear me, pity me, despise not
The prayer which—if Thou art—Thou hast inspired,
Or wherefore seek I now a God unknown?
And feel for Thee, if haply I may find
In whom I live and move and have my being?
Reveal Thyself to me; reveal thy power,
Thy light, thy name,—that I may fear, adore,
Obey,—and, oh! that I might love Thee too!
For, if Thou art—it must be—Thou art good;
And I would be the creature of thy goodness:
Oh! hear and answer:—let me know Thou hearest!
—Know that, as surely as Thou art, so surely
My prayer and supplication are accepted!”
He waited silently; there came no answer:
The roaring of the tide beneath, the gale
Rustling the forest-leaves, the notes of birds,
And hum of insects,—these were all the sounds
That met familiarly around his ear.
He look'd abroad: there shone no light from heaven
But that of sunset; and no shapes appear'd
But glistering clouds, which melted through the sky
As imperceptibly as they had come;
While all terrestrial objects seem'd the same
As he had ever known them;—still he look'd
And listen'd, till a cold sick feeling sunk
Into his heart, and blighted every hope.
Anon faint accents, from the sloping lawn
Beneath the crag where he was kneeling, rose
Like supernatural echoes of his prayer:
—“A Name above all names—I call upon.—
Thou art—Thou knowest that I am:—Reveal
Thyself to me;—but, oh! that I may love Thee!
For if Thou art, Thou must be good:—Oh! hear,
And let me know Thou hearest!”—Memory fail'd
The child; for 'twas his grandchild, though he knew not,—
In the deep transport of his mind, he knew not
That voice, to him the sweetest of ten thousand,
And known the best because the best beloved.
Again it cried:—“Thou art—Thou must be good:—Oh! hear,
And let me know Thou hearest.”—Memory fail'd

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The child; but feeling fail'd not: tears of light
Slid down his cheek; he too was on his knees,
Clasping his little hands upon his heart,
Unconscious why, yet doing what he saw
His grandsire do, and saying what he said.
For while he gather'd buds and flowers to twine
A garland for the old gray hairs, whose locks
Were lovelier in his sight than all the blooms
On which the bees and butterflies were feasting,
The Patriarch's agony of spirit caught
His eye, his ear, his heart; he dropp'd the flowers,
And, kneeling down among them, wept and pray'd
Like him, with whom he felt such strange emotions
As rapt his infant-soul to heavenly heights;
Though whence they sprang, and what they meant, he knew not:
But they were good, and that was all to him,
Who wonder'd why it was so sweet to weep;
Nor would he quit his humble attitude,
Nor cease repeating fragments of that lesson,
Thus learnt spontaneously from lips whose words
Were almost dearer to him than their kisses,
When on his lap the old man dandled him,
And told him simple stories of his mother.
Recovering thought, the venerable sire
Beheld, and recognised, his darling boy,
Thus beautiful and innocent, engaged
In the same worship with himself. His heart
Leap'd at the sight: he flung away despondence,
While joy unspeakable and full of glory
Broke through the pagan darkness of his soul.
He ran and snatch'd the infant in his arms,
Embraced him passionately, wept aloud,
And cried, scarce knowing what he said,—“My son!
My son! there is a God! there is a God!”—
“And, oh! that I may love Thee too!” rejoin'd
The child, whose tongue could find no other words
Than prayer;—“for if Thou art, Thou must be good.”—
“He is! He is! and we will love him too!
Yea, and be like Him,—good, for He is good!”
Replied the ancient father in amazement.

Then wept they o'er each other, till the child
Exceeded, and the old man's heart reproved him
For lack of reverence in the excess of joy:
The ground itself seem'd holy! heaven and earth
Full of the presence—felt, not seen—of Him,
The Power above all power, the Light above
All light, the Name above all other names;
Whom he had call'd upon, whom he had found,
Yet worshipp'd only as “the Unknown God,”—
That nearest step which uninstructed man
Can take from Nature up to Deity.
To Him again, standing erect, he pray'd;
And, while he pray'd, high in his arms he held
That dearest treasure of his heart, the child
Of his last dying daughter,—now the sole
Hope of his life, and orphan of his house.
He held him as an offering up to heaven,
A living sacrifice unto the God
Whom he invoked:—“Oh! Thou who art!” he cried,
“And hast reveal'd that mystery to me,
Hid from all generations of my fathers,
Or, if once known, forgotten and perverted;
I may not live to learn Thee better here;
But, oh! let this my son, mine only son,
Whom thus I dedicate to Thee;—let him,
Let him be taught thy will, and choose
Obedience to it;—may he fear thy power,
Walk in thy light, now dawning out of darkness;
And, oh!—my last, last prayer,—to him reveal
The unutterable secret of thy Name!”
He paused; then, with the transport of a seer,
Went on:—“That Name may all my nation know;
And all that hear it worship at the sound,
When thou shalt with a voice from heaven proclaim it!
And so it surely shall be.”—

“For Thou art;
And if Thou art, Thou must be good!” exclaim'd
The child, yet panting with the breath of prayer.

They ceased; then went rejoicing down the mountains,
Through the cool glen, where not a sound was heard,
Amidst the dark solemnity of eve,
But the loud purling of the little brook,
And the low murmur of the distant ocean.
Thence to their home beyond the hills in peace
They walk'd; and, when they reach'd their humble threshold,
The glittering firmament was full of stars.
—He died that night; his grandchild lived to see
The Patriarch's prayer and prophecy fulfill'd.

133

Here end my song; here ended not the vision:
I heard seven thunders uttering their voices,
And wrote what they did utter; but 'tis seal'd
Within the volume of my heart, where thoughts,
Unbodied yet in vocal words, await
The quickening warmth of poesy to bring
Their forms to light,—like secret characters,
Invisible till open'd to the fire;
Or like the potter's paintings, colourless
Till they have pass'd to glory through the flames.
Changes more wonderful than those gone by,
More beautiful, transporting, and sublime,
To all the frail affections of our nature,
To all the immortal faculties of man:
Such changes did I witness; not alone
In one poor Pelican Island, nor on one
Barbarian continent, where man himself
Could scarcely soar above the Pelican:
—The world as it hath been in ages past,
The world as now it is, the world to come,
Far as the eye of prophecy can pierce;—
These I beheld, and still in memory's rolls
They have their pages and their pictures: these,
Another day, a nobler song may show.
Vain boast! another day may not be given;
This song may be my last; for I have reach'd
That slippery descent, whence man looks back
With melancholy joy on all he cherish'd,
Around with love unfeign'd on all he's losing,
Forward with hope that trembles while it turns
To the dim point where all our knowledge ends.
I am but one among the living; one
Among the dead I soon shall be, and one
Among unnumber'd millions yet unborn;
The sum of Adam's mortal progeny,
From Nature's birthday to her dissolution:
—Lost in infinitude, my atom-life
Seems but a sparkle of the smallest star
Amidst the scintillations of ten thousand,
Twinkling incessantly; no ray returning
To shine a second moment where it shone
Once, and no more for ever:—so I pass.
The world grows darker, lonelier, and more silent,
As I go down into the vale of years;
For the grave's shadows lengthen in advance,
And the grave's loneliness appals my spirit,
And the grave's silence sinks into my heart,
Till I forget existence in the thought
Of non-existence, buried for a while
In the still sepulchre of my own mind,
Itself imperishable:—ah! that word,
Like the archangel's trumpet, wakes me up
To deathless resurrection. Heaven and earth
Shall pass away,—but that which thinks within me,
Must think for ever; that which feels, must feel:
—I am, and I can never cease to be.
O thou that readest! take this parable
Home to thy bosom; think as I have thought,
And feel as I have felt, through all the changes
Which Time, Life, Death, the world's great actors, wrought,
While centuries swept like morning dreams before me,
And thou shalt find this moral to my song:
—Thou art, and thou canst never cease to be:
What then are time, life, death, the world to thee?
I may not answer; ask Eternity.

134

PRISON AMUSEMENTS:

WRITTEN DURING NINE MONTHS OF CONFINEMENT IN THE CASTLE OF YORK, IN THE YEARS 1795 AND 1796.

143

VERSES TO A ROBIN RED-BREAST,

WHO VISITS THE WINDOW OF MY PRISON EVERY DAY.

Welcome, pretty little stranger!
Welcome to my lone retreat!
Here, secure from every danger,
Hop about, and chirp, and eat:
Robin! how I envy thee,
Happy child of Liberty!

Now, though tyrant Winter, howling,
Shakes the world with tempests round,
Heaven above with vapours scowling,
Frost imprisons all the ground;—
Robin! what are these to thee?
Thou art blest with liberty.

Though yon fair majestic river
Mourns in solid icy chains,
Though yon flocks and cattle shiver
On the desolated plains;—
Robin! thou art gay and free,
Happy in thy liberty.

Hunger never shall distress thee
While my cates one crumb afford;
Colds nor cramps shall e'er oppress thee;
Come and share my humble board:
Robin! come and live with me,
Live—yet still at liberty.

Soon shall Spring in smiles and blushes
Steal upon the blooming year;
Then, amid the enamour'd bushes,
Thy sweet song shall warble clear:
Then shall I, too, join with thee,
Swell the Hymn of Liberty.

Should some rough unfeeling Dobbin,
In this iron-hearted age,
Seize thee on thy nest, my Robin!
And confine thee in a cage,
Then, poor prisoner! think of me,
Think—and sigh for liberty.

Feb. 2. 1795.

MOONLIGHT.

Gentle Moon! a captive calls;
Gentle Moon! awake, arise!
Gild the prison's sullen walls;
Gild the tears that drown his eyes.

Throw thy veil of clouds aside;
Let those smiles that light the pole
Through the liquid ether glide,—
Glide into the mourner's soul.

Cheer his melancholy mind;
Soothe his sorrows, heal his smart:
Let thine influence, pure, refined,
Cool the fever of his heart.

Chase despondency and care,
Fiends that haunt the guilty breast:
Conscious virtue braves despair,
Triumphs most when most oppress'd.

Now I feel thy power benign
Swell my bosom, thrill my veins,
As thy beams the brightest shine
When the deepest midnight reigns.

Say, fair shepherdess of night!
Who thy starry flock dost lead
Unto rills of living light,
On the blue ethereal mead;

At this moment, dost thou see,
From thine elevated sphere,
One kind friend who thinks of me,—
Thinks, and drops a feeling tear?

On a brilliant beam convey
This soft whisper to his breast,—
“Wipe that generous drop away;
He for whom it falls is blest.

“Blest with Freedom unconfined,
Dungeons cannot hold the Soul:
Who can chain the immortal Mind?
—None but He who spans the pole.”

Fancy, too, the nimble fairy,
With her subtle magic spell,
In romantic visions airy
Steals the captive from his cell.

144

On her moonlight pinions borne,
Far he flies from grief and pain;
Never, never to be torn
From his friends and home again.

Stay, thou dear delusion! stay;
Beauteous bubble! do not break;
Ah! the pageant flits away;
—Who from such a dream would wake?

March 7. 1795.

THE CAPTIVE NIGHTINGALE.

Nocturnal Silence reigning,
A Nightingale began
In his cold cage complaining
Of cruel-hearted Man:
His drooping pinions shiver'd,
Like wither'd moss so dry;
His heart with anguish quiver'd,
And sorrow dimm'd his eye.

His grief in soothing slumbers
No balmy power could steep;
So sweetly flow'd his numbers,
The music seem'd to weep.
Unfeeling Sons of Folly!
To you the Mourner sung;
While tender melancholy
Inspired his plaintive tongue.

“Now reigns the moon in splendour
Amid the heaven serene;
A thousand stars attend her,
And glitter round their queen:
Sweet hours of inspiration!
When I, the still night long,
Was wont to pour my passion,
And breathe my soul in Song.

“But now, delicious season!
In vain thy charms invite;
Entomb'd in this dire prison,
I sicken at the sight.
This morn, this vernal morning,
The happiest bird was I
That hail'd the sun returning,
Or swam the liquid sky.

“In yonder breezy bowers,
Among the foliage green,
I spent my tuneful hours,
In solitude serene:
There soft Melodia's beauty
First fired my ravish'd eye;
I vow'd eternal duty:
She look'd—half kind, half shy!

“My plumes with ardour trembling
I flutter'd, sigh'd, and sung;
The fair one, still dissembling,
Refused to trust my tongue:
A thousand tricks inventing,
A thousand arts I tried;
Till the sweet nymph, relenting,
Confess'd herself my bride.

“Deep in the grove retiring,
To choose our secret seat,
We found an oak aspiring,
Beneath whose mossy feet,
Where the tall herbage swelling
Had form'd a green alcove,
We built our humble dwelling,
And hallow'd it with love.

“Sweet scene of vanish'd pleasure!
This day, this fatal day,
My little ones, my treasure,
My spouse, were stolen away!
I saw the precious plunder
All in a napkin bound;
Then, smit with human thunder,
I flutter'd on the ground!

“O Man! beneath whose vengeance
All Nature bleeding lies!
Who charged thine impious engines
With lightning from the skies?
Ah! is thy bosom iron?
Does it thine heart enchain?
As these cold bars environ,
And captive me detain?

“Where are my offspring tender?
Where is my widow'd mate?—
Thou Guardian Moon! defend her!
Ye Stars! avert their fate!—

145

O'erwhelm'd with killing anguish,
In iron cage, forlorn,
I see my poor babes languish:
I hear their mother mourn!

“O Liberty! inspire me,
And eagle-strength supply!
Thou, Love almighty! fire me!
I'll burst my prison—or die!”
He sung, and forward bounded;
He broke the yielding door!
But, with the shock confounded,
Fell lifeless on the floor!

Farewell, then, Philomela;
Poor martyr'd bird! adieu!
There's one, my charming fellow!
Who thinks, who feels, like you:
The bard that pens thy story,
Amidst a prison's gloom,
Sighs—not for wealth, nor glory—
But freedom, or thy tomb!

Feb. 12. 1796.

ODE TO THE EVENING STAR.

Hail! resplendent Evening Star!
Brightly beaming from afar;
Fairest gem of purest light
In the diadem of night.

Now thy mild and modest ray
Lights to rest the weary day,
While the lustre of thine eye
Sweetly trembles through the sky;
As the closing shadows roll
Deep and deeper round the pole,
Lo! thy kindling legions bright
Steal insensibly to light;
Till, magnificent and clear,
Shines the spangled hemisphere.

In these calmly pleasing hours,
When the soul expands her powers,
And, on wings of contemplation,
Ranges round the vast creation;
When the mind's immortal eye
Bounds with rapture to the sky,
And in one triumphant glance
Comprehends the wide expanse,
Where stars, and suns, and systems shine,
Faint beams of majesty divine;—
Now, when visionary sleep
Lulls the world in slumbers deep;
When silence, awfully profound,
Breathes solemn inspiration round,—
Queen of Beauty! queen of stars!
Smile upon these frowning bars;
Softly sliding from thy sphere,
Condescend to visit here.

In the circle of this cell
No tormenting demons dwell;
Round these walls in wild despair
No agonising spectres glare:
Here reside no furies gaunt;
No tumultuous passions haunt;
Fell revenge, nor treachery base;
Guilt, with bold unblushing face;
Pale remorse, within whose breast
Scorpion-horrors murder rest;
Coward malice, hatred dire,
Lawless rapine, dark desire;
Pining envy, frantic ire;
Never, never, dare intrude
On this pensive solitude:
—But a sorely-hunted deer
Finds a sad asylum here;
One whose panting sides have been
Pierced with many an arrow keen;
One whose deeply-wounded heart
Bears the scars of many a dart.
In the herd he vainly mingled;
From the herd, when harshly singled,
Too proud to fly, he scorn'd to yield;
Too weak to fight, he lost the field:
Assail'd, and captive led away,
He fell a poor inglorious prey.

Deign then, gentle Star! to shed
Thy soft lustre round mine head;
With cheering radiance gild the room,
And melt the melancholy gloom.
When I see thee from thy sphere
Trembling like a brilliant tear,
Shed a sympathising ray
On the pale expiring day,
Then a welcome emanation
Of reviving consolation,

146

Swifter than the lightning's dart,
Glances through my glowing heart;
Soothes my sorrows, lulls my woes,
In a soft, serene repose.
Like the undulating motion
Of the deep, majestic ocean,
When the whispering billows glide
Smooth along the tranquil tide;
Calmly thus, prepared, resign'd,
Swells the independent mind.

But when through clouds thy beauteous light
Streams in splendour on the night,
Hope, like thee, my leading star,
Through the sullen gloom of care,
Sheds an animating ray
On the dark, bewildering way.
Starting, then, with sweet surprise,
Tears of transport swell mine eyes;
Wildly through each throbbing vein,
Rapture thrills with pleasing pain:
All my fretful fears are banish'd,
All my dreams of anguish vanish'd;
Energy my soul inspires,
And wakes the Muse's hallow'd fires;
Rich in melody, my tongue
Warbles forth spontaneous song.

Thus my prison moments gay
Swiftly, sweetly, glide away;
Till, the last long day declining,
O'er yon tower thy glory, shining,
Shall the welcome signal be
Of to-morrow's liberty!
Liberty, triumphant borne
On the rosy wings of morn,
Liberty shall then return!

Rise to set the captive free;
Rise, O sun of Liberty!

Feb. 29. 1796.

SOLILOQUY OF A WATER-WAGTAIL ON THE WALLS OF YORK CASTLE.

On the walls that guard my prison,
Swelling with fantastic pride,
Brisk and merry as the season,
I a feather'd coxcomb spied:
When the little hopping elf
Gaily thus amused himself.

“Hear your sovereign's proclamation,
All good subjects, young and old:
I'm the Lord of the Creation;
I—a Water-Wagtail bold!
All around, and all you see,
All the world, was made for me!

“Yonder sun, so proudly shining,
Rises—when I leave my nest;
And, behind the hills declining,
Sets—when I retire to rest:
Morn and evening, thus you see,
Day and night, were made for me!

“Vernal gales to love invite me;
Summer sheds for me her beams;
Autumn's jovial scenes delight me;
Winter paves with ice my streams:
All the year is mine, you see;
Seasons change, like moons, for me!

“On the heads of giant mountains,
Or beneath the shady trees,
By the banks of warbling fountains,
I enjoy myself at ease:
Hills and valleys, thus you see,
Groves and rivers, made for me!

“Boundless are my vast dominions;
I can hop, or swim, or fly;
When I please, my towering pinions
Trace my empire through the sky:
Air and elements, you see,
Heaven and earth, were made for me!

“Birds and insects, beasts and fishes,
All their humble distance keep;
Man, subservient to my wishes,
Sows the harvest which I reap:
Mighty man himself, you see,
All that breathe, were made for me!

“'Twas for my accommodation
Nature rose when I was born;
Should I die—the whole creation
Back to nothing would return:
Sun, moon, stars, the world, you see,
Sprung—exist—will fall—with me!”

147

Here the pretty prattler, ending,
Spread his wings to soar away;
But a cruel Hawk, descending,
Pounced him up—an helpless prey:
—Couldst thou not, poor Wagtail! see
That the Hawk was made for thee?

April 15. 1796.

THE PLEASURES OF IMPRISONMENT.

IN TWO EPISTLES TO A FRIEND.

Epistle I.

You ask, my friend, and well you may,
You ask me how I spend the day.
I'll tell you, in unstudied rhyme,
How wisely I befool my time:
Expect not wit nor fancy, then,
In this effusion of my pen;
These idle lines—they might be worse—
Are simple prose, in simple verse.

Each morning, then, at five o'clock,
The adamantine doors unlock;
Bolts, bars, and portals, crash and thunder;
The gates of iron burst asunder:
Hinges that creak, and keys that jingle,
With clattering chains in concert mingle;
So sweet the din, your dainty ear
For joy would break its drum to hear;
While my dull organs, at the sound,
Rest in tranquillity profound:
Fantastic dreams amuse my brain,
And waft my spirit home again.
Though captive all day long, 'tis true,
At night I am as free as you;
Not ramparts high, nor dungeons deep,
Can hold me when I'm fast asleep.

But every thing is good in season;
I dream at large—and wake in prison.
Yet think not, sir, I lie too late;
I rise as early even as eight:
Ten hours of drowsiness are plenty,
For any man, in four-and-twenty.
You smile—and yet 'tis nobly done,
I'm but five hours behind the sun!

When dress'd, I to the yard repair,
And breakfast on the pure fresh air;
But though this choice Castalian cheer
Keeps both the head and stomach clear,
For reasons strong enough with me,
I mend the meal with toast and tea.
Now air and fame, as poets sing,
Are both the same, the self-same thing.
Yet bards are not chameleons quite,
And heavenly food is very light:
Whoever dined or supp'd on fame,
And went to bed upon a name?

Breakfast despatched, I sometimes read,
To clear the vapours from my head;
For books are magic charms, I ween,
Both for the crotchets and the spleen.
When genius, wisdom, wit abound,
Where sound is sense, and sense is sound;
When art and nature both combine,
And live and breathe in every line;
The reader glows along the page
With all the author's native rage!
But books there are with nothing fraught,—
Ten thousand words, and ne'er a thought;
Where periods without period crawl,
Like caterpillars on a wall,
That fall to climb, and climb to fall;
While still their efforts only tend
To keep them from their journey's end.
The readers yawn with pure vexation,
And nod—but not with approbation.
In such a fog of dulness lost,
Poor patience must give up the ghost:
Not Argus' eyes awake could keep;
Even Death might read himself to sleep.

At half-past ten, or thereabout,
My eyes are all upon the scout,
To see the lounging post-boy come
With letters or with news from home.
Believe it, on a captive's word,
Although the doctrine seem absurd,
The paper messengers of friends
For absence almost make amends;—
But if you think I jest or lie,
Come to York Castle, sir, and try.

Sometimes to fairy-land I rove:—
Those iron rails become a grove;
These stately buildings fall away
To moss-grown cottages of clay;

148

Debtors are changed to jolly swains,
Who pipe and whistle on the plains;
Yon felons grim, with fetters bound,
Are satyrs wild with garlands crown'd;
Their clanking chains are wreaths of flowers;
Their horrid cells ambrosial bowers;
The oaths, expiring on their tongues,
Are metamorphosed into songs:
While wretched female prisoners, lo!
Are Dian's nymphs of virgin snow.
Those hideous walls with verdure shoot;
These pillars bend with blushing fruit;
That dunghill swells into a mountain:
The pump becomes a purling fountain;
The noisome smoke of yonder mills,
The circling air with fragrance fills;
This horse-pond spreads into a lake,
And swans of ducks and geese I make;
Sparrows are changed to turtle-doves,
That bill and coo their pretty loves;
Wagtails, turn'd thrushes, charm the vales,
And tomtits sing like nightingales.
No more the wind through key-holes whistles,
But sighs on beds of pinks and thistles;
The rattling rain that beats without,
And gurgles down the leaden spout,
In light delicious dew distils,
And melts away in amber rills;—
Elysium rises on the green,
And health and beauty crown the scene.

Then, by the enchantress Fancy led,
On violet-banks I lay my head;
Legions of radiant forms arise,
In fair array, before mine eyes;
Poetic visions gild my brain,
And melt in liquid air again;
As in a magic-lantern clear,
Fantastic images appear,
That, beaming from the spectred glass,
In beautiful succession pass,
Yet steal the lustre of their light
From the deep shadow of the night:
Thus, in the darkness of my head,
Ten thousand shining things are bred,
That borrow splendour from the gloom,
As glow-worms twinkle in a tomb.

But lest these glories should confound me,
Kind Dulness draws her curtain round me;
The visions vanish in a trice,
And I awake as cold as ice:
Nothing remains of all the vapour,
Save—what I send you—ink and paper.

Thus flow my morning hours along,
Smooth as the numbers of my song:
Yet, let me wander as I will,
I feel I am a prisoner still.
Thus Robin, with the blushing breast,
Is ravish'd from his little nest
By barbarous boys, who bind his leg
To make him flutter round a peg:
See, the glad captive spreads his wings,
Mounts, in a moment mounts and sings,
When suddenly the cruel chain
Twitches him back to earth again!
—The clock strikes one—I can't delay,
For dinner comes but once a day:
At present, worthy friend, farewell;
But by to-morrow's post I'll tell
How, during these half-dozen moons,
I cheat the lazy afternoons.

June 13. 1796.

Epistle II.

In this sweet place, where freedom reigns,
Secured by bolts, and snug in chains;
Where innocence and guilt together
Roost like two turtles of a feather;
Where debtors safe at anchor lie
From saucy duns and bailiffs sly;
Where highwaymen and robbers stout
Would, rather than break in, break out;
Where all's so guarded and recluse,
That none his liberty can lose;—
Here each may, as his means afford,
Dine like a pauper or a lord,
And those who can't the cost defray
May live to dine another day.

Now let us ramble o'er the green,
To see and hear what's heard and seen;
To breathe the air, enjoy the light,
And hail yon sun, who shines as bright
Upon the dungeon and the gallows
As on York Minster or Kew Palace.
And here let us the scene review:—
That's the old castle,—this the new;

149

Yonder the felons walk,—and there
The lady-prisoners take the air;
Behind are solitary cells,
Where hermits live like snails in shells;
There stands the chapel for good people;
That black balcony is the steeple;
How gaily spins the weather-cock!
How proudly shines the crazy clock
A clock whose wheels eccentric run
More like my head than like the sun:
And yet it shows us, right or wrong,
The days are only twelve hours long;
Though captives often reckon here
Each day a month, each month a year.
There honest William stands in state,
The porter, at the horrid gate:
Yet no ill-natured soul is he,—
Entrance to all the world is free;
One thing, indeed, is rather hard,
Egress is frequently debarr'd:
Of all the joys within that reign,
There's none like—getting out again!
Across the green, behold the court,
Where jargon reigns and wigs resort;
Where bloody tongues fight bloodless battles,
For life and death, for straws and rattles;
Where juries yawn their patience out,
And judges dream in spite of gout.
There, on the outside of the door
(As sang a wicked wag of yore),
Stands Mother Justice, tall and thin,
Who never yet hath ventured in:
The cause, my friend, may soon be shown,
The lady was a stepping-stone,
Till—though the metamorphose odd is—
A chisel made the block a goddess:
—“Odd!” did I say?—I'm wrongt his time;
But I was hamper'd for a rhyme:
Justice at—I could tell you where—
Is just the same as justice there.

But lo! my frisking dog attends,
The kindest of four-footed friends;
Brim-full of giddiness and mirth,
He is the prettiest fool on earth.
The rogue is twice a squirrel's size,
With short snub nose and big black eyes;
A cloud of brown adorns his tail,
That curls and serves him for a sail;
The same deep auburn dyes his ears,
That never were abridged by shears:
While white around, as Lapland snows,
His hair in soft profusion flows;
Waves on his breast, and plumes his feet
With glossy fringe, like feathers fleet.
A thousand antic tricks he plays,
And looks at one a thousand ways;
His wit, if he has any, lies
Somewhere between his tail and eyes;
Sooner the light those eyes will fail,
Than Billy cease to wag that tail.

And yet the fellow ne'er is safe
From the tremendous beak of Ralph,—
A raven grim, in black and blue,
As arch a knave as e'er you knew;
Who hops about with broken pinions,
And thinks these walls his own dominions.
This wag a mortal foe to Bill is;
They fight like Hector and Achilles:
Bold Billy runs with all his might,
And conquers, Parthian-like, in flight;
While Ralph his own importance feels,
And wages endless war with heels:
Horses and dogs, and geese and deer,
He slily pinches in the rear;
They start, surprised with sudden pain,
While honest Ralph sheers off again.

A melancholy stag appears,
With rueful look and flagging ears;
A feeble, lean, consumptive elf,
The very picture of myself!
My ghost-like form, and new-moon phiz,
Are just the counterparts of his:
Blasted like me by fortune's frown;
Like me, twice hunted, twice run down!
Like me pursued, almost to death,
He's come to gaol to save his breath!
Still, on his painful limbs, are seen
The scars where worrying dogs have been;
Still, on his woe-imprinted face,
I weep a broken heart to trace.
Daily the mournful wretch I feed
With crumbs of comfort and of bread;
But man, false man! so well he knows,
He deems the species all his foes:
In vain I smile to soothe his fear,
He will not, dare not, come too near;

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He lingers—looks—and fain he would—
Then strains his neck to reach the food.
Oft as his plaintive looks I see,
A brother's bowels yearn in me.
What rocks and tempests yet await
Both him and me, we leave to fate:
We know, by past experience taught,
That innocence availeth nought:
I feel, and 'tis my proudest boast,
That conscience is itself a host:
While this inspires my swelling breast,
Let all forsake me—I'm at rest;
Ten thousand deaths, in every nerve,
I'd rather suffer than deserve.

But yonder comes the victim's wife,
A dappled doe, all fire and life:
She trips along with gallant pace,
Her limbs alert, her motion grace:
Soft as the moonlight fairies bound,
Her footsteps scarcely kiss the ground;
Gently she lifts her fair brown head,
And licks my hand, and begs for bread:
I pat her forehead, stroke her neck,
She starts and gives a timid squeak;
Then, while her eye with brilliance burns,
The fawning animal returns;
Pricks her bob-tail, and waves her ears,
And happier than a queen appears:
—Poor beast! from fell ambition free,
And all the woes of liberty;
Born in a gaol, a prisoner bred,
No dreams of hunting rack thine head;
Ah! mayst thou never pass these bounds
To see the world—and feel the hounds!
Still all her beauty, all her art,
Have fail'd to win her husband's heart:
Her lambent eyes, and lovely chest;
Her swan-white neck, and ermine breast;
Her taper legs, and spotty hide,
So softly, delicately pied,
In vain their fond allurements spread,—
To love and joy her spouse is dead.

But lo! the evening shadows fall
Broader and browner from the wall;
A warning voice, like curfew-bell,
Commands each captive to his cell;
My faithful dog and I retire,
To play and chatter by the fire:
Soon comes a turnkey with “Good night, sir!”
And bolts the door with all his might, sir:
Then leisurely to bed I creep,
And sometimes wake—and sometimes sleep.

These are the joys that reign in prison;
And if I'm happy, 'tis with reason:
Yet still this prospect o'er the rest
Makes every blessing doubly blest,—
That soon these pleasures will be vanish'd,
And I from all these comforts banish'd!

June 14. 1796.

THE BRAMIN.

EXTRACT FROM CANTO I.

Once, on the mountain's balmy lap reclined,
The sage unlock'd the treasures of his mind:
Pure from his lips sublime instruction came,
As the blest altar breathes celestial flame;
A band of youths and virgins round him press'd,
Whom thus the prophet and the sage address'd:—

“Through the wide universe's boundless range,
All that exist decay, revive, and change:
No atom torpid or inactive lies;
A being, once created, never dies.
The waning moon, when quench'd in shades of night,
Renews her youth with all the charms of light:
The flowery beauties of the blooming year
Shrink from the shivering blast, and disappear;
Yet, warm'd with quickening showers of genial rain,
Spring from their graves, and purple all the plain.
As day the night, and night succeeds the day,
So death re-animates, so lives decay:
Like billows on the undulating main,
The swelling fall, the falling swell again;
Thus on the tide of time, inconstant, roll
The dying body and the living soul.
In every animal, inspired with breath,
The flowers of life produce the seeds of death;—
The seeds of death, though scatter'd in the tomb,
Spring with new vigour, vegetate and bloom.

“When, wasted down to dust, the creature dies,
Quick from its cell the enfranchised spirit flies;

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Fills, with fresh energy, another form,
And towers an elephant, or glides a worm;
The awful lion's royal shape assumes;
The fox's subtlety, or peacock's plumes;
Swims, like an eagle, in the eye of noon,
Or wails, a screech-owl, to the deaf cold moon;
Haunts the dread brakes where serpents hiss and glare,
Or hums, a glittering insect in the air.
The illustrious souls of great and virtuous men,
In noble animals revive again;
But base and vicious spirits wind their way
In scorpions, vultures, sharks, and beasts of prey.
The fair, the gay, the witty, and the brave,
The fool, the coward, courtier, tyrant, slave,
Each, in congenial animals, shall find
A home and kindred for his wandering mind.

“Even the cold body, when enshrined in earth,
Rises again in vegetable birth:
From the vile ashes of the bad, proceeds
A baneful harvest of pernicious weeds;
The relics of the good, awaked by showers,
Peep from the lap of death, and live in flowers,
Sweet modest flowers, that blush along the vale,
Whose fragrant lips embalm the passing gale.”

EXTRACT FROM CANTO II.

[OMITTED]

“Now, mark the words these dying lips impart,
And wear this grand memorial round your heart:
All that inhabit ocean, air, or earth,
From one eternal sire derive their birth.
The Hand that built the palace of the sky
Form'd the light wings that decorate a fly;
The Power that wheels the circling planets round
Rears every infant floweret on the ground;
That Bounty which the mightiest beings share
Feeds the least gnat that gilds the evening air.
Thus all the wild inhabitants of woods,
Children of air, and tenants of the floods,—
All, all are equal, independent, free,
And all the heirs of immortality!
For all that live and breathe have once been men,
And, in succession, will be such again:
Even you, in turn, that human shape must change,
And through ten thousand forms of being range.

“Ah! then, refrain your brethren's blood to spill,
And, till you can create, forbear to kill!
Oft as a guiltless fellow-creature dies,
The blood of innocence for vengeance cries:
Even grim rapacious savages of prey,
Presume not, save in self-defence, to slay;
What though to Heaven their forfeit lives they owe,
Hath Heaven commission'd thee to deal the blow?
Crush not the feeble, inoffensive worm,
Thy sister's spirit wears that humble form!
Why should thy cruel arrow smite yon bird?
In him thy brother's plaintive song is heard.
When the poor harmless kid, all trembling, lies,
And begs his little life with infant cries,
Think, ere you take the throbbing victim's breath,
You doom a dear, an only, child to death.
When at the ring the beauteous heifer stands,
Stay, monster! stay those parricidal hands;
Canst thou not, in that mild dejected face,
The sacred features of thy mother trace?
When to the stake the generous bull you lead,
Tremble—ah! tremble—lest your father bleed.
Let not your anger on your dog descend,
The faithful animal was once your friend;
The friend whose courage snatch'd you from the grave,
When wrapp'd in flames or sinking in the wave.
Rash, impious youth! renounce that horrid knife;
Spare the sweet antelope!—ah, spare—thy wife!
In the meek victim's tear-illumined eyes
See the soft image of thy consort rise;
Such as she is when by romantic streams
Her spirit greets thee in delightful dreams;—
Not as she look'd when blighted in her bloom;
Not as she lies all pale in yonder tomb:
That mournful tomb, where all thy joys repose!
That hallow'd tomb, where all thy griefs shall close.

“While yet I sing, the weary king of light
Resigns his sceptre to the queen of night;
Unnumber'd orbs of living fire appear,
And roll in glittering grandeur o'er the sphere.
Perhaps the soul, released from earthly ties,
A thousand ages hence may mount the skies;
Through suns and planets, stars and systems, range,
In each new forms assume, relinquish, change;
From age to age, from world to world, aspire,
And climb the scale of being higher and higher:
But who these awful mysteries dare explore?
Pause, O my soul! and tremble and adore.

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“There is a Power, all other powers above,
Whose name is Goodness, and His nature Love;
Who call'd the infant universe to light,
From central nothing and circumfluent night.
On His great providence all worlds depend,
As trembling atoms to their centre tend;
In nature's face His glory shines confess'd,
She wears His sacred image on her breast;
His spirit breathes in every living soul;
His bounty feeds, His presence fills, the whole:
Though seen, invisible—though felt, unknown;
All that exist, exist in Him alone.
But who the wonders of His hand can trace
Through the dread ocean of unfathom'd space?
When from the shore we lift our fainting eyes,
Where boundless scenes of Godlike grandeur rise,
Like sparkling atoms in the noontide rays,
Worlds, stars, and suns, and universes, blaze:
Yet these transcendent monuments that shine,
Eternal miracles of skill divine,
These, and ten thousand more, are only still
The shadow of His power, the transcript of His will.”

April 14. 1796.

A TALE TOO TRUE

[_]

Being a Supplement to the “Prison Amusements,” originally published under the name of Paul Positive, in which many of the Author's Juvenile Verses were composed. The following were written at Scarborough, whither he had retired, on being liberated from York Castle, for the recovery of his health, before he returned home. They are dated July 23. 1796, and were literally a summer-day's labour.

One beautiful morning, when Paul was a child,
And went with a satchel to school,
The rogue play'd the truant, which shows he was wild,
And, though little, a very great fool.

He came to a cottage that grew on the moor,
No mushroom was ever so strong;
'Twas snug as a mouse-trap; and close by the door
A river ran rippling along.

The cot was embosom'd in rook-nested trees,
The chestnut, the elm, and the oak;
Geese gabbled in concert with bagpiping bees,
While softly ascended the smoke.

At the door sat a damsel, a sweet little girl,
Array'd in a petticoat green;
Her skin was lovely as mother-of-pearl,
And milder than moonlight her mien.

She sang as she knotted a garland of flowers,
Right mellowly warbled her tongue;
Such strains in Elysium's romantical bowers,
To soothe the departed, are sung.

Paul stood like a gander, he stood like himself,
Eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, open'd wide;
When, suddenly rising, the pretty young elf
The wonder-struck wanderer spied.

She started and trembled, she blush'd and she smiled,
Then dropping a courtesy she said,
“Pray, what brought you hither, my dear little child?
Did your legs run away with your head?”

“Yes! yes!” stammer'd Paul, and he made a fine bow,
At least 'twas the finest he could,
Though the lofty-bred belles of St. James's, I trow,
Would have call'd it a bow made of wood.

No matter, the dimple-cheek'd damsel was pleased,
And modestly gave him her wrist;
Paul took the fine present, and tenderly squeezed,
As if 'twere a wasp in his fist.

Then into the cottage she led the young fool,
Who stood all aghast to behold
The lass's grim mother, who managed a school,
A beldame, a witch, and a scold.

Her eyes were as red as two lobsters when boil'd,
Her complexion the colour of straw;
Though she grinn'd like a death's head whenever she smiled,
She show'd not a tooth in her jaw.

Her body was shrivell'd and dried like a kecks,
Her arms were all veins, bone, and skin;
And then she'd a beard, sir, in spite of her sex,
I don't know how long, on her chin.

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Her dress was as mournful as mourning could be,
Black sackcloth, bleach'd white with her tears;
For a widow, fair ladies! a widow was she,
Most dismally stricken in years.

The charms of her youth, if she ever had any,
Were all under total eclipse;
While the charms of her daughter, who truly had many,
Were only unfolding their lips.

Thus, far in a wilderness, bleak and forlorn,
When winter deflowers the year,
All hoary and horrid, I've seen an old thorn,
In icicle trappings appear:

While a sweet-smiling snow-drop enamels its root,
Like the morning-star gladdening the sky;
Or an elegant crocus peeps out at its foot,
As blue as Miss Who-ye-will's eye.

“Dear mother!” the damsel exclaim'd with a sigh,
“I have brought you a poor little wretch,
Your victim and mine,”—but a tear from her eye
Wash'd away all the rest of her speech.

The beldame then mounting her spectacles on,
Like an arch o'er the bridge of her nose,
Examined the captive, and, crying “Well done!”
Bade him welcome with twenty dry blows.

Paul fell down astounded, and only not dead,
For death was not quite within call;
Recovering, he found himself in a warm bed,
And in a warm fever and all.

Reclined on her elbow, to anguish a prey,
The maiden, in lovely distress,
Sate weeping her soul from her eyelids away:
How could the fair mourner do less?

But when she perceived him reviving again,
She caroll'd a sonnet so sweet,
The captive, transported, forgot all his pain,
And presently fell at her feet.

All rapture and fondness, all folly and joy,
“Dear damsel! for your sake,” he cried,
“I'll be your cross mother's own dutiful boy,
And you shall one day be my bride.”

“For shame!” quoth the nymph, though she look'd the reverse,
“Such nonsense I cannot approve;
Too young we're to wed.”—Paul said, “So much the worse;
But are we too young, then, to love?”

The lady replied in a language that speaks
Not unto the ear but the eye;
The language that blushes through eloquent cheeks,
When modesty looks very sly.

Our true lovers lived—for the fable saith true—
As merry as larks in their nest,
Who are learning to sing while the hawk is in view,
—The ignorant always are blest.

Through valleys and meadows they wander'd by day,
And warbled and whistled along;
So liquidly glided their moments away,
Their life was a galloping song.

When they twitter'd their notes from the top of a hill,
If November did not look like May,
If rocks did not caper, nor rivers stand still,
The asses at least did not bray.

If the trees did not leap nor the mountains advance,
They were deafer than bailiffs, 'tis clear;
If sun, moon, and stars, did not lead up a dance,
They wanted a musical ear.

But sometimes the beldame, cross, crazy, and old,
Would thunder, and threaten, and swear;
Expose them to tempests, to heat, and to cold,
To danger, fatigue, and despair.

For wisdom, she argued, could only be taught
By bitter experience to fools;
And she acted, as every good school-mistress ought
Quite up to the beard of her rules.

Her school, by-the-bye, was the noblest on earth
For mortals to study themselves;
There many great folks, who were folios by birth,
She cut down to pitiful twelves.

Her rod, like Death's scythe, in her levelling hand
Bow'd down rich, poor, wicked, and just;

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Kings, queens, popes, and heroes, the touch of her wand
Could crumble to primitive dust.

At length, in due season, the planets that reign,
By chance or some similar art,
Commanded the damsel to honour her swain
With her hand as the key to her heart.

The grisly old mother then bless'd the fond pair;
—“While you live, O my darlings!” she cried,
“My favours unask'd for you always shall share,
And cleave like two ribs to my side.

“Poor Paul is a blockhead in marrow and bone,
Whom nought but my rod can make wise;
The fellow will only, when all's said and done,
Be just fit to live when he dies.”

The witch was a prophetess, all must allow,
And Paul a strange moon-stricken youth,
Who somewhere had pick'd up, I'll not tell you how,
A sad knack of telling the truth.

His sorrows and sufferings his consort may paint,
In colours of water and fire;
She saw him in prison, desponding and faint,
She saw him in act to expire:

Then, melting her voice to the tenderest tone,
The lovely enthusiast began
To sing in sweet numbers the comforts unknown,
That solace the soul of the man,

Who, hated, forsaken, tormented, opprest,
And wrestling with anguish severe,
Can turn his eye inward, and view in his breast
A conscience unclouded and clear.

The captive look'd up with a languishing eye,
Half quench'd in a tremulous tear;
He saw the meek Angel of Hope standing by,
He heard her solicit his ear.

Her strain then exalting, and swelling her lyre,
The triumphs of patience she sung,
While passions of music and language of fire
Flow'd full and sublime from her tongue.

At length the gay morning of liberty shone,
At length the dread portals flew wide;
Then, hailing each other with transports unknown,
The captive escaped with his bride.

Behold in a fable the Poet's own life,
From which this lean moral we draw,—
The Muse is Paul Positive's nightingale-wife,
Misfortune his mother-in-law.

THOUGHTS ON WHEELS.

“Crooked cannot be made straight.”
Ecclesiastes, i. 15.

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No. I. THE COMBAT.

Of old when fiery warriors met,
On edge of steel their lives were set;
Eye watching eye, shield crossing shield,
Foot wedged to foot, they fought the field,
Dealt and withstood as many strokes
As might have fell'd two forest-oaks,
Till one, between the harness-joint,
Felt the resistless weapon's point
Quick through his heart,—and in a flood
Pour'd his hot spirit with his blood.

The victor, rising from the blow
That laid his brave assailant low,
Then blush'd not from his height to bend,
Foully a gallant deed to end;
But whirl'd in fetters round the plain,
Whirl'd at his chariot-wheels, the slain;
Beneath the silent curse of eyes
That look'd for vengeance to the skies;
While shame, that could not reach the dead,
Pour'd its whole vial on his head.

Who falls in honourable strife,
Surrenders nothing but his life;
Who basely triumphs, casts away
The glory of the well-won day:
—Rather than feel the joy he feels,
Commend me to his chariot-wheels.

No. II. THE CAR OF JUGGERNAUT.

On plains beneath the morning star,
Lo! Juggernaut's stupendous car;
So high and menacing its size,
The Tower of Babel seems to rise;
Darkening the air, its shadow spreads
O'er thrice a hundred thousand heads;
Darkening the soul, it strikes a gloom,
Dense as the night beyond the tomb.
Full in mid-heaven, when mortal eye
Up this huge fabric climbs the sky,
The Idol scowls, in dragon-pride,
Like Satan's conscience deified:
—Satan himself would scorn to ape
Divinity in such a shape.

Breaking the billows of the crowd,
As countless, turbulent, and loud
As surges on the windward shore,
That madly foam and idly roar;
The' unwieldy wain compels its course,
Crushing resistance down by force;
It creaks, and groans, and grinds along
'Midst shrieks and prayers,—'midst dance and song;
With orgies in the eye of noon,
Such as would turn to blood the moon;
Impieties so bold, so black,
The stars to shun them would reel back;
And secret horrors, which the Sun
Would put on sackcloth to see done.

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Thrice happy they, whose headlong souls,
Where'er the' enormous ruin rolls,
Cast their frail bodies on the stones,
Pave its red track with crashing bones,
And pant and struggle for the fate—
To die beneath the sacred weight.

“O fools and mad!” your Christians cry:
Yet wise, methinks, are those who die:
For me,—if Juggernaut were God,—
Rather than writhe beneath his rod;
Rather than live his devotee,
And bow to such a brute the knee;
Rather than be his favourite priest,
Wallow in wantonness, and feast
On tears and blood, on groans and cries,
The fume and fat of sacrifice;
Rather than share his love,—or wrath;
I'd fling my carcass in his path,
And almost bless his name to feel
The murdering mercy of his wheel.

No III. THE INQUISITION.

There was in Christendom, of yore,
—And would to heaven it were no more!—
There was an Inquisition-Court,
Where priestcraft made the demons sport:
Priestcraft,—in form a giant monk,
With wine of Rome's pollutions drunk,
Like captive Samson, bound and blind,
In chains and darkness of the mind,—
There show'd such feats of strength and skill
As made it charity to kill,
And well the blow of death might pass
For what he call'd it—coup de grace;
While, in his little hell on earth,
The foul fiends quaked amidst their mirth:
But not like him, who to the skies
Turn'd the dark embers of his eyes,
(Where lately burn'd a fire divine,
Where still it burn'd, but could not shine,)
And won by violence of prayer
(Hope's dying accents in despair),
Power to demolish, from its base,
Dagon's proud fane, on Dagon's race;
Not thus like Samson;—false of heart,
The tonsured juggler play'd his part,
God's law in God's own name made void,
Men for their Saviour's sake destroy'd,
Made pure religion his pretence
To rid the earth of innocence;
While spirits from the' infernal flood
Cool'd their parch'd tongues in martyrs' blood,
And half forgot their stings and flames
In conning, at those hideous games,
Lessons,—which he who taught should know
How well they had been learn'd below.

Among the engines of his power
Most dreaded in the trying hour,
When impotent were fire and steel,
All but almighty was the Wheel,
Whose harrowing revolution wrung
Confession from the slowest tongue;
From joints unlock'd made secrets start,
Twined with the cordage of the heart;
From muscles in convulsion drew
Knowledge the sufferer never knew;
From failing flesh, in Nature's spite,
Brought deeds that ne'er were done to light;
From snapping sinews wrench'd the lie,
That gain'd the victim leave to die;
When self-accused,—condemn'd at length,
His only crime was want of strength;
From holy hands with joy he turn'd,
And kiss'd the stake at which he burn'd.
But from the man, of soul sublime,
Who lived above the world of time,
Fervent in faith, in conscience clear,
Who knew to love,—but not to fear;
When every artifice of pain
Was wasted on his limbs in vain,
And baffled cruelty could find
No hidden passage to his mind,
The Wheel extorted nought in death,
Except—forgiveness, and his breath.

Such a victorious death to die
Were prompt translation to the sky:
—Yet, with the weakest, I would meet
Racks, scourges, flames, and count them sweet;
Nay, might I choose, I would not 'scape
“The question,” put in any shape,
Rather than sit in judgment there,
Where the stern bigot fills the chair:
—Rather than turn his torturing Wheel.
Give me its utmost stretch to feel.

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No. IV. THE STATE LOTTERY.

Escaped from ancient battle-field,
Though neither with nor on my shield:
Escaped—how terrible the thought
Even of escape!—from Juggernaut;
Escaped from ten-fold worse perdition
In dungeons of the Inquisition;
O with what ecstasy I stand
Once more on Albion's refuge-land!
O with what gratitude I bare
My bosom to that island-air,
Which tyrants gulp and cease to be,
Which slaves inhale and slaves are free!
For though the wheels, behind my back,
Still seem to rumble in my track,
Their sound is music on the breeze;
I dare them all to cross the seas:
—Nay, should they reach our guarded coast,
Like Pharaoh's chariots and his host,
Monks, Bramins, warriors, swoln and dead,
Axles and orbs, in wrecks were spread.

And are there on this holy ground
No wheels to trail the vanquish'd found?
None framed the living bones to break,
Or rend the nerves for conscience-sake?
No:—Britons scorn the' unhallow'd touch;
They will not use, nor suffer, such:
Alike they shun, with fearless heart,
The victim's and tormentor's part.

Yet here are wheels of feller kind,
To drag in chains the captive mind;
To crush, beneath their horrid load,
Hearts panting prostrate on the road;
To wind desire from spoke to spoke,
And break the spirit stroke by stroke.

Where Gog and Magog, London's pride,
O'er city bankruptcies preside;
Stone-blind at nisi prius sit,
Hearken stone-deaf to lawyers' wit;
Or scowl on men, that play the beasts
At Common Halls and Lord Mayors' feasts,
When venison or the public cause,
Taxes or turtle, stretch their jaws;
There,—in a whisper be it said,
Lest honest Beckford shake his head;
Lest Chatham, with indignant cheek,
Start from his pedestal and speak;
Lest Chatham's son in marble groan,
As if restored to skin and bone;
There,—speak! speak out! abandon fear!
Let both the dead and living hear;
—The dead, that they may blush for shame
Amidst their monumental fame;
—The living, that, forewarn'd of fate,
Conscience may force them, ere too late,
Those Wheels of infamy to shun,
Which thousands touch, and are undone:

There,—built by legislative hands,
On Christian ground, an altar stands.
—“Stands? gentle Poet, tell me where?”
Go to Guildhall:—“It stands not there!”
True;—'tis my brain that raves and reels
Whene'er it turns on Lottery Wheels:
Such things in youth can I recall
Nor think of thee,—of thee, Guildhall?
Where erst I play'd with glittering schemes,
And lay entranced in golden dreams;
Bright round my head those bubbles broke,
Poorer from every dream I 'woke;
Wealth came,—but not the wealth I sought;
Wisdom was wealth to me; and taught
My feet to miss thy gates,—that lay,
Like toll-bars on the old “broad way,”
Where pilgrims paid,—O grief to tell!—
Tribute for going down to hell.

Long on thy floor an altar stood,
To human view unstain'd with blood,
But red and foul in Heaven's pure eyes,
Groaning with infant sacrifice,
From year to year;—till sense or shame,
Or some strange cause without a name,
—'Twas not the cry of innocence,—
Drove such abomination thence:
Thence drove it,—but destroy'd it not;
It blackens some obscurer spot;
Obscurer,—yet so well defined,
Thither the blind may lead the blind,
While heralds shout in every ear,
“This is the temple,—worship here.”

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Thither the deaf may read their way;
'Tis plain;—to find it, go astray!
Thither the lame, on wings of paper,
May come to nothing, like a vapour;
Thither may all the world repair;
A word, a wish, will waft you there;
And, O so smooth and steep the track,
'Tis worth your life to venture back;
Easy the step to Coopers' Hall,
As headlong from a cliff to fall;
Hard to recover from the shock,
As broken-limb'd to climb a rock.

There, built by legislative hands,
Our country's shame, an altar stands:
Not votive brass, nor hallow'd stone,
Humbly inscribed—“To God unknown;”
Though sure, if earth afford a space
For such an altar, here's the place:
—Not breathing incense in a shrine,
Where human art appears divine,
And man by his own skill hath wrought
So bright an image of his thought,
That nations, barbarous or refined,
Might worship there the' immortal mind,
That gave their ravish'd eyes to see
A meteor glimpse of Deity;
A ray of Nature's purest light
Shot through the gulf of Pagan night,
Dazzling,—but leaving darkness more
Profoundly blinding than before.
—Ah! no such power of genius calls
Sublime devotion to these walls;
No pomp of art, surpassing praise,
Britannia's altar here displays;
A money-changer's table,—spread
With hieroglyphics, black and red,
Exhibits, on deceitful scrolls,
“The price of Tickets,”—and of Souls;
For thus are Souls to market brought,
Barter'd for vanity,—for nought;
Till the poor venders find the cost,—
Time to eternal ages lost!

No sculptured idol decks the place,
Of such excelling form and face,
That Grecian pride might feign its birth
A statue fallen from heaven to earth:
The goddess here is best design'd,
—A flimsy harlot, bold and blind;
Invisible to standers-by,
And yet in every-body's eye!
Fortune her name;—a gay deceiver,
Cheat as she may, the crowd believe her;
And she, abuse her as they will,
Showers on the crowd her favours still:
For 'tis the bliss of both to be
Themselves unseen, and not to see:
Had she discernment,—pride would scout
The homage of her motley rout;
Were she reveal'd,—the poorest slave
Would blush to be her luckiest knave.

Not good old fortune here we scorn,
In classic fable heavenly born;
She who for nothing deigns to deal
Her blanks and prizes from One Wheel;
And who, like Justice, wisely blind,
Scatters her bounties on mankind
With such a broad impartial aim,
If none will praise her, none should blame;
For were ten thousand fancies tried,
Wealth more discreetly to divide
Among the craving race of man,
Wit could not frame a happier plan.

Here 'tis her Counterfeit, who reigns
O'er haunted heads and moon-struck brains;
A Two-wheel'd Jade, admired by sots,
Who flings, for cash in hand, her lots
To those, who, fain “their luck to try,”
Sell Hope, and Disappointment buy.
The wily sorceress here reveals,
With proud parade, her mystic Wheels;
—Those Wheels, on which the nation runs
Over the morals of its Sons;
—Those Wheels, at which the nation draws
Through shouting streets its broken laws!
Engines of plotting Fortune's skill
To lure, entangle, torture, kill.
Behold her, in imperial pride,
King, Lords, and Commons at her side;
Arm'd with authority of state,
The public peace to violate:
More might be told,—but not by me
Must this “eternal blazon” be.
Between her Wheels the Phantom stands,
With Syren voice, and Harpy hands:

162

She turns the' enchanted axle round;
Forth leaps the “twenty thousand pound!”
That “twenty thousand” one has got;
—But twenty thousand more have not.
These curse her to her face, deplore
Their loss, then—take her word once more;
Once more deceived, they rise like men
Bravely resolved—to try again;
Again they fail;—again trepann'd,
She mocks them with her sleight of hand;
Still fired with rage, with avarice steel'd,
Perish they may, but never yield;
They woo her till their latest breath,
Then snatch their prize—a blank in death.

The priests that in her temple wait,
Her minor ministers of fate,
Like Dian's silversmiths of old,
True to the craft that brings them gold,
Lungs, limbs, and pens, unwearied ply
To puff their Goddess to the sky:
O that their puffs could fix Her there,
Who builds such castles in the air,
And in the malice of her mirth
Lets them to simpletons on earth!
—Who steals the rainbow's peaceful form,
But is the demon of the storm;
—Assumes a star's benignant mien,
But wears a comet's tail unseen;
—Who smiles a Juno to the crowd,
But all that win her catch a cloud,
And, doom'd Ixion's fate to feel,
Are whirl'd upon a giddier wheel.
—O that her priests could fix her there,
Whose breath and being are but air!
Yet not for this their spells they try;
They bawl to keep her from the sky,
A harmless meteor in that sphere;
A baleful Ignis fatuus here,
With wandering and bewildering light,
To cheer, and then confound, the sight,
Guide the lorn traveller,—then betray,
Where death in ambush lurks for prey.

Fierce, but familiar, at their call,
The veriest fiend of Satan's fall;
—The fiend that tempted him to stake
Heaven's bliss against the burning lake;
—The fiend that tempted him again
To burst the darkness of his den,
And risk whate'er of wrath untried
Eternal justice yet could hide,
For one transcendent chance, by sin,
Man and his new-made world to win;
—That fiend, while Satan play'd his part
At Eve's fond ear, assail'd her heart,
And tempted her to hazard more
Than fallen Angels lost before;
They ruin'd but themselves—her crime
Brought death on all the race of time:
—That fiend comes forth, like Ætna's flame;
The spirit of gambling call his name;
So flush'd and terrible in power,
The priests themselves he would devour;
But straight, by Act of Parliament,
Loose through the land his plagues are sent.
The Polypus himself divides,
A legion issues from his sides;
Ten thousand shapes he wears at will,
In every shape a devil still;
Eager and restless to be known
By any mark except his own;
In airy, earthly, heavenly guise,
No matter,—if it strike the eyes;
Yet ever, at the clink of pelf,
He starts, and shrinks into himself:
—A traitor now, with face of truth,
He dupes the innocence of youth;
A shrewd pretender, smooth and sage,
He tempts the avarice of age;
A wizard, versed in damned arts,
He trammels uncorrupted hearts;
He lulls Suspicion, Sense waylays,
Honour and Honesty betrays,
Finds Virtue sleeping, and by stealth
Beguiles her with a dream of wealth;
Till rich and poor, till fools and wise,
Haste to the headlong sacrifice,
Gaze till they slip into the snare;
—Angels might weep to see them there;
Then to the Lottery Wheels away,
The spirit of gambling drags his prey.

Hail to the fiery bigot's rack!
Hail Juggernaut's destructive track!
Hail to the warrior's iron car!
But O, be Lottery Wheels afar!
I'll die by torture, war, disease,
I'll die—by any Wheels but these!

163

No. V. TO BRITAIN.

I love Thee, O my native Isle!
Dear as my mother's earliest smile,
Sweet as my father's voice to me,
Is all I hear, and all I see,
When, glancing o'er thy beauteous land,
In view thy Public Virtues stand,
The Guardian-angels of thy coast,
Who watch the dear domestic Host,
The Heart's Affections, pleas'd to roam
Around the quiet heaven of Home.

I love Thee,—when I mark thy soil
Flourish beneath the peasant's toil,
And from its lap of verdure throw
Treasures which neither Indies know.

I love Thee,—when I hear around
Thy looms, and wheels, and anvils sound,
Thine engines heaving all their force,
Thy waters labouring on their course,
And arts, and industry, and wealth,
Exulting in the joys of health.

I love Thee,—when I trace thy tale
To the dim point where records fail;
Thy deeds of old renown inspire
My bosom with our fathers' fire;
A proud inheritance I claim
In all their sufferings, all their fame:
Nor less delighted, when I stray
Down History's lengthening, widening way,
And hail Thee in thy present hour,
From the meridian arch of power,
Shedding the lustre of thy reign,
Like sunshine, over land and main.

I love Thee,—when I read the lays
Of British bards in elder days,
Till, rapt on visionary wings,
High o'er thy cliffs my spirit sings;
For I, amidst thy living choir,
I, too, can touch the sacred lyre.

I love Thee,—when I contemplate
The full-orb'd grandeur of thy state;
Thy laws and liberties, that rise,
Man's noblest works beneath the skies,
To which the Pyramids are tame,
And Grecian temples bow their fame:
These, thine immortal sages wrought
Out of the deepest mines of thought;
These, on the scaffold, in the field,
Thy warriors won, thy patriots seal'd;
These, at the parricidal pyre,
Thy martyrs sanctified in fire,
And, with the generous blood they spilt,
Wash'd from thy soil their murderers' guilt,
Cancell'd the curse which Vengeance sped,
And left a blessing in its stead.
Can words, can numbers, count the price
Paid for this little paradise?
Never, oh! never be it lost;
The land is worth the price it cost.

I love Thee,—when thy Sabbath dawns
O'er woods and mountains, dales and lawns,
And streams that sparkle while they run,
As if their fountain were the Sun:
When, hand in hand, thy tribes repair,
Each to their chosen house of prayer,
And all in peace and freedom call
On Him, who is the Lord of all.

I love Thee,—when my soul can feel
The seraph-ardours of thy zeal:
Thy charities, to none confined,
Bless, like the sun, the rain, the wind;
Thy schools the human brute shall raise,
Guide erring youth in wisdom's ways,
And leave, when we are turn'd to dust,
A generation of the just.

I love Thee,—when I see thee stand
The hope of every other land;
A sea-mark in the tide of time,
Rearing to heaven thy brow sublime;
Whence beams of Gospel-splendour shed
A sacred halo round thine head;
And Gentiles from afar behold
(Not as on Sinai's rocks of old)
God,—from eternity conceal'd,
In His own light, on Thee reveal'd.

164

I love Thee,—when I hear thy voice
Bid a despairing world rejoice,
And loud from shore to shore proclaim,
In every tongue, Messiah's name;
That name, at which, from sea to sea.
All nations yet shall bow the knee.

I love Thee:—next to heaven above,
Land of my fathers! thee I love;
And, rail thy slanderers as they will,
“With all thy faults I love Thee” still:
For faults thou hast of heinous size;
Repent, renounce them, ere they rise
In judgment; lest thine ocean-wall
With boundless ruin round thee fall,
And that, which was thy mightiest stay,
Sweep all thy rocks like sand away.

Yes, thou hast faults of heinous size,
From which I turn with weeping eyes;
On these let them that hate Thee dwell;
Yet one I spare not—one I tell,
Tell with a whisper in thine ear;
Oh! might it wring thy heart with fear!
Oh! that my weakest word might roll,
Like heaven's own thunder through thy soul!

There is a lie in thy right hand;
A bribe, corrupting all the land;
There is within thy gates a pest,
—Gold and a Babylonish vest;
Not hid in shame-concealing shade,
But broad against the Sun display'd.
These,—tell it not,—it must be told;
These from thy Lottery Wheels are sold;
Sold,—and thy children, train'd to sin,
Hazard both worlds these plagues to win;
Nay, thy deluded statesmen stake
Thyself,—and lose Thee for their sake!
—Lose Thee?—They shall not;—HE, whose will
Is Nature's law, preserves Thee still;
And while the' uplifted bolt impends,
One warning more His mercy sends.

O Britain! O my country! bring
Forth from thy camp the' accursed thing;
Consign it to remorseless fire;
Watch till the latest spark expire,
Then cast the ashes on the wind,
Nor leave one atom-wreck behind.

So may thy wealth and power increase;
So may thy people dwell in peace;
On Thee the' Almighty's glory rest,
And all the world in Thee be blest.

Sheffield, Oct. 10. 1816.

THE CLIMBING BOY'S SOLILOQUIES.

167

PROLOGUE.

A WORD WITH MYSELF.

I know they scorn the Climbing Boy,
The gay, the selfish, and the proud;
I know his villanous employ
Is mockery with the thoughtless crowd.

So be it;—brand with every name
Of burning infamy his art,
But let his country bear the shame,
And feel the iron at her heart.

I cannot coldly pass him by,
Stript, wounded, left by thieves half dead;
Nor see an infant Lazarus lie
At rich men's gates, imploring bread.

A frame as sensitive as mine,
Limbs moulded in a kindred form,
A soul degraded, yet divine,
Endear to me my brother-worm.

He was my equal at his birth,
A naked, helpless, weeping child;
—And such are born to thrones on earth,
On such hath every mother smiled.

My equal he will be again,
Down in that cold oblivious gloom,
Where all the prostrate ranks of men
Crowd, without fellowship, the tomb.

My equal in the judgment-day,
He shall stand up before the throne,
When every veil is rent away,
And good and evil only known.

And is he not mine equal now?
Am I less fall'n from God and truth,
Though “Wretch” be written on his brow,
And leprosy consume his youth?

If holy Nature yet have laws
Binding on man, of woman born,
In her own court I'll plead his cause,
Arrest the doom, or share the scorn.

Yes, let the scorn that haunts his course
Turn on me like a trodden snake,
And hiss and sting me with remorse,
If I the fatherless forsake.

Sheffield, Feb. 28. 1824.

No. I. THE COMPLAINT.

Who loves the climbing boy? Who cares
If well or ill I be?
Is there a living soul that shares
A thought or wish with me?

I've had no parents since my birth,
Brothers and sisters none,
Ah! what to me is all this earth,
Where I am only one?

I wake and see the morning shine,
And all around me gay;
But nothing I behold is mine,
No, not the light of day;—

No, not the very breath I draw;
These limbs are not my own;
A master calls me his by law,—
My griefs are mine alone:

Ah! these they could not make him feel—
Would they themselves had felt
Who bound me to that man of steel,
Whom mercy cannot melt!

Yet not for wealth or ease I sigh,
All are not rich and great;
Many may be as poor as I,
But none so desolate.

For all I know have kin and kind,
Some home, some hope, some joy;
But these I must not look to find—
Who knows the climbing boy?

168

The world has not a place of rest
For outcast so forlorn;
'Twas all bespoken, all possest,
Long before I was born.

Affection, too, life's sweetest cup,
Goes round from hand to hand;
But I am never ask'd to sup—
Out of the ring I stand.

If kindness beats within my heart,
What heart will beat again?
I coax the dogs, they snarl and start;
Brutes are as bad as men.

The beggar's child may rise above
The misery of his lot;
The gipsy may be loved, and love;
But I—but I must not.

Hard fare, cold lodgings, cruel toil,
Youth, health, and strength consume:
What tree could thrive in such a soil?
What flower so scathed could bloom?

Should I outgrow this crippling work,
How shall my bread be sought?
Must I to other lads turn Turk,
And teach what I am taught?

O, might I roam with flocks and herds
In fellowship along!
O, were I one among the birds,
All wing, and life, and song!

Free with the fishes might I dwell
Down in the quiet sea!
The snail in his cob-castle shell—
The snail's a king to me!

For out he glides in April showers,
Lies snug when storms prevail;
He feeds on fruit, he sleeps on flowers—
I wish I was a snail!—

No, never! do the worst they can,
I may be happy still;
For I was born to be a man,
And if I live I will!

No. II. THE DREAM.

I dreamt; but what care I for dreams?
And yet I tremble too;
It look'd so like the truth, it seems
As if it would come true.

I dreamt that, long ere peep of day,
I left my cold straw bed,
And o'er a common far away,
As if I flew, I fled.

The tempest hurried me behind
Like a mill-stream along;
I could have lean'd against the wind,
It was so deadly strong.

The snow—I never saw such snow—
Raged like the sea all round,
Tossing and tumbling to and fro;
I thought I must be drown'd.

Now up, now down, with main and might
I plunged through drift and stour;
Nothing, no nothing baulk'd my flight,
I had a giant's power.

Till suddenly the storm stood still,
Flat lay the snow beneath;
I curdled to an icicle,
I could not stir—not breathe.

My master found me rooted there;
He flogg'd me back to sense,
Then pluck'd me up, and by the hair,
Sheer over ditch and fence,—

He dragg'd, and dragg'd, and dragg'd me on,
For many and many a mile;
At a grand house he stopp'd anon;—
It was a famous pile:

Up to the moon it seem'd to rise,
Broad as the earth to stand;
The building darken'd half the skies,
Its shadow half the land.

169

All round was still—as still as death;
I shivering, chattering, stood;
And felt the coming, going breath,
The tingling, freezing blood.

Soon, at my master's rap, rap, rap,
The door wide open flew;
In went we;—with a thunder-clap
Again the door bang'd to.

I trembled, as I've felt a bird
Tremble within my fist;
For none I saw, and none I heard,
But all was lone and whist.

The moonshine through the windows show'd
Long stripes of light and gloom;
The carpet with all colours glow'd,
Stone men stood round the room:

Fair pictures in their golden frames,
And looking-glasses bright;
Fine things, I cannot tell their names,
Dazed and bewitch'd me quite.

Master soon thwack'd them out my head—
The chimney must be swept!
Yet in the grate the coals were red;
I stamp'd, and scream'd, and wept.

I kneel'd, I kiss'd his feet, I pray'd;
For then—which shows I dreamt—
Methought I ne'er before had made
The terrible attempt.

But, as a butcher lifts the lamb
That struggles for its life,
(Far from the ramping, bleating dam,)
Beneath his desperate knife;

With his two iron hands he grasp'd
And hoisted me aloof;
His naked neck in vain I clasp'd,
The man was pity-proof.

So forth he swung me through the space,
Above the smouldering fire;
I never can forget his face,
Nor his gruff growl, “Go higher!”

As if I climb'd a steep house-side,
Or scaled a dark draw-well,
The horrid opening was so wide,
I had no hold,—I fell:

Fell on the embers, all my length,
But scarcely felt their heat,
When, with a madman's rage and strength,
I started on my feet;

And, ere I well knew what I did,
Had clear'd the broader vent;
From his wild vengeance to be hid,
I cared not where I went.

The passage narrow'd as I drew
Limb after limb by force,
Working and worming, like a screw,
My hard, slow, up-hill course.

Rougher than harrow-teeth within,
Sharp lime and jagged stone
Stripp'd my few garments, gored the skin,
And grided to the bone.

Gall'd, wounded, bleeding, ill at ease,
Still I was stout at heart;
Head, shoulders, elbows, hands, feet, knees,
All play'd a stirring part.

I climb'd, and climb'd, and climb'd in vain,
No light at top appear'd;
No end to darkness, toil, and pain,
While worse and worse I fear'd.

I climb'd, and climb'd, and had to climb,
Yet more and more astray;
A hundred years I thought the time,
A thousand miles the way.

Strength left me, and breath fail'd at last,
Then had I headlong dropp'd,
But the strait funnel wedged me fast,
So there dead-lock'd I stopp'd.

I groan'd, I grasp'd, to shriek I tried,
No sound came from my breast;
There was a weight on every side,
As if a stone-delf press'd.

170

Yet still my brain kept beating on
Through night-mares of all shapes,
Foul fiends, no sooner come than gone,
Dragons, and wolves, and apes.

They gnash'd on me with bloody jaws,
Chatter'd, and howl'd, and hiss'd;
They clutch'd me with their cat-like claws
While off they whirl'd in mist.

Till, like a lamp-flame, blown away,
My soul went out in gloom;
Thought ceased, and dead-alive I lay,
Shut up in that black tomb.

O, sweetly on the mother's lap
Her pretty baby lies,
And breathes so freely in his nap,
She can't take off her eyes.

Ah! thinks she then,—ah, thinks she not!—
How soon the time may be
When all her love will be forgot,
And he a wretch like me?

She in her grave at rest may lie,
And daisies speck the sod,
Nor see him bleed, nor hear him cry,
Beneath a ruffian's rod.

No mother's lap was then my bed,
O'er me no mother smiled;
No mother's arm went round my head,
—Am I no mother's child?

Life, on a sudden, ran me through,
Light, light, all round me blazed,
Red flames rush'd roaring up the flue,—
Flames by my master raised.

I heard his voice, and ten-fold might
Bolted through every limb;
I saw his face, and shot upright;
Brick walls made way from him.

Swift as a squirrel seeks the bough
Where he may turn and look
Down on the school-boy, chop-fallen now,
My ready flight I took.

The fire was quickly quench'd beneath,
Blue light above me glanced,
And air, sweet air, I 'gan to breathe,
The blood within me danced.

I climb'd, and climb'd, and climb'd away,
Till on the top I stood,
And saw the glorious dawn of day
Come down on field and flood.

Oh me! a moment of such joy
I never knew before;
Right happy was the climbing-boy,
One moment,—but no more.

Sick, sick, I turn'd, the world ran round,
The stone I stood on broke,
And plumb I toppled to the ground;
—Like a scared owl, I woke.

I woke, but slept again, and dream'd
The self-same things anew:
The storm, the snow, the building seem'd
All true, as daylight's true.

But, when I tumbled from the top,
The world itself had flown;
There was no ground on which to drop,
'Twas emptiness alone.

On winter nights I've seen a star
Leap headlong from the sky;
I've watch'd the lightning from afar
Flash out of heaven and die.

So,—but in darkness,—so I fell
Through nothing to no place,
Until I saw the flames of hell
Shoot upward to my face.

Down, down, as with a mill-stone weight,
I plunged right through their smoke:
To cry for mercy 'twas too late,—
They seized me,—I awoke:

'Woke, slept, and dream'd the like again,
The third time, through and through,
Except the winding up;—ah! then
I wish it had been true.

171

For when I climb'd into the air,
Spring-breezes flapp'd me round;
Green hills, and dales, and woods were there,
And May-flowers on the ground.

The moon was waning in the west,
The clouds were golden red;
The lark, a mile above his nest,
Was cheering o'er my head.

The stars had vanish'd, all but one,
The darling of the sky,
That glitter'd like a tiny sun,
No bigger than my eye.

I look'd at this,—I thought it smiled,
Which made me feel so glad,
That I became another child,
And not the climbing lad:

A child as fair as you may see,
Whom soot has never soil'd;
As rosy-cheek'd as I might be
If I had not been spoil'd.

Wings, of themselves, about me grew,
And, free as morning-light,
Up to that single star I flew,
So beautiful and bright.

Through the blue heaven I stretch'd my hand
To touch its beams,—it broke
Like a sea-bubble on the sand;
Then all fell dark.—I woke.

No. III. EASTER-MONDAY AT SHEFFIELD.

Yes, there are some that think of me;
The blessing on their heads! I say;
May all their lives as happy be
As mine has been with them to-day!

When I was sold, from Lincolnshire
To this good town, I heard a noise,
What merry-making would be here
At Easter-tide for climbing boys.

'Twas strange, because where I had been,
The better people cared no more
For such as me, than had they seen
A young crab crawling on their shore.

Well, Easter came;—in all the land
Was e'er a 'prentice-lad so fine!
A bran-new suit at second-hand,
Cap, shoes, and stockings, all were mine.

The coat was green, the waistcoat red,
The breeches leather, white and clean;
I thought I must go off my head,
I could have jump'd out of my skin.

All Sunday through the streets I stroll'd,
Fierce as a turkey-cock, to see
How all the people, young and old,—
At least I thought so,—look'd at me.

At night, upon my truss of straw,
Those gaudy clothes hung round the room;
By moon-glimpse oft their shapes I saw
Like bits of rainbow in the gloom.

Yet scarce I heeded them at all,
Although I never slept a wink;
The feast next day at Cutlers' Hall,
Of that I could not help but think.

Wearily trail'd the night away;
Between the watchman and the clock,
I thought it never would be day;
At length out crew the earliest cock.

A second answer'd, then a third,
At a long distance,—one, two, three,—
A dozen more in turn were heard;
—I crew among the rest for glee.

Up gat we, I and little Bill,
And donn'd our newest and our best;
Nay, let the proud say what they will,
As grand as fiddlers we were drest.

We left our litter in the nook,
And wash'd ourselves as white as snow;
On brush and bag we scorn'd to look,
—It was a holiday, you know.

172

What ail'd me then I could not tell,
I yawn'd the whole forenoon away,
And hearken'd while the vicar's bell
Went ding dong, ding dong, pay, pay, pay!

The clock struck twelve—I love the twelves
Of all the hours 'twixt sun and moon;
For then poor lads enjoy themselves,—
We sleep at midnight, rest at noon.

This noon was not a resting time!
At the first stroke we started all,
And, while the tune rang through the chime,
Muster'd, like soldiers, at the hall.

Not much like soldiers in our gait;
Yet never soldier, in his life,
Tried, as he march'd, to look more straight
Than Bill and I,—to drum and fife.

But now I think on't, what with scars,
Lank bony limbs, and spavin'd feet,
Like broken soldiers from the wars
We limp'd, yet strutted through the street.

Then, while our meagre motley crew
Came from all quarters of the town,
Folks to their doors and windows flew;
I thought the world turn'd upside down.

For now, instead of oaths and jeers,
The sauce that I have found elsewhere,
Kind words, and smiles, and hearty cheers,
Met us,—with halfpence here and there.

The mothers held their babies high,
To chuckle at our hobbling train,
But clipt them close while we went by;
—I heard their kisses fall like rain,—

And wiped my cheek, that never felt
The sweetness of a mother's kiss;
For heart and eyes began to melt,
And I was sad, yet pleased, with this.

At Cutlers' Hall we found the crowd,
That shout the gentry to their feast;
They made us way, and bawl'd so loud,
We might have been young lords at least.

We enter'd, twenty lads and more,
While gentlemen, and ladies too,
All bade us welcome at the door,
And kindly ask'd us, “How d'ye do?”

“Bravely,” I answer'd, but my eye
Prickled, and leak'd, and twinkled still;
I long'd to be alone, to cry,
—To be alone, and cry my fill.

Our other lads were blithe and bold,
And nestling, nodding as they sat,
Till dinner came, their tales they told,
And talk'd of this, and laugh'd at that.

I pluck'd up courage, gaped, and gazed
On the fine room, fine folks, fine things,
Chairs, tables, knives, and forks, amazed,
With pots and platters fit for kings.

Roast-beef, plum-pudding, and what not,
Soon smoked before us,—such a size,
Giants their dinners might have got;
We open'd all our mouths and eyes.

Anon, upon the board, a stroke
Warn'd each to stand up in his place;
One of our generous friends then spoke
Three or four words—they call'd it Grace.

I think he said—“God bless our food!”
—Oft had I heard that name, in tones
Which ran like ice, cold through my blood,
And made the flesh creep on my bones:

But now, and with a power so sweet,
The name of God went through my heart,
That my lips trembled to repeat
Those words, and tears were fain to start.

Tears, words, were in a twinkle gone,
Like sparrows whirring through the street,
When, at a sign, we all fell on,
As geese in stubble, to our meat.

The large plum-puddings first were carved,
And well we younkers plied them o'er;
You would have thought we had been starved,
Or were to be,—a month and more.

173

Next the roast beef flew reeking round
In glorious slices, mark ye that!
The dishes were with gravy drown'd;
A sight to make a weazel fat.

A great meat-pie, a good meat-pie,
Baked in a cradle-length of tin,
Was open'd, emptied, scoop'd so dry,
You might have seen your face within.

The ladies and the gentlemen
Took here and there with us a seat;
They might be hungry, too,—but then
We gave them little time to eat.

Their arms were busy helping us,
Like cobblers' elbows at their work,
Or see-saw, see-saw, thus and thus;
A merry game at knife and fork.

O, then the din, the deafening din,
Of plates, cans, crockery, spoons, and knives,
And waiters running out and in;
We might be eating for our lives.

Such feasting I had never seen
So presently had got enough;
The rest, like fox-hounds, staunch and keen,
Were made of more devouring stuff.

They cramm'd like cormorants their craws,
As though they never would have done;
It was a feast to watch their jaws
Grind, and grow weary, one by one.

But there's an end to every thing;
And this grand dinner pass'd away:—
I wonder if great George our king
Has such a dinner every day?—

Grace after meat again was said,
And my good feelings sprang anew;
But at the sight of gingerbread,
Wine, nuts, and oranges, they flew.

So while we took a turn with these,
Almost forgetting we had dined;
As though we might do what we please,
We loll'd, and joked, and told our mind.

Now I had time, if not before,
To take a peep at every lad;
I counted them to twenty-four,
Each in his Easter-finery clad:

All wash'd and clean as clean could be,—
And yet so dingy, marr'd, and grim,
A mole with half an eye might see
Our craft in every look and limb.

All shapes but straight ones you might find,
As sapling-firs on the high moors,
Black, stunted, crook'd, through which the wind,
Like a wild bull, all winter roars.

Two toddling five-year olds were there,
Twins, that had just begun to climb,
With cherry-cheeks, and curly hair,
And skins not yet engrain'd with grime.

I wish'd, I did, that they might die,
Like “Babes i' th' Wood,” the little slaves,
And “Robin-redbreast” painfully
Hide them “with leaves,” for want of graves;

Rather than live like me, and weep
To think that ever they were born;
Toil the long day, and from short sleep
Wake to fresh miseries every morn.

Gay as young goldfinches in spring,
They chirp'd and peck'd, top-full of joy,
As if it was some mighty thing
To be a chimney-sweeper's boy.

And so it is, on such a day,
As welcome Easter brings us here,
—In London, too, the first of May,—
But O, what is it all the year!

Close at a Quaker-lady's side,
Sate a young girl;—I know not how
I felt when me askance she eyed,
And a quick blush flew o'er her brow.

For then, just then, I caught a face
Fair,—but I oft had seen it black,
And mark'd the owner's tottering pace
Beneath a vile two-bushel sack.

174

O! had I known it was a lass,
Could I have scorn'd her with her load?—
Next time we meet, she shall not pass
Without a lift along the road.

Her mother—mother but in name!—
Brought her to-day to dine with us:
Her father,—she's his 'prentice:—shame
On both, to use their daughter thus!

Well, I shall grow, and she will grow
Older,—it may be taller,—yet;
And if she'll smile on me, I know
Poor Poll shall be poor Reuben's pet.

Time, on his two unequal legs,
Kept crawling round the church-clock's face;
Though none could see him shift his pegs,
Each was for ever changing place.

O, why are pleasant hours so short?
And why are wretched ones so long?
They fly like swallows while we sport,
They stand like mules when all goes wrong.

Before we parted, one kind friend,
And then another, talk'd so free;
They went from table-end to end,
And spoke to each, and spoke to me.

Books, pretty books, with pictures in,
Were given to those who learn to read,
Which show'd them how to flee from sin,
And to be happy boys indeed.

These climbers go to Sunday schools,
And hear what things to do or shun,
Get good advice, and golden rules
For all their lives,—but I'm not one.

Nathless I'll go next Sabbath day
Where masters, without thrashing, teach
Lost children how to read, and pray,
And sing, and hear the parsons preach.

For I'm this day determined—not
With bad companions to grow old,
But, weal or woe, whate'er my lot,
To mind what our good friends have told.

They told us things I never knew
Of Him who heaven and earth did make;
And my heart felt their words were true,
It burn'd within me while they spake.

Can I forget that God is love,
And sent his Son to dwell on earth?
Or, that our Saviour from above
Lay in a manger at his birth,—

Grew up in humble poverty,
A life of grief and sorrow led?
No home to comfort Him had He;
No, not a place to lay his head.

Yet He was merciful and kind,
Heal'd with a touch all sort of harms;
The sick, the lame, the deaf, the blind;
And took young children in his arms.

Then He was kill'd by wicked men,
And buried in a deep stone cave;
But of Himself He rose again,
On Easter-Sunday, from the grave.

Caught up in clouds,—at God's right hand
In heaven He took the highest place;
There, dying Stephen saw Him stand,—
Stephen, who had an angel's face.

He loves the poor, He always did;
The little ones are still his care;
I'll seek Him,—let who will forbid,—
I'll go to Him this night in prayer.

O, soundly, soundly should I sleep,
And think no more of sufferings past,
If God would only bless, and keep,
And make me His,—His own, at last!

Sheffield, March, 1834.

201

NARRATIVES.

FAREWELL TO WAR:

BEING A PROLOGUE TO “LORD FALKLAND'S DREAM,” AND “ARNOLD DE WINKELRIED, OR THE PATRIOT'S PASS-WORD.”

Peace to the trumpet!—no more shall my breath
Sound an alarm in the dull ear of death,
Nor startle to life from the truce of the tomb
The relics of heroes, to combat till doom.
Let Marathon sleep to the sound of the sea,
Let Hannibal's spectre haunt Cannæ for me;
Let Cressy and Agincourt tremble with corn,
And Waterloo blush with the beauty of morn;
I turn not the furrow for helmets and shields,
Nor sow dragon's teeth in their old fallow fields;
I will not, as bards have been wont, since the flood,
With the river of song swell the river of blood,
—The blood of the valiant, that fell in all climes,
—The song of the gifted, that hallow'd all crimes,
—All crimes in the war-fiend incarnate in one;
War, withering the earth—war, eclipsing the sun,
Despoiling, destroying, since discord began,
God's works and God's mercies,—man's labours and man.

Yet war have I loved, and of war have I sung,
With my heart in my hand and my soul on my tongue;
With all the affections that render life dear,
With the throbbings of hope and the flutterings of fear,
—Of hope, that the sword of the brave might prevail,
—Of fear, lest the arm of the righteous should fail.

But what was the war that extorted my praise?
What battles were fought in my chivalrous lays?
—The war against darkness contending with light;
The war against violence trampling down right;
—The battles of patriots, with banner unfurl'd,
To guard a child's cradle against an arm'd world;
Of peasants that peopled their ancestors' graves,
Lest their ancestors' homes should be peopled by slaves.
I served, too, in wars and campaigns of the mind;
My pen was the sword, which I drew for mankind;
—In war against tyranny throned in the West,
—Campaigns to enfranchise the negro oppress'd;
In war against war, on whatever pretence,
For glory, dominion, revenge, or defence,
While murder and perfidy, rapine and lust,
Laid provinces desolate, cities in dust.

Yes, war against war was ever my pride;
My youth and my manhood in waging it died,
And age, with its weakness, its wounds, and its scars,
Still finds my free spirit unquench'd as the stars,
And he who would bend it to war must first bind
The waves of the ocean, the wings of the wind;
For I call it not war, which war's counsels o'erthrows,
I call it not war which gives nations repose;
'Tis judgment brought down on themselves by the proud,
Like lightning, by fools, from an innocent cloud.

I war against all war;—nor, till my pulse cease,
Will I throw down my weapons, because I love peace,
Because I love liberty, execrate strife,
And dread, most of all deaths, that slow death call'd life,
Dragg'd on by a vassal, in purple or chains,
The breath of whose nostrils, the blood in whose veins,
He calls not his own, nor holds from his God,
While it hangs on a king's or a sycophant's nod.

Around the mute trumpet,—no longer to breathe
War-clangours, my latest war-chaplets I wreathe,

202

Then hang them aloof on the time-stricken oak,
And thus, in its shadow, heaven's blessing invoke:—
“Lord God! since the African's bondage is o'er,
And war in our borders is heard of no more,
May never, while Britain adores Thee, again
The malice of fiends or the madness of men
Break the peace of our land, and by villanous wrong
Find a field for a hero, a hero for song!”

1834.

LORD FALKLAND'S DREAM.

A. D. 1643.

“Io vo gridando, Pace! pace! pace!”
Petrarca, Canzone agli principi d'Italia, Esortazione alla Pace, A.D. 1344.

“In this unhappy battle [of Newbury] was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight of conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.

‘Turpe mori, post te, solo non posse dolore.’”

“From the entrance into that unnatural war, his natural cheerfulness and vivacity grew clouded; and a kind of sadness and dejection stole upon him, which he had never been used to. . . . . . After the King's return to Oxford, and the furious resolution of the two Houses not to admit any treaty for peace, those indispositions which had before touched him grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness; and he who had been so exactly easy and affable to all men, that his face and countenance was always present, and vacant to his company, and held any cloudiness or less pleasantness of the visage a kind of rudeness or incivility, became on a sudden less communicable, and thence very sad, pale, and exceedingly affected with the spleen. In his clothes and habit, which he minded before with more neatness, and industry, and expense, than is usual to so great a soul, he was not only incurious, but too negligent; and in his reception of suitors, and the necessary and casual addresses to his place (being then Secretary of State to King Charles), so quick, and sharp, and severe, that there wanted not some men (strangers to his nature and disposition) who believed him proud and imperious, from which no mortal man was ever more free.”

“When there was any overture or hope of peace he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press any thing which he thought might promote it; and, sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence, and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word ‘Peace! peace!’ and would profess that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart.”

Clarendon's History, vol. ii. part i.

War, civil war, was raging like a flood,
England lay weltering in her children's blood;
Brother with brother waged unnatural strife,
Sever'd were all the charities of life:
Two passions,—virtues they assumed to be,—
Virtues they were,—romantic loyalty,
And stern, unyielding patriotism, possess'd
Divided empire in the nation's breast;
As though two hearts might in one body reign,
And urge conflicting streams from vein to vein.
On either side the noblest spirits fought,
And highest deeds on either side were wrought:
Hampden in battle yesterday hath bled,
Falkland to-morrow joins the immortal dead;
The one for freedom perish'd—not in vain;
The other falls—a courtier without stain.

'Twas on the eve of Newbury's doubtful fight;
O'er marshall'd foes came down the peace of night,
—Peace which, to eyes in living slumber seal'd,
The mysteries of the night to come reveal'd,
When that throng'd plain, now warm with heaving breath,
Should lie in cold, fix'd apathy of death.
Falkland from court and camp had glid away,
With Chaucer's shade, through Speenham woods to stray,
And pour in solitude, without control,
Through the dun gloom, the anguish of his soul.
—Falkland, the plume of England's chivalry,
The just, the brave, the generous, and the free!
—Nay, task not poetry to tell his praise,
Twine but a wreath of transitory bays,
To crown him, as he lives, from age to age,
In Clarendon's imperishable page;
Look there upon the very man, and see
What Falkland was,—what thou thyself shouldst be;
Patriot and loyalist, who veil'd to none,
He loved his country and his king in one,

203

And could no more, in his affections, part
That wedded pair, than pluck out half his heart:
Hence every wound that each the other gave,
Brought their best servant nearer to the grave.
Thither he hasten'd, withering in his prime,—
The worm of sorrow wrought the work of time;
And England's woes had sunk him with their weight,
Had not the swifter sword foreclosed his date.

In sighs for her his spirit was exhaled,
He wept for her till power of weeping fail'd;
Pale, wasted, nerveless, absent,—he appear'd
To haunt the scenes which once his presence cheer'd;
As though some vampire from its cerements crept,
And drain'd health's fountain nightly while he slept;
But he slept not;—sleep from his eyelids fled,
All restless as the ocean's foam his bed;
The very agony of war,—the guilt
Of blood by kindred blood in hatred spilt,—
Crush'd heart and hope; till foundering, tempest-toss'd,
From gulfs to deeper gulfs, himself he lost.
Yet when he heard the drum to battle beat,
First at the onset, latest in retreat,
Eager to brave rebellion to the face,
Or hunt out peril in its hiding-place,
Falkland was slow to arm the' ignoble crowd,
He sought to raise the fall'n, strike down the proud,
Nor stood there one for parliament or throne
More choice of meaner lives, more reckless of his own.

Oft from his lips a shrill sad moan would start,
And cold misgivings creep around his heart,
When he beheld the plague of war increase,
And but one word found utterance—“Peace! peace! peace!”

That eve he wander'd in his wayward mood,
Through thoughts more wildering than the maze of wood,
Where, when the moon-beam flitted o'er his face,
He seem'd the' unquiet spectre of the place:
Rank thorns and briars, the rose and woodbine's bloom,
Perplex'd his path through checker'd light and gloom;
Himself insensible of gloom or light,
Darkness within made all around him night;
Till the green beauty of a little glade,
That open'd up to heaven, his footsteps stay'd:
Eye, breath, and pulse, the sweet enchantment felt,
His heart with tenderness began to melt;
Trembling, he lean'd against a Druid oak,
Whose boughs bare token of the thunder-stroke,
With root unshaken, and with bole unbroke:
Then thus, while hope almost forgot despair,
Breathed his soul's burden on the tranquil air:—

“O Britain! Britain! to thyself be true;
Land which the Roman never could subdue:
Oft though he pass'd thy sons beneath the yoke,
As oft thy sons the spears they bow'd to broke;
Others with home-wrought chains he proudly bound,
His own too weak to fetter thee he found;
Though garrison'd by legions, legions fail'd
To quell thy spirit,—thy spirit again prevail'd.
By him abandon'd, island-martyr! doom'd
To prove the fires of ages unconsumed,
Though Saxon, Dane, Norwegian, Gallic hordes,
In dire succession, gave thee laws and lords,
Conquer'd themselves by peace,—in every field,
The victor to the vanquish'd lost his shield.
To win my country, to usurp her throne,
Canute and William must forsake their own;
Invading rivers thus roll back the sea,
Then lose themselves in its immensity.

“But 'twas thine own distractions lent them aid,
Enslaved by strangers, because self-betray'd;
Still self-distracted;—yet should foreign foe
Land now, another spirit thy sons would show;
King, nobles, parliament, and people,—all,
Like the Red Sea's returning waves, would fall,
And with one burst o'erwhelm the mightiest host.
—Would such a foe this hour were on thy coast!

“How oft, O Albion! since those twilight times,
Have wars intestine laid thee waste with crimes!
Tweed's borderers were hereditary foes,
Nor can one crown even now their feuds compose;
Thy peasantry were serfs to vassal lords,
Yoked with their oxen, tether'd to their swords:
Round their cross banners kings thy bowmen ranged,
Till York and Lancaster their roses changed.
Those days, thank Heaven! those evil days are past,
Yet wilt thou fall by suicide at last?
O England! England! from such frenzy cease,
And on thyself have mercy,—Peace! peace! peace!”

204

“Who talks of Peace?—sweet Peace is in her grave:
Save a lone widow,—from her offspring save!”
Exclaim'd a voice, scarce earthly, in his ear,
Withering his nerves with unaccustom'd fear;
His hand was on his sword, but, ere he drew
The starting blade, a suppliant cross'd his view;
Forth from the forest rush'd a female form,
Like the moon's image hurrying through the storm;
Down in a moment, at his feet, aghast,
Lock'd to his smiting knees, herself she cast.
Rent were her garments, and her hair unbound,
All fleck'd with blood from many an unstaunch'd wound,
Inflicted by the very hands that press'd,
In rose-lipp'd infancy, her yearning breast;
And ever and anon she look'd behind,
As though pursuing voices swell'd the wind;
Then shriek'd insanely,—“Peace is in her grave!
Save a lost mother,—from her children save!”
Wan with heart-sickness, ready to expire,
Her cheeks were ashes, but her eye was fire,
—Fire fix'd, as through the horror of the mine,
Sparks from the diamond's still water shine;
So where the cloud of death o'ershadowing hung,
Light in her eye from depth of darkness sprung,
Dazzling his sight, and kindling such a flame
Within his breast as nature could not name;
He knew her not;—that face he never saw;
He loved her not,—yet love, chastised by awe
And reverence, with mysterious terror mix'd,
His looks on hers in fascination fix'd.

“Who?—whence?—what wouldst thou?” Falkland cried at length:
His voice inspired her; up she rose in strength,
Gather'd her robe and spread her locks, to hide
The unsightly wounds; then fervently replied:—
“Behold a matron, widow'd and forlorn,
Yet many a noble son to me was born,
Flowers of my youth, and morning-stars of joy!
They quarrell'd, fought, and slew my youngest boy;
Youngest and best beloved!—I rush'd between,
My darling from the fratricides to screen;
He perish'd; from my arms he dropp'd in death;
I felt him kiss my feet with his last breath;
The swords that smote him, flashing round my head,
Pierced me;—the murderers saw my blood, and fled,—
Their parent's blood; and she, unconscious why
She sought thee out, came here—came here to die.
'Tis a strange tale;—'tis true,—and yet 'tis not;
Follow me, Falkland, thou shalt see the spot,—
See my slain boy,—my life's own life, the pride
And hope of his poor mother,—but he died;
He died,—and she did not;—how can it be?
But I'm immortal!—Falkland, come and see.”

She spake: while Falkland, more and more amazed,
On her ineffable demeanour gazed;
So vitally her form and features changed,
He thought his own clear senses were deranged;
Outraged and desolate she seem'd no more;
He follow'd; stately, she advanced before:
The thickets, at her touch, gave way, and made
A wake of moonlight through their deepest shade.
Anon he found himself on Newbury's plain,
Walking among the dying and the slain;
At every step in blood his foot was dyed,
He heard expiring groans on every side.
The battle-thunder had roll'd by; the smoke
Was vanish'd; calm and bright the morning broke,
While such estrangement o'er his mind was cast,
As though another day and night had past.
There, 'midst the nameless crowd, oft met his view
An eye, a countenance, which Falkland knew,
But knew not him;—that eye to ice congeal'd,
That countenance by death's blank signet seal'd:
Rebel and royalist alike laid low,
Where friend embraced not friend, but foe grasp'd foe;
Falkland had tears for each, and patriot-sighs,
For both were Britons in that Briton's eyes.

Silent before him trod the lofty dame,
Breathlessly looking round her, till they came
Where shatter'd fences mark'd a narrow road:
Tracing that line, with prostrate corpses strow'd,
She turn'd their faces upward, one by one,
Till, suddenly, the newly-risen sun
Shot through the level air a ruddy glow,
That fell upon a visage white as snow;
Then with a groan of agony, so wild,
As if the soul within her spake,—“My child!
My child!” she said, and pointing, shrinking back,
Made way for Falkland.—Prone along the track
(A sight at once that warm'd and thrill'd with awe)
The perfect image of himself he saw,
Shape, feature, limb, the arms, the dress he wore,
And one wide honourable wound before.

205

Then flash'd the fire of pride from Falkland's eye,
“'Tis glorious for our country thus to die;
'Tis sweet to leave an everlasting name,
A heritage of clear and virtuous fame.”
While thoughts like these his maddening brain possess'd,
And lightning pulses thunder'd through his breast;
While Falkland living stood o'er Falkland dead,
Fresh at his feet the corse's death-wound bled,
The eye met his with inexpressive glance,
Like the sleep-walker's in benumbing trance,
And o'er the countenance of rigid clay
The flush of life came quick, then pass'd away;
A momentary pang convulsed the chest,
As though the heart, awaking from unrest,
Broke with the effort;—all again was still;
Chill through his tingling veins the blood ran, chill.
“Can this,” he sigh'd, “be virtuous fame and clear?
Ah! what a field of fratricide is here!
Perish who may,—'tis England, England falls;
Triumph who will,—his vanquish'd country calls,
As I have done,—as I will never cease,
While I have breath and being,—Peace! peace! peace!”

Here stoop'd the matron o'er the dead man's face,
Kiss'd the cold lips, then caught in her embrace
The living Falkland;—as he turn'd to speak,
He felt his mother's tears upon his cheek:
He knew her, own'd her, and at once forgot
All but her earliest love, and his first lot.
Her looks, her tones, her sweet caresses, then
Brought infancy and fairy-land again,
—Youth in the morn and maidenhood of life,
Ere fortune curst his father's house with strife,
And in an age when nature's laws were changed,
Mother and son, as heaven from earth, estranged.

“O Falkland! Falkland!” when her voice found speech,
The lady cried; then took a hand of each,
And joining clasp'd them in her own,—“My son!
Behold thyself, for thou and he are one.”
The dead man's hand grasp'd Falkland's with such force,
He fell transform'd into that very corse,
As though the wound which slew his counterpart
That moment sent the death-shot through his heart.

When from that ecstasy he oped his eyes,
He thought his soul translated to the skies;
The battle-field had disappear'd; the scene
Had changed to beauty, silent and serene;
City nor country look'd as heretofore;
A hundred years and half a hundred more
Had travell'd o'er him while entranced he lay;
England appear'd as England at this day,
In arts, arms, commerce, enterprise, and power,
Beyond the dreams of his devoutest hour,
When, with prophetic call, the patriot brought
Ages to come before creative thought.

With doubt, fear, joy, he look'd above, beneath,
Felt his own pulse, inhaled, and tried to breathe:
Next raised an arm, advanced a foot, then broke
Silence, yet only in a whisper spoke:—
“My mother! are we risen from the tomb?
Is this the morning of the day of doom?”
No answer came; his mother was not there,
But, tall and beautiful beyond compare,
One, who might well have been an angel's bride,
Were angels mortal, glitter'd at his side.
It seem'd some mighty wizard had unseal'd
The book of fate, and in that hour reveal'd
The object of a passion all his own,
—A lady unexistent, or unknown,
Whose saintly image, in his heart enshrined,
Was but an emanation of his mind,
The ideal form of glory, goodness, truth,
Embodied now in all the flush of youth,
Yet not too exquisite to look upon:
He kneel'd to kiss her hand,—the spell was gone.
Even while his brain the dear illusion cross'd,
Her form of soft humanity was lost.
—Then, nymph nor goddess, of poetic birth,
E'er graced Jove's heaven, or stept on classic earth,
Like her in majesty;—the stars came down
To wreathe her forehead with a fadeless crown;
The sky enrobed her with ethereal blue,
And girt with orient clouds of many a hue;
The sun, enamour'd of that loveliest sight,
So veil'd his face with her benigner light,

206

That woods and mountains, valleys, rocks, and streams,
Were only visible in her pure beams.

While Falkland, pale and trembling with surprise,
Admired the change, her stature seem'd to rise,
Till from the ground, on which no shadow spread,
To the arch'd firmament she rear'd her head;
And in the' horizon's infinite expanse,
He saw the British Islands at a glance,
With intervening and encircling seas,
O'er which, from every port, with every breeze,
Exulting ships were sailing to all realms,
Whence vessels came, with strangers at their helms,
On Albion's shores all climes rejoiced to meet,
And pour their native treasures at her feet.

Then Falkland, in that glorious dame, descried
Not a dead parent, nor a phantom bride,
But her who ruled his soul, in either part,
At once the spouse and mother of his heart,
—His Country, thus personified, in grace
And grandeur unconceived, before his face.
Then spake a voice, as from the primal sphere,
Heard by his spirit rather than his ear:—

“Henceforth let civil war for ever cease;
Henceforth, my sons and daughters, dwell in peace;
Amidst the ocean-waves that never rest,
My lovely Isle, be thou the halcyon's nest;
Amidst the nations, evermore in arms,
Be thou a haven, safe from all alarms;
Alone immovable 'midst ruins stand,
The' unfailing hope of every failing land:
To thee for refuge kings enthroned repair;
Slaves flock to breathe the freedom of thine air.
Hither, from chains and yokes, let exiles bend
Their footsteps; here the friendless find a friend;
The country of mankind shall Britain be,
The home of peace, the whole world's sanctuary.”

The pageant fled; 'twas but a dream: he woke,
And found himself beneath the Druid-oak
Where first the phantom on his vigil broke.

Around him gleam'd the morn's reviving light;
But distant trumpets summon'd to the fight,
And Falkland slept among the slain at night.

1831.

THE PATRIOT'S PASS-WORD.

[_]

On the achievement of Arnold de Winkelried, at the battle of Sempach, in which the Swiss insurgents secured the freedom of their country, against the power of Austria, in the fourteenth century.

“Make way for liberty!” he cried,—
Made way for liberty, and died.

In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
A living wall, a human wood;
A wall,—where every conscious stone
Seem'd to its kindred thousands grown,
A rampart all assaults to bear,
Till time to dust their frames should wear:
A wood,—like that enchanted grove
In which with fiends Rinaldo strove,
Where every silent tree possess'd
A spirit imprison'd in its breast,
Which the first stroke of coming strife
Might startle into hideous life:
So still, so dense, the Austrians stood,
A living wall, a human wood.
Impregnable their front appears,
All-horrent with projected spears,
Whose polish'd points before them shine,
From flank to flank, one brilliant line,
Bright as the breakers' splendours run
Along the billows to the sun.

Opposed to these, a hovering band
Contended for their father-land;
Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke
From manly necks the' ignoble yoke,
And beat their fetters into swords,
On equal terms to fight their lords,
And what insurgent rage had gain'd,
In many a mortal fray maintain'd.
Marshall'd once more, at freedom's call
They came to conquer or to fall,
Where he who conquer'd, he who fell,
Was deem'd a dead or living Tell;
Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
That wheresoe'er his arrows flew,
Heroes in his own likeness grew,
And warriors sprang from every sod
Which his awakening footstep trod.

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And now the work of life and death
Hung on the passing of a breath;
The fire of conflict burn'd within,
The battle trembled to begin;
Yet while the Austrians held their ground,
Point for assault was nowhere found;
Where'er the' impatient Switzers gazed,
The' unbroken line of lances blazed;
That line 'twere suicide to meet,
And perish at their tyrants' feet:
How could they rest within their graves,
To leave their homes the haunts of slaves?
Would they not feel their children tread,
With clanking chains, above their head?

It must not be!—this day, this hour,
Annihilates the' invader's power;
All Switzerland is in the field,
She will not fly, she cannot yield,
She must not fall; her better fate
Here gives her an immortal date.
Few were the numbers she could boast,
Yet every freeman was a host,
And felt, as 'twere a secret known,
That one should turn the scale alone,
While each unto himself was he,
On whose sole arm hung victory.

It did depend on one indeed;
Behold him,—Arnold Winkelried;
There sounds not to the trump of fame
The echo of a nobler name.
Unmark'd he stood amidst the throng,
In rumination deep and long,
Till you might see, with sudden grace,
The very thought come o'er his face,
And by the motion of his form
Anticipate the bursting storm,
And by the uplifting of his brow
Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.

But 'twas no sooner thought than done,
The field was in a moment won;
“Make way for liberty!” he cried,
Then ran with arms extended wide,
As if his dearest friend to clasp;
Ten spears he swept within his grasp;
“Make way for liberty!” he cried,
Their keen points cross'd from side to side;
He bow'd amidst them, like a tree,
And thus made way for liberty.

Swift to the breach his comrades fly,
“Make way for liberty!” they cry,
And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
As rush'd the spears through Arnold's heart,
While, instantaneous as his fall,
Rout, ruin, panic seized them all;
An earthquake could not overthrow
A city with a surer blow.

Thus Switzerland again was free;
Thus death made way for liberty.

Redcar, 1827.

THE VOYAGE OF THE BLIND.

“It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark.”
Milton's Lycidas.

[_]

The subject of the following poem was suggested by certain well-authenticated facts, published at Paris, in a Medical Journal, some years ago; of which a few particulars may be given here:—

The ship Le Rodeur, Captain B., of 200 tons burthen, left Havre on the 24th of January, 1819, for the coast of Africa, and reached her destination on the 14th of March following, anchoring at Bonny, on the river Calabar. The crew, consisting of twenty-two men, enjoyed good health during the outward voyage, and during their stay at Bonny, where they continued till the 6th of April. They had observed no trace of ophthalmia among the natives; and it was not until fifteen days after they had set sail on the return voyage, and the vessel was near the equator, that they perceived the first symptoms of this frightful malady. It was then remarked, that the negroes, who, to the number of 160, were crowded together in the hold, and between the decks, had contracted a considerable redness of the eyes, which spread with singular rapidity. No great attention was at first paid to these symptoms, which were thought to be caused only by the want of air in the hold, and by the scarcity of water, which had already begun to be felt. At this time they were limited to eight ounces of water a day for each person, which quantity was afterwards reduced to the half of a wine-glass. By the advice of M. Maugnan, the surgeon of the ship, the negroes, who had hitherto remained shut up in the hold, were brought upon deck in succession, in order that they might breathe a purer air. But it became necessary to abandon this expedient, salutary as it was, because many of the negroes, affected with nostalgia (a passionate longing to return to their native land), threw themselves into the sea, locked in each other's arms.

The disease which had spread itself so rapidly and frightfully among the Africans, soon began to infect all on board. The danger also was greatly increased by a malignant dysentery which prevailed at the time. The first of

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the crew who caught it was a sailor who slept under the deck near the grated hatch which communicated with the hold. The next day a landsman was seized with ophthalmia; and in three days more the captain and the whole ship's company, except one sailor, who remained at the helm, were blinded by the disorder.

All means of cure which the surgeon employed, while he was able to act, proved ineffectual. The sufferings of the crew, which were otherwise intense, were aggravated by apprehension of revolt among the negroes, and the dread of not being able to reach the West Indies, if the only sailor who had hitherto escaped the contagion, and on whom their whole hope rested, should lose his sight like the rest. This calamity had actually befallen the Leon, a Spanish vessel which the Rodeur met on her passage, and the whole of whose crew, having become blind, were under the necessity of altogether abandoning the direction of their ship. These unhappy creatures, as they passed, earnestly entreated the charitable interference of the seamen of the Rodeur; but these, under their own affliction, could neither quit their vessel to go on board the Leon, nor receive the crew of the latter into the Rodeur, where, on account of the cargo of negroes, there was scarcely room for themselves. The vessels, therefore, soon parted company, and the Leon was never seen or heard of again, so far as could be traced at the publication of this narrative. In all probability, then, it was lost. On the fate of this vessel the poem is founded.

The Rodeur reached Guadaloupe on the 21st of June, 1819; her crew being in a most deplorable condition. Of the negroes, thirty-seven had become perfectly blind, twelve had lost each an eye, and fourteen remained otherwise blemished by the disease. Of the crew, twelve, including the surgeon, had entirely lost their sight; five escaped with an eye each, and four were partially injured.

Part I.

O'er Africa the morning broke,
And many a negro-land reveal'd,
From Europe's eye and Europe's yoke,
In nature's inmost heart conceal'd:
Here roll'd the Nile his glittering train,
From Ethiopia to the main;
And Niger there uncoil'd his length,
That hides his fountain and his strength,
Among the realms of noon;
Casting away their robes of night,
Forth stood in nakedness of light
The Mountains of the Moon.

Hush'd were the howlings of the wild,
The leopard in his den lay prone;
Man, while creation round him smiled,
Was sad or savage, man alone;
—Down in the dungeons of Algiers,
The Christian captive woke in tears;
—Caffraria's lean marauding race
Prowl'd forth on pillage or the chase;
—In Lybian solitude,
The Arabian horseman scour'd along;
—The caravan's obstreperous throng,
Their dusty march pursued.

But woe grew frantic in the west;
A wily rover of the tide
Had mark'd the hour of Afric's rest,
To snatch her children from her side:
At early dawn, to prospering gales,
The eager seamen stretch their sails;
The anchor rises from its sleep
Beneath the rocking of the deep;
Impatient from the shore,
A vessel steals;—she steals away,
Mute as the lion with his prey,
—A human prey she bore.

Curst was her trade and contraband;
Therefore that keel, by guilty stealth,
Fled with the darkness from the strand,
Laden with living bales of wealth:
Fair to the eye her streamers play'd
With undulating light and shade;
White from her prow the gurgling foam
Flew backward tow'rds the negro's home,
Like his unheeded sighs;
Sooner that melting foam shall reach
His inland home, than yonder beach
Again salute his eyes.

Tongue hath not language to unfold
The secrets of the space between
That vessel's flanks,—whose dungeon-hold
Hides what the sun hath never seen;
Three hundred writhing prisoners there
Breathe one mephitic blast of air
From lip to lip;—like flame supprest,
It bursts from every tortured breast,
With dreary groans and strong;
Lock'd side to side, they feel by starts
The beating of each other's hearts,
—Their breaking too, ere long.

Light o'er the blue untroubled sea,
Fancy might deem that vessel held
Her voyage to eternity,
By one unchanging breeze impell'd;
—Eternity is in the sky,
Whose span of distance mocks the eye;

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Eternity upon the main,
The horizon there is sought in vain;
Eternity below
Appears in heaven's inverted face;
And on, through everlasting space,
The' unbounded billows flow.

Yet, while his wandering bark career'd,
The master knew, with stern delight,
That full for port her helm was steer'd,
With aim unerring, day and night.
—Pirate! that port thou ne'er shalt hail;
Thine eye in search of it shall fail:
But, lo! thy slaves expire beneath;
Haste, bring the wretches forth to breathe:
Brought forth,—away they spring,
And headlong in the whelming tide,
Rescued from thee, their sorrows hide
Beneath the halcyon's wing.

Part II.

There came an angel of eclipse,
Who haunts at times the' Atlantic flood,
And smites with blindness, on their ships,
The captives and the men of blood.
—Here, in the hold the blight began,
From eye to eye contagion ran;
Sight, as with burning brands, was quench'd;
None from the fiery trial blench'd,
But, panting for release,
They call'd on death, who, close behind,
Brought pestilence to lead the blind
From agony to peace.

The twofold plague no power could check:
Unseen its withering arrows flew;
It walk'd in silence on the deck,
And smote from stem to stern the crew:
—As glow-worms dwindle in the shade,
As lamps in charnel-houses fade,
From every orb with vision fired,
In flitting sparks the light retired;
The sufferers saw it go,
And o'er the ship, the sea, the skies,
Pursued it with their failing eyes,
Till all was black below.

A murmur swell'd along the gale;—
All rose, and held their breath to hear;
All look'd, but none could spy a sail,
Although a sail was near!
—“Help! help!” our beckoning sailors cried;
“Help! help!” a hundred tongues replied:
Then hideous clamour rent the air,
Questions and answers of despair:
Few words the mystery clear'd;
The pest had found that second bark,
Where every eye but his was dark
Whose hand the vessel steer'd.

He, wild with panic, turn'd away,
And thence his shrieking comrades bore;
From either ship the winds convey
Farewells, that soon are heard no more:
—A calm of horror hush'd the waves;
Behold them!—merchant, seamen, slaves,
The blind, the dying, and the dead;
All help, all hope, for ever fled;
Unseen, yet face to face!
Woe past, woe present, woe to come,
Held for a while each victim dumb,—
Impaled upon his place.

It is not the blood of man
To crouch ingloriously to fate;
Nature will struggle while she can;
Misfortune makes her children great:
The head which lightning hath laid low,
Is hallow'd by the noble blow;
The wretch who yields a felon's breath,
Emerges from the cloud of death,
A spirit on the storm;
But virtue perishing unknown,
Watch'd by the eye of heaven alone,
Is earth's least earthly form.

What were the scenes on board that bark?
The tragedy which none beheld,
When (as the deluge bore the ark),
By power invisible impell'd,
The keel went blindfold through the surge,
Where stream might drift, or tempest urge;
—Plague, famine, thirst, their numbers slew,
And frenzy seized the hardier few
Who yet were spared to try
How everlasting are the pangs,
When life upon a moment hangs,
And death stands mocking by.

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Imagination's daring glance
May pierce that vale of mystery,
As in the rapture of a trance,
Things which no eye hath seen to see;
And hear by fits along the gales,
Screams, maniac-laughter, hollow wails:
—They stand, they lie, above, beneath,
Groans of unpitied anguish breathe.
Tears unavailing shed;
Each, in abstraction of despair,
Seems to himself a hermit there,
Alive among the dead.

Yet respite,—respite from his woes,
Even here, the conscious sufferer feels;
Worn down by torture to repose,
Slumber the vanish'd world reveals:
—Ah! then the eyes, extinct in night,
Again behold the blessed light;
Ah! then the frame of rack'd disease
Lays its delighted limbs at ease;
Swift to his own dear land
The unfetter'd slave with shouts returns,
Hard by his dreaming tyrant burns
At sight of Cuba's strand.

To blank reality they wake,
In darkness opens every eye:
Peace comes;—the negro's heart-strings break,
To him 'tis more than life to die:
—How feels, how fares, the man of blood?
In endless exile on the flood,
Rapt, as though fiends his vessel steer'd,
Things which he once believed and fear'd,
—Then scorn'd as idle names,—
Death, judgment, conscience, hell, conspire
With thronging images of fire
To light up guilt in flames.

Who cried for mercy in that hour,
And found it on the desert sea?
Who to the utmost grasp of power
Wrestled with life's last enemy?
Who, Marius-like, defying fate,
(Marius on fallen Carthage) sate?
Who, through a hurricane of fears,
Clung to the hopes of future years?
And who, with heart unquail'd,
Look'd from time's trembling precipice
Down on eternity's abyss,
Till breath and footing fail'd?

Is there among this crew not one,
—One whom a widow'd mother bare,
Who mourns far off her only son,
And pours for him her soul in prayer?
Even now, when o'er his soften'd thought,
Remembrance of her love is brought,
To soothe death's agony, and dart
A throb of comfort through his heart,—
Even now a mystic knell
Sounds through her pulse;—she lifts her eye,
Sees a pale spirit passing by,
And hears his voice, “farewell!”

Mother and son shall meet no more:
—The floating tomb of its own dead,
That ship shall never reach a shore;
But, far from track of seamen led,
The sun shall watch it, day by day,
Careering on its lonely way;
Month after month, the moon shine pale
On falling mast and riven sail;
The stars, from year to year,
Mark the bulged flanks, and sunken deck,
Till not a ruin of the wreck
On ocean's face appear.

1820.

AN EVERY-DAY TALE.

[_]

Written for a benevolent society in the metropolis, the object of which is to relieve poor women during the first month of their widowhood, to preserve what little property they may have from wreck and ruin, in a season of embarrassment, when kindness and good counsel are especially needed; and, so far as may be practicable, to assist the destitute with future means of maintaining themselves and their fatherless children.

“The short and simple annals of the poor.”
Gray.

Mine is a tale of every day,
Yet turn not thou thine ear away;
For 'tis the bitterest thought of all,
The wormwood added to the gall,
That such a wreck of mortal bliss,
That such a weight of woe as this,
Is no strange thing,—but, strange to say!
The tale, the truth, of every day.

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At Mary's birth, her mother smiled
Upon her first, last, only child,
And, at the sight of that young flower,
Forgot the anguish of her hour:
Her pains return'd;—she soon forgot
Love, joy, hope, sorrow,—she was not.

Her partner stood, like one bereft
Of all;—not all, their babe was left:
By the dead mother's side it slept,
Slept sweetly;—when it woke, it wept.
“Live, Mary, live, and I will be
Father and mother both to thee!”
The mourner cried, and while he spake,
His breaking heart forebore to break;
Faith, courage, patience, from above,
Flew to the help of fainting love.
While o'er his charge that parent yearn'd,
All woman's tenderness he learn'd,
All woman's waking, sleeping care,
—That sleeps not to her babe,—her prayer,
Of power to bring upon its head,
The richest blessings heaven can shed;
All these he learn'd, and lived to say,
“My strength was given me as my day.”

So the Red Indian of those woods
That echo to Lake Erie's floods,
Reft of his consort in the wild,
Became the mother of his child!
Nature (herself a mother) saw
His grief, and loosed her kindliest law:
Warm from its fount life's stream, propell'd,
His breasts with sweet nutrition swell'd,
At whose strange springs, his infant drew
Milk, as the rose-bud drinks the dew.

Mary from childhood rose to youth,
In paths of innocence and truth;
—Train'd by her parent, from her birth,
To go to heaven by way of earth,
She was to him, in after-life,
Both as a daughter and a wife.

Meekness, simplicity, and grace,
Adorn'd her speech, her air, her face;
The spirit, through its earthly mould,
Broke, as the lily's leaves unfold;
Her beauty open'd on the sight,
As a star trembles into light.

Love found that maiden; love will find
Way to the coyest maiden's mind;
Love found and tried her many a year,
With hope deferr'd, and boding fear:
To the world's end her hero stray'd;
Tempests and calms his bark delay'd;
What then could her heart-sickness soothe?
“The course of true love ne'er ran smooth!”
Her bosom ached with drear suspense,
Till sharper trouble drove it thence:
Affliction smote her father's brain,
And he became a child again.
Ah! then, the prayers, the pangs, the tears,
He breathed, felt, shed on her young years,
That duteous daughter well repaid,
Till in the grave she saw him laid,
Beneath her mother's church-yard stone:
—There first she felt herself alone;
But while she gazed on that cold heap,
Her parents' bed, and could not weep,
A still small whisper seem'd to say,
“Strength shall be given thee as thy day:”
Then rush'd the tears to her relief;
A bow was in the cloud of grief.

Her wanderer now from clime to clime,
Return'd, unchanged by tide or time,
True as the morning to the sun;
—Mary and William soon were one;
And never rang the village bells
With sweeter falls or merrier swells,
Than while the neighbours, young and old,
Stood at their thresholds, to behold
And bless them, till they reach'd the spot
Where woodbines girdled Mary's cot,
Where throstles, perch'd on orchard trees,
Sang to the hum of garden bees:
And there—no longer forced to roam—
William found all the world at home!
Yea, more than all the world beside,—
A warm, kind heart to his allied.

Twelve years of humble life they spent,
With food and raiment well content;
In flower of youth and flush of health,
They envied not voluptuous wealth:
The wealth of poverty was theirs,
—Those riches without wings or snares,
Which honest hands, by daily toil,
May dig from every generous soil.

212

A little farm while William till'd,
Mary her household cares fulfill'd:
And love, joy, peace, with guileless mirth,
Sate round their table, warm'd their hearth;
Whence rose, like incense, to the skies,
Morning and evening sacrifice,
And contrite spirits found, in prayer,
That home was heaven, for God was there.

Meanwhile the May-flowers on their lands
Were yearly pluck'd by younger hands;
New-comers watch'd the swallows float,
And mock'd the cuckoo's double note;
Till, head o'er head, in slanting line,
They stood,—a progeny of nine,
That might be ten;—but ere that day,
The father's life was snatch'd away:
Faint from the field one night he came;
Fever had seized his sinewy frame,
And left the strong man, when it pass'd,
Frail as the sere leaf in the blast;
A long, long winter's illness, bow'd
His head;—spring-daisies deck'd his shroud.
Oh! 'twas a bitter day for all,
The husband's, father's funeral;
The dead, the living, and the unborn
Met there,—were there asunder torn.

Scarce was he buried out of sight,
Ere his tenth infant sprang to light,
And Mary, from her child-bed throes,
To instant utter ruin rose;
Harvests had fail'd, and sickness drain'd
Her frugal stock-purse, long retain'd;
Rents, debts, and taxes all fell due,
Claimants were loud, resources few,
Small, and remote;—yet time and care
Her shatter'd fortunes might repair,
If but a friend,—a friend in need,—
Such friend would be a friend indeed,—
Would, by a mite of succour lent,
Wrongs irretrievable prevent!
She look'd around for such an one,
And sigh'd but spake not,—“Is there none?”
—Oh! if he come not ere an hour,
All will elapse beyond her power,
And homeless, helpless, hopeless, lost,
Mary on this cold world be tost
With all her babes!—

Came such a friend?—I must not say;
Mine is a tale of every day:
But wouldst thou know the worst of all,
The wormwood mingled with the gall,
Go visit thou, in their distress,
The widow and the fatherless,
And thou shalt find such woe as this,
Such breaking up of earthly bliss,
Is no strange thing,—but, strange to say!
The tale—the truth—of every day.

Go, visit thou, in their distress,
The Widow and the Fatherless.

1830.

A TALE WITHOUT A NAME.

“O, woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please;
—When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!”
Scott's Marmion, canto vi.

Part I.

He had no friend on earth but thee;
No hope in heaven above;
By day and night, o'er land and sea,
No solace but thy love:
He wander'd here, he wander'd there,
A fugitive like Cain;
And mourn'd like him, in dark despair,
A brother rashly slain.

Rashly, yet not in sudden wrath,
They quarrell'd in their pride,
He sprang upon his brother's path,
And smote him that he died.
A nightmare sat upon his brain,
All stone within he felt;
A death-watch tick'd through every vein,
Till the dire blow was dealt.

As from a dream, in pale surprise,
Waking, the murderer stood;
He met the victim's closing eyes,
He saw his brother's blood:
That blood pursued him on his way,
A living, murmuring stream;

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Those eyes before him flash'd dismay,
With ever-dying gleam.

In vain he strove to fly the scene,
And breathe beyond that time;
Tormented memory glared between;
Immortal seem'd his crime:
His thoughts, his words, his actions all
Turn'd on his fallen brother;
That hour he never could recall,
Nor ever live another.

To him the very clouds stood still,
The ground appear'd unchanged;
One light was ever on the hill,
—That hill where'er he ranged:
He heard the brook, the birds, the wind,
Sound in the glen below;
The self-same tree he cower'd behind,
He struck the self-same blow.

Yet was not reason quite o'erthrown,
Nor so benign his lot,
To dwell in frenzied grief alone,
All other woe forgot:
The world within and world around,
Clash'd in perpetual strife;
Present and past close interwound
Through his whole thread of life.

That thread, inextricably spun,
Might reach eternity;
For ever doing, never done,
That moment's deed might be;
This was a worm that would not die,
A fire unquenchable:
Ah! whither shall the sufferer fly?
Fly from a bosom-hell?

He had no friend on earth but thee,
No hope in heaven above;
By day and night, o'er land and sea,
No refuge but thy love;
Not time nor place, nor crime nor shame,
Could change thy spousal truth;
In desolate old age the same
As in the joy of youth.

Not death, but infamy, to 'scape,
He left his native coast;
To death in any other shape,
He long'd to yield the ghost:
But infamy his steps pursued,
And haunted every place,
While death, though like a lover woo'd,
Fled from his loathed embrace.

He wander'd here, he wander'd there,
And she his angel-guide,—
The silent spectre of despair,
With mercy at his side;
Whose love and loveliness alone
Shed comfort round his gloom,—
Pale as the monumental stone
That watches o'er a tomb.

Part II.

They cross'd the blue Atlantic flood;
A storm their bark assail'd;
Stern through the hurricane he stood;
All hearts, all efforts, fail'd:
With horrid hope, he eyed the waves
That flash'd like wild-fires dim;
But ocean, midst a thousand graves,
Denied a grave to him.

On shore he sought delirious rest,
In crowds of busy men,
When suddenly the yellow pest
Came reeking from its den:
The city vanish'd at its breath;
He caught the taint, and lay
A suppliant at the gate of death,
—Death spurn'd the wretch away.

In solitude of streams and rocks,
Mountains and forests dread,
Where nature's free and fearless flocks
At her own hand are fed,
They hid their pangs;—but oh! to live
In peace,—in peace to die,—
Was more than solitude could give,
Or earth's whole round supply.

The swampy wilderness their haunt,
Where fiery panthers prowl,
Serpents their fatal splendours flaunt,
And wolves and lynxes howl;

214

Where alligators throng the floods,
And reptiles, venom-arm'd,
Infest the air, the fields, the woods,
They slept, they waked, unharm'd.

Where the Red Indians, in their ire,
With havoc mark the way,
Skulk in dark ambush, waste with fire,
Or gorge inhuman prey:
Their blood no wild marauder shed;
Secure without defence,
Alike, were his devoted head,
And her meek innocence.

Weary of loneliness, they turn'd
To Europe's carnage-field;
At glory's Moloch-shrine, he burn'd
His hated breath to yield:
He plunged into the hottest strife;
He dealt the deadliest blows;
To every foe exposed his life;
Powerless were all his foes.

The iron thunder-bolts, with wings
Of lightning, shunn'd his course;
Harmless the hail of battle rings,
The bayonet spends its force;
The sword to smite him flames aloof,
Descends,—but strikes in vain;
His branded front was weapon-proof,
He wore the mark of Cain.

“I cannot live,—I cannot die!”
He mutter'd in despair;
“This curse of immortality,
O, could I quit,—or bear!”
—Of every frantic hope bereft,
To meet a nobler doom,
One refuge, only one, was left,—
To storm the' unyielding tomb.

Through his own breast the passage lay,
The steel was in his hand;
But fiends upstarting fenced the way,
And every nerve unmann'd:
The heart that ached its blood to spill,
With palsying horror died;
The arm, rebellious to his will,
Hung withering at his side.

O, woman! wonderful in love,
Whose weakness is thy power,
How did thy spirit rise above
The conflict of that hour!
—She found him prostrate;—not a sigh
Escaped her tortured breast,
Nor fell one tear-drop from her eye,
Where torrents were supprest.

Her faithful bosom stay'd his head,
That throbb'd with fever heat;
Her eye serene compassion shed,
Which his could never meet:
Her arms enclasp'd his shuddering frame,
While at his side she kneel'd,
And utter'd nothing but his name,
Yet all her soul reveal'd.

Touch'd to the quick, he gave no sign
By gentle word or tone;
In him affection could not shine,
'Twas fire within a stone;
Which no collision by the way
Could startle into light,
Though the poor heart that held it lay
Wrapt in Cimmerian night.

It was not always thus;—erewhile
The kindness of his youth,
His brow of innocence, and smile
Of unpretending truth,
Had left such strong delight, that she
Would oft recall the time,
And live in golden memory,
Unconscious of his crime.

Though self-abandon'd now to fate,
The passive prey of grief,
Sullen, and cold, and desolate,
He shunn'd, he spurn'd, relief:
Still onward in its even course
Her pure affection press'd,
And pour'd with soft and silent force
Its sweetness through his breast.

Thus Sodom's melancholy lake
No turn or current knows;
Nor breeze, nor billow sounding, break
The horror of repose;

215

While Jordan, through the sulphurous brine,
Rolls a translucent stream,
Whose waves with answering beauty shine
To every changing beam.

Part III.

At length the hardest trial came,
Again they cross the seas;
The waves their wilder fury tame,
The storm becomes a breeze:
Homeward their easy course they hold,
And now in radiant view,
The purple forelands, tinged with gold,
Larger and lovelier grew.

The vessel on the tranquil tide
Then seem'd to lie at rest,
While Albion, in maternal pride,
Advanced with open breast
To bid them welcome on the main:
—Both shrunk from her embrace;
Cold grew the pulse through every vein;
He turn'd away his face.

Silent, apart, on deck he stands
In ecstasy of woe;
A brother's blood is on his hands,
He sees, he hears it flow:
Wilder than ocean tempest-wrought,
Though deadly calm his look;
—His partner read his inmost thought,
And strength her limbs forsook.

Then first, then last, a pang she proved
Too exquisite to bear:
She fell;—he caught her,—strangely moved,
Roused from intense despair;
Alive to feelings long unknown,
He wept upon her cheek,
And call'd her in as kind a tone
As love's own lips could speak.

Her spirit heard that voice, and felt
Arrested on its flight;
Back to the mansion where it dwelt,
Back from the gates of light,
That open'd Paradise in trance,
It hasten'd from afar,
Quick as the startled seaman's glance
Turns from the polar star.

She breathed again, look'd up, and lo!
Those eyes that knew not tears,
With streams of tenderness o'erflow;
That heart, through hopeless years
The den of fiends in darkness chain'd,
That would not, dared not rest,
Affection fervent, pure, unfeign'd,
In speechless sighs express'd.

Content to live, since now she knew
What love believed before;
Content to live, since he was true,
And love could ask no more,—
This vow to righteous heaven she made,
—“Whatever ills befall,
Patient, unshrinking, undismay'd,
I'll freely suffer all.”

They land,—they take the wonted road,
By twice ten years estranged;
The trees, the fields, their old abode,
Objects and men, had changed:
Familiar faces, forms endear'd,
Each well-remember'd name,
From earth itself had disappear'd,
Or seem'd no more the same.

The old were dead, the young were old;
Children to men had sprung;
And every eye to them was cold,
And silent every tongue;
Friendless, companionless, they roam
Amidst their native scene;
In drearier banishment at home,
Than savage climes had been.

Part IV.

Yet worse she fear'd;—nor long they lay
In safety or suspense;
Unslumbering justice seized her prey,
And dragg'd the culprit thence:
Amid the dungeon's darken'd walls,
Down on the cold damp floor,
A wreck of misery he falls,
Close to the bolted door.

216

And she is gone,—while he remains,
Bewilder'd in the gloom,
To brood in solitude and chains
Upon a felon's doom:
Yes, she is gone,—and he forlorn
Must groan the night away,
And long to see her face at morn,
More welcome than the day.

The morning comes,—she re-appears
With grief-dissembling wiles;
A sad serenity of tears,
An agony of smiles,
Her looks assume; his spectral woes
Are vanish'd at the sight;
And all within him seem'd repose,
And all around him light.

Never since that mysterious hour,
When kindred blood was spilt,—
Never had aught in nature power
To soothe corroding guilt,
Till the glad moment when she cross'd
The threshold of that place,
And the wild rapture when he lost
Himself in her embrace.

Even then, while on her neck he hung,
Ere yet a word they spoke,
As by a fiery serpent stung,
Away at once he broke:
Frenzy, remorse, confusion burst
In tempest o'er his brain;
He felt accused, condemn'd, accurst,
He was himself again.

Days, weeks, and months, had mark'd the flight
Of time's unwearied wing,
Ere winter's long, lugubrious night
Relented into spring:
To him who pined for death's release,
An age the space between!
To her who could not hope for peace,
How fugitive the scene!

In vain she chid forewarning fears,
In vain repress'd her woe,
Alone, unseen, her sighs and tears
Would freely heave and flow:
Yet ever in his sight, by day,
Her looks were calm and kind,
And when at evening torn away,
She left her soul behind.

Hark!—hark!—the Judge is at the gate,
The trumpets' thrilling tones
Ring through the cells, the voice of fate!
Re-echoed thence in groans:
The sound hath reach'd her ear,—she stands,
In marble-chilness dumb;
He too hath heard, and smites his hands:
“I come,” he cried, “I come.”

Before the dread tribunal now,
Firm in collected pride,
Without a scowl upon his brow,
Without a pang to hide,
He stood;—superior in that hour
To recreant fear and shame;
Peril itself inspired the power
To meet the worst that came.

'Twas like the tempest, when he sought
Fate in the swallowing flood;
'Twas like the battle, when he fought
For death through seas of blood:
—A violence which soon must break
The heart that would not bend,—
A heart that almost ceased to ache
In hope of such an end.

On him while every eye was fix'd,
And every lip express'd,
Without a voice, the rage unmix'd,
That boil'd in every breast;
It seem'd as though that deed abhorr'd,
In years far distant done,
Had cut asunder every cord
Of fellowship but one,—

That one indissolubly bound
A feeble woman's heart:
—Faithful in every trial found,
Long had she borne her part;
Now at his helpless side alone,
Girt with infuriate crowds,
Like the new moon her meekness shone,
Pale through a gulf of clouds.

217

Ah! well might every bosom yearn
Responsive to her sigh,
And every visage, dark and stern,
Soften beneath that eye;
Ah! well might every lip of gall
The unutter'd curse suspend;
Its tones for her in blessings fall,
Its breath in prayer ascend.

“Guilty!”—that thunder-striking sound,
All shudder'd when they heard;
A burst of horrid joy around
Hail'd the tremendous word;
Check'd in a moment,—she was there!
The instinctive groan was hush'd:
Nature, that forced it, cried, “Forbear;”
Indignant justice blush'd.

Part V.

One woe is past, another speeds
To brand and seal his doom;
The third day's failing beam recedes;
She watch'd it into gloom:
That night, how swift in its career
It flew from sun to sun!
That night, the last of many a dear
And many a dolorous one!—

That night, by special grace, she wakes
In the lone convict's cell,
With him for whom the morrow breaks
To light to heaven or hell:
Dread sounds of preparation rend
The dungeon's ponderous roof;
The hammer's doubling strokes descend,
The scaffold creaks aloof.

She watch'd his features through the shade
Which glimmering embers broke;
Both from their inmost spirit pray'd;
They pray'd, but seldom spoke:
Moments meanwhile were years to him;
Her grief forgot their flight,
Till on the hearth the fire grew dim;
She turn'd, and lo! the light;—

The light less welcome to her eyes,
The loveliest light of morn,
Than the dark glare of felons' eyes
Through grated cells forlorn:
The cool fresh breeze from heaven that blew,
The free lark's mounting strains,
She felt in drops of icy dew,
She heard like groans and chains.

“Farewell!”—'twas but a word, yet more
Was utter'd in that sound
Than love had ever told before,
Or sorrow yet had found:
They kiss like meeting flames,—they part
Like flames asunder driven;
Lip cleaves to lip, heart beats on heart,
Till soul from soul is riven.

Quick hurried thence,—the sullen bell
Its pausing peal began;
She hearkens,—'tis the dying knell
Rung for the living man:
The mourner reach'd her lonely bower,
Fell on her widow'd bed,
And found, through one entrancing hour,
The quiet of the dead.

She woke,—and knew he was no more:
“Thy dream of life is past;
That pang with thee, that pang is o'er,
The bitterest and the last!”
She cried:—then scenes of sad amaze
Flash'd on her inward eye;
A field, a troop, a crowd to gaze,
A murderer led to die!

He eyed the ignominious tree,
Look'd round, but saw no friend;
Was plunged into eternity;
—Is this—is this the end?
Her spirit follow'd him afar
Into the world unknown,
And saw him standing at that bar
Where each must stand alone.

Silence and darkness hide the rest:
—Long she survived to mourn;
But peace sprang up within her breast,
From trouble meekly borne:
And higher, holier joys had she,
A Christian's hopes above,
The prize of suffering constancy,
The crown of faithful love.

1821.

218

A SNAKE IN THE GRASS.

A TALE FOR CHILDREN: FOUNDED ON FACTS.

She had a secret of her own,
That little girl of whom we speak,
O'er which she oft would muse alone,
Till the blush came across her cheek,
A rosy cloud that glow'd awhile,
Then melted in a sunny smile.

There was so much to charm the eye,
So much to move delightful thought,
Awake at night she loved to lie,
Darkness to her that image brought;
She murmur'd of it in her dreams,
Like the low sounds of gurgling streams.

What secret thus the soul possess'd
Of one so young and innocent?
Oh! nothing but a robin's nest,
O'er which in ecstasy she bent;
That treasure she herself had found,
With five brown eggs, upon the ground.

When first it flash'd upon her sight,
Bolt flew the dam above her head;
She stoop'd, and almost shriek'd with fright;
But spying soon that little bed
With feathers, moss, and horse-hairs twined,
Rapture and wonder fill'd her mind.

Breathless and beautiful she stood,
Her ringlets o'er her bosom fell;
With hands uplift, in attitude
As though a pulse might break the spell,
While through the shade her pale fine face
Shone like a star amidst the place.

She stood so silent, stay'd so long,
The parent-birds forgot their fear;
Cock-robin trill'd his small sweet song,
In notes like dew-drops trembling clear;
From spray to spray the shyer hen
Dropp'd softly on her nest again.

There Lucy mark'd her slender bill
On this side, and on that her tail
Peer'd o'er the edge,—while, fix'd and still,
Two bright black eyes her own assail,
Which, in eye-language, seem to say,
“Peep, pretty maiden! then, away!”

Away, away at length she crept,
So pleased, she knew not how she trode,
Yet light on tottering tiptoe stept,
As if birds' eggs strew'd all the road;
With folded arms, and lips compress'd,
To keep her joy within her breast.

Morn, noon, and eve, from day to day,
By stealth she visited that spot;
Alike her lessons and her play
Were slightly conn'd, or half forgot;
And when the callow young were hatch'd,
With infant fondness Lucy watch'd:—

Watch'd the kind parents dealing food
To clamorous suppliants all agape;
Watch'd the small, naked, unform'd brood
Improve in size, and plume, and shape,
Till feathers clad the fluttering things,
And the whole group seem'd bills and wings.

Unconsciously within her breast,
Where many a brooding fancy lay,
She plann'd to bear the tiny nest
And chirping choristers away,
In stately cage to tune their throats,
And learn untaught their mother-notes.

One morn, when fairly fledged for flight,
Blithe Lucy, on her visit, found
What seem'd a necklace, glittering bright,
Twin'd round the nest, twin'd round and round,
With emeralds, pearls, and sapphires set,
Rich as my lady's coronet.

She stretch'd her hand to seize the prize,
When up a serpent popp'd its head,
But glid like wild-fire from her eyes,
Hissing and rustling as it fled;
She utter'd one short shrilling scream,
Then stood, as startled from a dream.

Her brother Tom, who long had known
That something drew her feet that way,
Curious to catch her there alone,
Had follow'd her that fine May-day;

219

—Lucy, bewilder'd by her trance,
Came to herself at his first glance.

Then in her eyes sprang welcome tears;
They fell as showers in April fall;
He kiss'd her, coax'd her, soothed her fears
Till she in frankness told him all:
—Tom was a bold adventurous boy,
And heard the dreadful tale with joy.

For he had learnt,—in some far land,—
How children catch the sleeping snake;
Eager himself to try his hand,
He cut a hazel from the brake,
And like a hero set to work,
To make a lithe long-handled fork.

Brother and sister then withdrew,
Leaving the nestlings safely there;
Between their heads the mother flew,
Prompt to resume her nursery care:
But Tom, whose breast for glory burn'd,
In less than half an hour return'd.

With him came Ned, as cool and sly
As Tom was resolute and stout;
So, fair and softly, they drew nigh,
Cowering and keeping sharp look-out,
Till they had reach'd the copse,—to see,
But not alarm, the enemy.

Guess with what transport they descried,
How, as before, the serpent lay
Coil'd round the nest, in slumbering pride;
The urchins chuckled o'er their prey,
And Tom's right hand was lifted soon,
Like Greenland whaler's with harpoon.

Across its neck the fork he brought,
And pinn'd it fast upon the ground;
The reptile woke, and quick as thought
Curl'd round the stick, curl'd round and round;
While head and tail Ned's nimble hands
Tied at each end with pack-thread bands.

Scarce was the enemy secured,
When Lucy timidly drew near,
But, by their shouting well assured,
Eyed the green captive void of fear;
The lads, stark wild with victory, flung
Their caps aloft,—they danced, they sung.

But Lucy, with an anxious look,
Turn'd to her own dear nest, when lo!
To legs and wings the young ones took,
Hopping and tumbling to and fro;
The parents chattering from above
With all the earnestness of love.

Alighting now among their train,
They peck'd them on new feats to try;
But many a lesson seem'd in vain,
Before the giddy things would fly;
Lucy both laugh'd and cried, to see
How ill they play'd at liberty.

I need not tell the snake's sad doom,
You may be sure he lived not long;
Cork'd in a bottle for a tomb,
Preserv'd in spirits and in song,—
His skin in Tom's museum shines,
You read his story in these lines.

1831.

THE VIGIL OF ST. MARK.

Returning from their evening walk,
On yonder ancient stile,
In sweet, romantic, tender talk,
Two lovers paused awhile:

Edmund, the monarch of the dale,
All conscious of his powers;
Ella, the lily of the vale,
The rose of Auburn's bowers.

In airy Love's delightful bands
He held her heart in vain;
The Nymph denied her willing hands
To Hymen's awful chain.

“Ah! why,” said he, “our bliss delay?
Mine Ella, why so cold?
Those who but love from day to day,
From day to day grow old.

220

“The bounding arrow cleaves the sky,
Nor leaves a trace behind;
And single lives like arrows fly,—
They vanish through the wind.

“In Wedlock's sweet endearing lot
Let us improve the scene,
That some may be when we are not,
To tell—that we have been.”

“'Tis now,” replied the village Belle,
“St. Mark's mysterious Eve;
And all that old traditions tell
I tremblingly believe:—

“How, when the midnight signal tolls,
Along the churchyard-green
A mournful train of sentenced souls
In winding-sheets are seen:

“The ghosts of all whom Death shall doom
Within the coming year,
In pale procession walk the gloom
Amid the silence drear.

“If Edmund, bold in conscious might,
By love severely tried,
Can brave the terrors of to-night,
Ella will be his bride.”

She spake,—and, like the nimble fawn,
From Edmund's presence fled:
He sought, across the rural lawn,
The dwelling of the dead;—

That silent, solemn, simple spot,
The mouldering realm of peace,
Where human passions are forgot,
Where human follies cease.

The gliding moon through heaven serene
Pursued her tranquil way,
And shed o'er all the sleeping scene
A soft nocturnal day.

With swelling heart and eager feet
Young Edmund gain'd the church,
And chose his solitary seat
Within the dreadful porch.

Thick, threatening clouds assembled soon,
Their dragon-wings display'd;
Eclipsed the slow retiring moon,
And quench'd the stars in shade.

Amid the deep abyss of gloom
No ray of beauty smiled,
Save, glistening o'er some haunted tomb,
The glow-worm's lustre wild.

The village watch-dogs bay'd around,
The long grass whistled drear,
The steeple trembled to the ground,
Ev'n Edmund quaked with fear.

All on a sudden died the blast,
Dumb horror chill'd the air;
While Nature seem'd to pause aghast,
In uttermost despair.

—Twelve times the midnight herald toll'd,
As oft did Edmund start;
For every stroke fell dead and cold
Upon his fainting heart.

Then, glaring through the ghastly gloom,
Along the churchyard-green,
The destined victims of the tomb
In winding-sheets were seen.

In that strange moment Edmund stood,
Sick with severe surprise!
While creeping horror drank his blood,
And fix'd his flinty eyes.

He saw the secrets of the grave;
He saw the face of DEATH:
No pitying power appear'd to save—
He gasp'd away his breath.

Yet still the scene his soul beguiled,
And every spectre cast
A look unutterably wild
On Edmund as they pass'd.

All on the ground entranced he lay;
At length the vision broke;
—When, lo!—a kiss, as cold as clay,
The slumbering youth awoke.

221

That moment through a rifted cloud
The darting moon display'd,
Robed in a melancholy shroud,
The image of a maid.

Her dusky veil aside she threw,
And show'd a face most fair:
“My Love! my Ella!”—Edmund flew,
And clasp'd the yielding air.

“Ha! who art thou?” His cheek grew pale:
A well-known voice replied,
“Ella, the lily of the vale;
Ella—thy destined bride.”

To win his neck her airy arms
The pallid phantom spread;
Recoiling from her blasted charms,
The affrighted lover fled.

To shun the visionary maid,
His speed outstript the wind;
But,—though unseen to move,—the shade
Was evermore behind.

So Death's unerring arrows glide,
Yet seem suspended still;
Nor pause, nor shrink, nor turn aside,
But smite, subdue, and kill.

O'er many a mountain, moor, and vale,
On that tremendous night,
The ghost of Ella, wild and pale,
Pursued her lover's flight.

But when the dawn began to gleam,
Ere yet the morning shone,
She vanish'd like a nightmare-dream,
And Edmund stood alone.

Three days, bewilder'd and forlorn,
He sought his home in vain;
At length he hail'd the hoary thorn
That crown'd his native plain.

'Twas evening;—all the air was balm,
The heavens serenely clear;
When the soft music of a psalm
Came pensive o'er his ear.

Then sunk his heart;—a strange surmise
Made all his blood run cold:
He flew,—a funeral met his eyes:
He paused,—a death-bell toll'd.

“'Tis she! 'tis she!”—He burst away;
And bending o'er the spot
Where all that once was Ella lay,
He all beside forgot.

A maniac now, in dumb despair,
With love-bewilder'd mien,
He wanders, weeps, and watches there,
Among the hillocks green.

And every Eve of pale St. Mark,
As village hinds relate,
He walks with Ella in the dark,
And reads the rolls of Fate.

1799.

A DEED OF DARKNESS.

[_]

The body of the Missionary, John Smith, (who died February 6. 1824, in prison, under sentence of death by a court-martial, in Demerara,) was ordered to be buried secretly at night; and no person, not even his widow, was allowed to follow the corpse. Mrs. Smith, however, and her friend Mrs. Elliott, accompanied by a free Negro, carrying a lantern, repaired beforehand to the spot where a grave had been dug, and there they awaited the interment, which took place accordingly. His Majesty's pardon, annulling the condemnation, is said to have arrived on the day of the unfortunate Missionary's death, from the rigours of confinement, in a tropical climate, and under the slow pains of an inveterate malady, previously afflicting him.

Come down in thy profoundest gloom,
Without one vagrant fire-fly's light,
Beneath thine ebon arch entomb
Earth from the gaze of heaven, O Night!
A deed of darkness must be done;
Put out the moon, hold back the sun.

Are these the criminals that flee
Like deeper shadows through the shade?
A flickering lamp, from tree to tree,
Betrays their path along the glade,
Led by a Negro;—now they stand,
Two trembling women, hand in hand.

222

A grave, an open grave, appears;
O'er this in agony they bend,
Wet the fresh turf with bitter tears;
Sighs following sighs their bosoms rend:
These are not murderers!—these have known
Grief more bereaving than their own.

Oft through the gloom their straining eyes
Look forth for what they fear to meet:
It comes; they catch a glimpse; it flies:
Quick-glancing lights, slow-trampling feet,
Amidst the cane-crops,—seen, heard, gone,—
Return,—and in dead-march move on.

A stern procession!—gleaming arms
And spectral countenances dart,
By the red torch-flame, wild alarms
And withering pangs through either heart;
A corpse amidst the group is borne,
A prisoner's corpse who died last morn.

Not by the slave-lord's justice slain,
Who doom'd him to a traitor's death;
While royal mercy sped in vain
O'er land and sea to save his breath;—
No; the frail life that warm'd this clay
Man could not give nor take away.

His vengeance and his grace alike
Were impotent to spare or kill;—
He may not lift the sword to strike,
Nor turn its edge aside, at will;
Here, by one sovereign act and deed,
God cancell'd all that man decreed.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
That corpse is to the grave consign'd;
The scene departs:—this buried trust
The Judge of quick and dead shall find,
When things which Time and Death have seal'd
Shall be in flaming fire reveal'd.

The fire shall try Thee, then, like gold,
Prisoner of hope!—await the test;
And O! when truth alone is told,
Be thy clear innocence confess'd!
The fire shall try thy foes;—may they
Find mercy in that dreadful day!

THE CAST-AWAY SHIP.

[_]

The subjects of the two following poems were suggested by the loss of the Blenheim, commanded by Sir Thomas Trowbridge, which was separated from the vessels under its convoy during a storm in the Indian Ocean.—The Admiral's son afterwards made a voyage, without success, in search of his father.—Trowbridge was one of Nelson's captains at the Battle of the Nile, but his ship unfortunately ran aground as he was bearing down on the enemy.

A vessel sail'd from Albion's shore,
To utmost India bound,
Its crest a hero's pendant bore,
With broad sea-laurels crown'd
In many a fierce and noble fight,
Though foil'd on that Egyptian night
When Gallia's host was drown'd,
And Nelson o'er his country's foes
Like the destroying angel rose.

A gay and gallant company,
With shouts that rend the air,
For warrior-wreaths upon the sea,
Their joyful brows prepare;
But many a maiden's sigh was sent,
And many a mother's blessing went,
And many a father's prayer,
With that exulting ship to sea,
With that undaunted company.

The deep, that like a cradled child
In breathing slumber lay,
More warmly blush'd, more sweetly smiled,
As rose the kindling day:
Through ocean's mirror dark and clear,
Reflected clouds and skies appear
In morning's rich array;
The land is lost, the waters glow,
'Tis heaven above, around, below.

Majestic o'er the sparkling tide,
See the tall vessel sail,
With swelling winds in shadowy pride,
A swan before the gale:
Deep-laden merchants rode behind;
—But, fearful of the fickle wind,
Britannia's cheek grew pale,
When, lessening through the flood of light,
Their leader vanish'd from her sight.

223

Oft had she hail'd its trophied prow,
Victorious from the war,
And banner'd masts that would not bow,
Though riven with many a scar;
Oft had her oaks their tribute brought,
To rib its flanks, with thunder fraught;
But late her evil star
Had cursed it on its homeward way,
—“The spoiler shall become the prey.”

Thus warn'd, Britannia's anxious heart
Throbb'd with prophetic woe
When she beheld that ship depart,
A fair ill-omen'd show!
So views the mother, through her tears,
The daughter of her hopes and fears,
When hectic beauties glow
On the frail cheek, where sweetly bloom
The roses of an early tomb.

No fears the brave adventurers knew,
Peril and death they spurn'd;
Like full-fledged eagles forth they flew!
Jove's birds, that proudly burn'd
In battle-hurricanes to wield
His lightnings on the billowy field;
And many a look they turn'd
O'er the blue waste of waves to spy
A Gallic ensign in the sky.

But not to crush the vaunting foe,
In combat on the main,
Nor perish by a glorious blow,
In mortal triumph slain,
Was their unutterable fate;
—That story would the Muse relate,
The song might rise in vain;
In ocean's deepest, darkest bed,
The secret slumbers with the dead.

On India's long-expecting strand
Their sails were never furl'd;
Never on known or friendly land,
By storms their keel was hurl'd;
Their native soil no more they trod,
They rest beneath no hallow'd sod:
Throughout the living world,
This sole memorial of their lot
Remains,—they were, and they are not.

The spirit of the Cape pursued
Their long and toilsome way;
At length, in ocean solitude,
He sprang upon his prey;
“Havoc!” the shipwreck-demon cried,
Loosed all his tempests on the tide,
Gave all his lightnings play;
The abyss recoil'd before the blast,
Firm stood the seamen till the last.

Like shooting-stars, athwart the gloom
The merchant-sails were sped;
Yet oft, before its midnight doom,
They mark'd the high mast-head
Of that devoted vessel, tost
By winds and floods, now seen, now lost:
While every gun-fire spread
A dimmer flash, a fainter roar;
—At length they saw, they heard, no more.

There are to whom that ship was dear,
For love and kindred's sake;
When these the voice of Rumour hear,
Their inmost heart shall quake,
Shall doubt, and fear, and wish, and grieve,
Believe, and long to unbelieve,
But never cease to ache;
Still doom'd, in sad suspense, to bear
The Hope that keeps alive Despair.

THE SEQUEL.

He sought his sire from shore to shore,
He sought him day by day;
The prow he track'd was seen no more,
Breasting the ocean-spray;
Yet, as the winds his voyage sped,
He sail'd above his father's head,
Unconscious where it lay,
Deep, deep beneath the rolling main;
—He sought his sire; he sought in vain.

Son of the brave! no longer weep;
Still with affection true,
Along the wild disastrous deep,
Thy father's course pursue;

224

Full in his wake of glory steer,
His spirit prompts thy bold career,
His compass guides thee through;
So, while thy thunders awe the sea,
Britain shall find thy sire in thee.

1815.

A NIGHT IN A STAGE-COACH;

BEING A MEDITATION ON THE WAY BETWEEN LONDON AND BRISTOL,

Sept. 23. 1815.

I travel all the irksome night,
By ways to me unknown;
I travel, like a bird in flight,
Onward, and all alone.

In vain I close my weary eyes.
They will not, cannot sleep,
But, like the watchers of the skies,
Their twinkling vigils keep.

My thoughts are wandering wild and far;
From earth to heaven they dart;
Now wing their flight from star to star,
Now dive into my heart.

Backward they roll the tide of time,
And live through vanish'd years,
Or hold their “colloquy sublime”
With future hopes and fears;

Then passing joys and present woes
Chase through my troubled mind,
Repose still seeking,—but repose
Not for a moment find.

So yonder lone and lovely moon
Gleams on the clouds gone by,
Illumines those around her noon,
Yet westward points her eye.

Nor wind nor flood her course delay,
Through heaven I see her glide;
She never pauses on her way,
She never turns aside.

With anxious heart and throbbing brain,
Strength, patience, spirits gone,
Pulses of fire in every vein,
Thus, thus I journey on.

But soft!—in Nature's failing hour,
Up springs a breeze,—I feel
Its balmy breath, its cordial power,—
A power to soothe and heal.

Lo! grey, and gold, and crimson streaks
The gorgeous east adorn,
While o'er the' empurpled mountain breaks
The glory of the morn.

Insensibly the stars retire,
Exhaled like drops of dew;
Now through an arch of living fire
The sun comes forth to view.

The hills, the vales, the waters, burn
With his enkindling rays,
No sooner touch'd than they return
A tributary blaze.

His quickening light on me descends,
His cheering warmth I own;
Upward to him my spirit tends,
But worships God alone.

Oh! that on me, with beams benign,
His countenance would turn:
I too should then arise and shine,—
Arise, and shine, and burn.

Slowly I raise my languid head,
Pain and soul-sickness cease;
The phantoms of dismay are fled,
And health returns, and peace.

Where is the beauty of the scene
Which silent night display'd?
The clouds, the stars, the blue serene,
The moving light and shade?

All gone!—the moon, erewhile so bright,
Veil'd with a dusky shroud,
Seems, in the sun's o'erpowering light,
The fragment of a cloud.

225

At length I reach my journey's end:
—Welcome that well-known face!
I meet a brother and a friend;
I find a resting-place.

Just such a pilgrimage is life;
Hurried from stage to stage,
Our wishes with our lot at strife,
Through childhood to old age.

The world is seldom what it seems:—
To man, who dimly sees,
Realities appear as dreams,
And dreams realities.

The Christian's years, though slow their flight,
When he is call'd away,
Are but the watches of a night,
And Death the dawn of day.

THE REIGN OF SPRING.

Who loves not Spring's voluptuous hours,
The carnival of birds and flowers?
Yet who would choose, however dear,
That Spring should revel all the year?
—Who loves not Summer's splendid reign,
The bridal of the earth and main?
Yet who would choose, however bright,
A dog-day noon without a night?
—Who loves not Autumn's joyous round,
When corn, and wine, and oil abound?
Yet who would choose, however gay,
A year of unrenew'd decay?
—Who loves not Winter's awful form?
The sphere-born music of the storm?
Yet who would choose, how grand soever,
The shortest day to last for ever?

'Twas in that age renown'd, remote,
When all was true that Esop wrote;
And in that land of fair Ideal,
Where all that poets dream is real;
Upon a day of annual state,
The Seasons met in high debate.
There blush'd young Spring in maiden pride,
Blithe Summer look'd a gorgeous bride,
Staid Autumn moved with matron-grace,
And beldame Winter pursed her face.
Dispute grew wild; all talk'd together;
The four at once made wondrous weather;
Nor one (whate'er the rest had shown)
Heard any reason but her own,
While each (for nothing else was clear)
Claim'd the whole circle of the year.

Spring, in possession of the field,
Compell'd her sisters soon to yield:
They part,—resolved elsewhere to try
A twelvemonth's empire of the sky;
And, calling off their airy legions,
Alighted in adjacent regions.
Spring o'er the eastern champaign smiled,
Fell Winter ruled the northern wild,
Summer pursued the sun's red car,
But Autumn loved the twilight star.

As Spring parades her new domain,
Love, Beauty, Pleasure, hold her train;
Her footsteps wake the flowers beneath,
That start, and blush, and sweetly breathe;
Her gales on nimble pinions rove,
And shake to foliage every grove;
Her voice, in dell and thicket heard,
Cheers on the nest the mother-bird;
The ice-lock'd streams, as if they felt
Her touch, to liquid diamond melt;
The lambs around her bleat and play;
The serpent flings his slough away,
And shines in orient colours dight,
A flexile ray of living light.
Nature unbinds her wintry shroud
(As the soft sunshine melts the cloud),
With infant gambols sports along,
Bounds into youth, and soars in song.
The morn impearls her locks with dew,
Noon spreads a sky of boundless blue,
The rainbow spans the evening scene,
The night is silent and serene,
Save when her lonely minstrel wrings
The heart with sweetness while he sings.
—Who would not wish, unrivall'd here,
That Spring might frolic all the year?

Three months are fled, and still she reigns,
Exulting queen o'er hills and plains;

226

The birds renew their nuptial vow,
Nestlings themselves are lovers now;
Fresh broods each bending bough receives,
Till feathers far outnumber leaves;
But kites in circles swim the air,
And sadden music to despair.
The stagnant pools, the quaking bogs,
Teem, croak, and crawl with hordes of frogs;
The matted woods, the' infected earth,
Are venomous with reptile-birth;
Armies of locusts cloud the skies;
With beetles hornets, gnats with flies,
Interminable warfare wage,
And madden heaven with insect rage.

The flowers are wither'd;—sun nor dew
Their fallen glories shall renew;
The flowers are wither'd;—germ nor seed
Ripen in garden, wild, or mead:
The corn-fields shoot:—their blades, alas!
Run riot in luxuriant grass.
The tainted flocks, the drooping kine,
In famine of abundance pine,
Where vegetation, sour, unsound,
And loathsome, rots and rankles round;
Nature with nature seems at strife;
Nothing can live but monstrous life
By death engender'd;—food and breath
Are turn'd to elements of death;
And where the soil his victims strew,
Corruption quickens them anew.

But ere the year was half expired,
Spring saw her folly, and retired;
Yoked her light chariot to a breeze,
And mounted to the Pleiades;
Content with them to rest or play
Along the calm nocturnal way;
Till, heaven's remaining circuit run,
They meet the pale hybernal sun,
And, gaily mingling in his blaze,
Hail the true dawn of vernal days.

THE REIGN OF SUMMER.

The hurricanes are fled! the rains,
That plough'd the mountains, wreck'd the plains,
Have pass'd away before the wind,
And left a wilderness behind,
As if an ocean had been there
Exhaled, and left its channels bare.
But, with a new and sudden birth,
Nature replenishes the earth;
Plants, flowers, and shrubs, o'er all the land
So promptly rise, so thickly stand,
As if they heard a voice,—and came,
Each at the calling of its name.
The tree, by tempests stript and rent,
Expands its verdure like a tent,
Beneath whose shade, in weary length,
The' enormous lion rests his strength,
For blood, in dreams of hunting, burns,
Or, chased himself, to fight returns;
Growls in his sleep, a dreary sound,
Grinds his wedged teeth, and spurns the ground;
While monkeys, in grotesque amaze,
Down from their bending perches gaze,
But when he lifts his eye of fire,
Quick to the topmost boughs retire.

Loud o'er the mountains bleat the flocks;
The goat is bounding on the rocks;
Far in the valleys range the herds;
The welkin gleams with flitting birds,
Whose plumes such gorgeous tints adorn,
They seem the offspring of the morn.
From nectar'd flowers and groves of spice,
Earth breathes the air of Paradise;
Her mines their hidden wealth betray,
Treasures of darkness burst to day;
O'er golden sands the rivers glide,
And pearls and amber track the tide.
Of every sensual bliss possess'd,
Man riots here;—but is he bless'd?
And would he choose, for ever bright,
This Summer-day without a night?
For here hath Summer fix'd her throne,
Intent to reign,—and reign alone.

Daily the sun, in his career,
Hotter and higher, climbs the sphere,
Till from the zenith, in his rays,
Without a cloud or shadow, blaze
The realms beneath him:—in his march,
On the blue key-stone of heaven's arch,
He stands;—air, earth, and ocean lie
Within the presence of his eye,
The wheel of Nature seems to rest,
Nor rolls him onward to the west,

227

Till thrice three days of noon unchanged,
That torrid clime have so deranged,
Nine years may not the wrong repair;
But Summer checks the ravage there;
Yet still enjoins the sun to steer
By the stern Dog-star round the year,
With dire extremes of day and night,
Tartarean gloom, celestial light.

In vain the gaudy season shines,
Her beauty fades, her power declines:
Then first her bosom felt a care;
—No healing breeze embalm'd the air,
No mist the mountain-tops bedew'd,
Nor shower the arid vale renew'd;
The herbage shrunk; the ploughman's toil
Scatter'd to dust the crumbling soil;
Blossoms were shed; the' umbrageous wood,
Laden with sapless foliage, stood;
The streams, impoverish'd day by day,
Lessen'd insensibly away;
Where cattle sought, with piteous moans,
The vanish'd lymph, midst burning stones,
And tufts of wither'd reeds, that fill
The wonted channel of the rill;
Till, stung with hornets, mad with thirst,
In sudden rout, away they burst,
Nor rest, till where some channel deep
Gleams in small pools, whose waters sleep;
There with huge draught and eager eye
Drink for existence,—drink and die!

But direr evils soon arose,
Hopeless, unmitigable woes:
Man proves the shock; through all his veins
The frenzy of the season reigns;
With pride, lust, rage, ambition blind,
He burns in every fire of mind,
Which kindles from insane desire,
Or fellest hatred can inspire;
Reckless whatever ill befall,
He dares to do and suffer all
That heart can think, that arm can deal,
Or out of hell a fury feel.

There stood in that romantic clime,
A mountain awfully sublime;
O'er many a league the basement spread,
It tower'd in many an airy head,
Height over height,—now gay, now wild,
The peak with ice eternal piled;
Pure in mid-heaven, that crystal cone
A diadem of glory shone,
Reflecting, in the night-fall'n sky,
The beams of day's departed eye;
Or holding, ere the dawn begun,
Communion with the' unrisen sun.
The cultured sides were clothed with woods,
Vineyards, and fields; or track'd with floods,
Whose glacier fountains, hid on high,
Sent down their rivers from the sky.
O'er plains, that mark'd its gradual scale,
On sunny slope, in shelter'd vale,
Earth's universal tenant,—He,
Who lives wherever life may be,
Sole, social, fix'd, or free to roam,
Always and every where at home,
Man pitch'd his tents, adorn'd his bowers,
Built temples, palaces, and towers,
And made that Alpine world his own,
—The miniature of every zone,
From brown savannas parch'd below,
To ridges of cerulean snow.

Those high-lands form'd a last retreat
From rabid Summer's fatal heat:
Though not unfelt her fervours there,
Vernal and cool the middle air;
While from the icy pyramid
Streams of unfailing freshness slid,
That long had slaked the thirsty land,
Till avarice, with insatiate hand,
Their currents check'd; in sunless caves,
And rock-bound dells, ingulf'd the waves,
And thence in scanty measures doled,
Or turn'd heaven's bounty into gold.
Ere long the dwellers on the plain
Murmur'd;—their murmurs were in vain;
Petition'd,—but their prayers were spurn'd;
Threaten'd,—defiance was return'd:
Then rang both regions with alarms;
Blood-kindling trumpets blew to arms;
The maddening drum and deafening fife
Marshall'd the elements of strife:
Sternly the mountaineers maintain
Their rights against the' insurgent plain;
The plain's indignant myriads rose
To wrest the mountain from their foes,

228

Resolved its blessings to enjoy
By dint of valour,—or destroy.

The legions met in war-array;
The mountaineers brook'd no delay;
Aside their missile weapons threw,
From holds impregnable withdrew,
And, rashly brave, with sword and shield,
Rush'd headlong to the open field.
Their foes the' auspicious omen took,
And raised a battle-shout that shook
The champaign;—stanch and keen for blood,
Front threatening front, the columns stood;
But, while like thunder-clouds they frown,
In tropic haste the sun went down;
Night o'er both armies stretch'd her tent,
The star-bespangled firmament,
Whose placid host, revolving slow,
Smile on the' impatient hordes below,
That chafe and fret the hours away,
Curse the dull gloom, and long for day,
Though destined by their own decree
No other day nor night to see.
—That night is past, that day begun;
Swift as he sunk ascends the sun,
And from the red horizon springs
Upward, as borne on eagle wings:
Aslant each army's lengthen'd lines,
O'er shields and helms he proudly shines,
While spears that catch his lightnings keen
Flash them athwart the space between.
Before the battle-shock, when breath
And pulse are still,—awaiting death;
In that cold pause, which seems to be
The prelude to eternity,
When fear, ere yet a blow is dealt,
Betray'd by none, by all is felt;
While, moved beneath their feet, the tomb
Widens her lap to make them room;
—Till, in the onset of the fray,
Fear, feeling, thought, are cast away,
And foaming, raging, mingling foes,
Like billows dash'd in conflict, close,
Charge, strike, repel, wound, struggle, fly,
Gloriously win, unconquer'd die:—
Here, in dread silence, while they stand,
Each with a death-stroke in his hand,
His eye fix'd forward, and his ear
Tingling the signal blast to hear,
The trumpet sounds;—one note,—no more;
The field, the fight, the war is o'er;
An earthquake rent the void between;
A moment show'd, and shut, the scene;
Men, chariots, steeds,—of either host
The flower, the pride, the strength were lost:
A solitude remains;—the dead
Are buried there,—the living fled.

Nor yet the reign of Summer closed;
—At night in their own homes reposed
The fugitives, on either side,
Who 'scaped the death their comrades died;
When, lo! with many a giddy shock
The mountain-cliffs began to rock,
And deep below the hollow ground
Ran a strange mystery of sound,
As if, in chains and torments there,
Spirits were venting their despair.
That sound, those shocks, the sleepers woke;
In trembling consternation, broke
Forth from their dwellings young and old;
—Nothing abroad their eyes behold
But darkness so intensely wrought,
'Twas blindness in themselves they thought.
Anon, aloof, with sudden rays,
Issued so fierce, so broad, a blaze,
That darkness started into light,
And every eye, restored to sight,
Gazed on the glittering crest of snows,
Whence the bright conflagration rose,
Whose flames condensed at once aspire,
—A pillar of celestial fire,
Alone amidst infernal shade,
In glorious majesty display'd:
Beneath, from rifted caverns, broke
Volumes of suffocating smoke,
That roll'd in surges, like a flood;
By the red radiance turn'd to blood;
Morn look'd aghast upon the scene,
Nor could a sunbeam pierce between
The panoply of vapours, spread
Above, around, the mountain's head.

In distant fields, with drought consumed,
Joy swell'd all hearts, all eyes illumed,
When from that peak, through lowering skies,
Thick curling clouds were seen to rise,
And hang o'er all the darken'd plain,
The presage of descending rain.

229

The' exulting cattle bound along;
The tuneless birds attempt a song;
The swain, amidst his sterile lands,
With outstretch'd arms of rapture stands.
But fraught with plague and curses came
The' insidious progeny of flame;
Ah! then,—for fertilising showers,
The pledge of herbage, fruits, and flowers,—
Words cannot paint, how every eye
(Blood-shot and dim with agony)
Was glazed, as by a palsying spell,
When light sulphureous ashes fell,
Dazzling, and eddying to and fro,
Like wildering sleet or feathery snow:
Strewn with grey pumice Nature lies,
At every motion quick to rise,
Tainting with livid fumes the air;
—Then hope lies down in prone despair,
And man and beast, with misery dumb,
Sullenly brood on woes to come.

The mountain now, like living earth,
Pregnant with some stupendous birth,
Heaved, in the anguish of its throes,
Sheer from its crest the' incumbent snows;
And where of old they chill'd the sky,
Beneath the sun's meridian eye,
Or, purpling in the golden west,
Appear'd his evening throne of rest,
There, black and bottomless and wide,
A cauldron, rent from side to side,
Simmer'd and hiss'd with huge turmoil;
Earth's disembowell'd minerals boil,
And thence in molten torrents rush:
—Water and fire, like sisters, gush
From the same source; the double stream
Meets, battles, and explodes in steam;
Then fire prevails; and broad and deep
Red lava roars from steep to steep;
While rocks unseated, woods upriven,
Are headlong down the current driven;
Columnar flames are wrapt aloof,
In whirlwind forms, to heaven's high roof,
And there, amidst transcendent gloom,
Image the wrath beyond the tomb.

The mountaineers, in wild affright,
Too late for safety, urge their flight;
Women, made childless in the fray;
Women, made mothers yesterday;
The sick, the aged, and the blind;
—None but the dead are left behind.
Painful their journey, toilsome, slow,
Beneath their feet quick embers glow,
And hurtle round in dreadful hail:
Their limbs, their hearts, their senses fail,
While many a victim, by the way,
Buried alive in ashes lay,
Or perish'd by the lightning's stroke,
Before the slower thunder broke.
A few the open field explore:
The throng seek refuge on the shore,
Between two burning rivers hemm'd,
Whose rage nor mounds nor hollows stemm'd;
Driven like a herd of deer, they reach
The lonely, dark, and silent beach,
Where, calm as innocence in sleep,
Expanded lies the' unconscious deep.
Awhile the fugitives respire,
And watch those cataracts of fire
(That bar escape on either hand)
Rush on the ocean from the strand;
Back from the onset rolls the tide,
But instant clouds the conflict hide;
The lavas plunge to gulfs unknown,
And, as they plunge, collapse to stone.

Meanwhile the mad volcano grew
Tenfold more terrible to view;
And thunders, such as shall be hurl'd
At the death-sentence of the world;
And lightnings, such as shall consume
Creation, and creation's tomb,
Nor leave, amidst the' eternal void,
One trembling atom undestroy'd;
Such thunders crash'd, such lightnings glared:
—Another fate those outcasts shared,
When, with one desolating sweep,
An earthquake seemed to' ingulf the deep,
Then threw it back, and from its bed
Hung a whole ocean overhead;
The victims shriek'd beneath the wave,
And in a moment found one grave;
Down to the' abyss the flood return'd—
Alone, unseen, the mountain burn'd.

1815.

230

ABDALLAH AND SABAT.

[_]

[Originally published with “Abdallah, or the Christian Martyr,” by Thomas Foster Barham, Esq.]

From West Arabia to Bochara came
A noble youth, Abdallah was his name;
Who journey'd through the various East to find
New forms of man, in feature, habit, mind;
Where Tartar-hordes through nature's pastures run,
A race of Centaurs,—horse and rider one;
Where the soft Persian maid the breath inhales
Of love-sick roses, woo'd by nightingales;
Where India's grim array of idols seem
The rabble-phantoms of a maniac's dream:
—Himself the flowery path of trespass trod,
Which the false Prophet deck'd to lure from God.
But He, who changed, into the faith of Paul,
The slaughter-breathing enmity of Saul,
Vouchsafed to meet Abdallah by the way:
No miracle of light eclipsed the day;
No vision from the' eternal world, nor sound
Of awe and wonder, smote him to the ground;
All mild and calm, with power till then unknown,
The Gospel-glory through his darkness shone;
A still small whisper, only heard within,
Convinced the trembling penitent of sin;
And Jesus, whom the Infidel abhorr'd,
The Convert now invoked, and call'd him Lord.
Escaping from the lewd Impostor's snare,
As flits a bird released through boundless air,
And, soaring up the pure blue ether, sings,
—So rose his Spirit on exulting wings.
But love, joy, peace, the Christian's bliss below,
Are deeply mingled in a cup of woe,
Which none can pass:—he, counting all things loss
For his Redeemer, gladly bore the cross:
Soon call'd, with life, to lay that burden down,
In the first fight he won the Martyr's crown.

Abdallah's friend was Sabat;—one of those
Whom love estranged transforms to bitterest foes:
From persecution to that friend he fled;
But Sabat pour'd reproaches on his head,
Spurn'd like a leprous plague the prostrate youth,
And hated him as falsehood hates the truth;
Yet first with sophistry and menace tried
To turn him from “the faithful word” aside;
All failing, old esteem to rancour turn'd,
With Mahomet's own reckless rage he burn'd.
A thousand hideous thoughts, like fiends, possess'd
The Pandemonium of the Bigot's breast,
Whose fires, enkindled from the' infernal lake,
Abdallah's veins, unsluiced, alone could slake.

The victim dragg'd to slaughter by his friend,
Witness'd a good confession to the end.
—Bochara pour'd her people forth to gaze
Upon the direst scene the world displays,
The blood of innocence by treason spilt,
The reeking triumph of deep-branded guilt:
—Bochara pour'd her people forth, to eye
The loveliest spectacle beneath the sky,
The look with which a Martyr yields his breath,
—The resurrection of the soul in death.
“Renounce the Nazarene!” the headsman cries,
And flash'd the unstain'd falchion in his eyes:
“No!—be his name by heaven and earth adored!”
He said, and gave his right hand to the sword.
“Renounce Him, who forsakes thee thus bereft;”
He wept, but spake not, and resign'd his left.
“Renounce Him now, who will not, cannot save;”
He kneel'd like Stephen, look'd beyond the grave,
And, while the dawn of heaven around him broke,
Bow'd his meek head to the dissevering stroke:
Out-cast on earth a mangled body lay;
A spirit enter'd Paradise that day.

But where is Sabat?—Conscience-struck he stands,
With eye of agony and fast-lock'd hands.
Abdallah, in the moment to depart,
Had turn'd, and look'd the traitor through the heart:
It smote him like a judgment from above,
That gentle look of wrong'd forgiving love!
Then hatred vanish'd; suddenly repress'd
Were the strange flames of passion in his breast;
Nought but the smouldering ashes of despair,
Blackness of darkness, death of death, were there.
Ere long, wild whirlwinds of remorse arise;
He flies,—from all except himself he flies,
And a low voice for ever thrilling near,
The voice of blood, which none but he can hear.

231

He fled from guilt; but guilt and he were one,
A Spirit seeking rest and finding none;
Visions of horror haunted him by night,
Yet darkness was less terrible than light;
From dreams of woe when startled nature broke,
To woes that were not dreams the wretch awoke.
Forlorn he ranged through India, till the Power,
That met Abdallah in a happier hour,
Arrested Sabat: through his soul he felt
The word of truth; his heart began to melt,
And yielded slowly, as cold Winter yields
When the warm Spring comes flushing o'er the fields;
Then first a tear of gladness swell'd his eye,
Then first his bosom heaved a healthful sigh;
That bosom parch'd as Afric's desert land;
That eye a flint-stone in the burning sand.
—Peace, pardon, hope, eternal joy, reveal'd,
Humbled his heart: before the cross he kneel'd,
Look'd up to Him whom once he pierced, and bore
The name of Christ which he blasphemed before.
—Was Sabat then subdued by love or fear?
And who shall vouch that he was not sincere?

Now with a Convert's zeal his ardent mind
Glow'd for the common weal of all mankind;
Yet with intenser faith the' Arabian pray'd,
When homeward thought thro' childhood's Eden stray'd.
—There, in the lap of Yemen's happiest vale,
The shepherds' tents are waving to the gale;
The Patriarch of their tribe, his sire, he sees
Beneath the shadow of ambrosial trees;
His Sisters, from the fountain in the rock,
Pour the cool sparkling water to their flock;
His Brethren, rapt on steeds and camels, roam
O'er wild and mountain, all the land their own:
—Thither he long'd to send that book, unseal'd,
Whose words are life, whose leaves his wounds had heal'd;
That Ishmael, living by his sword and bow,
Might thus again the God of Abraham know;
And Meccan Pilgrims to Caäba's shrine,
Like locusts marching in perpetual line,
Might quit the broad to choose the narrow path,
That leads to glory, and reclaims from wrath.

Fired with the hope to bless his native soil,
Years roll'd unfelt, in consecrated toil,
To mould the truths which holy writers teach
In the loved accents of his mother's speech;
While, like the sun, that always to the west
Leads the bright day, his fervent spirit press'd,
Thither a purer light from Heaven to dart,
—The only light that reaches to the heart;
Whose deserts blossom where its beams are shed,
The blind behold them, and they raise the dead.
Nor by Arabia were his labours bound,
To Persian lips he taught “the joyful sound.”
Would he had held unchanged that high career!
—But Sabat fell like lightning from his sphere:
Once with the morning stars God's works he sung;
Anon a Serpent, with envenom'd tongue,
Like that apostate fiend who tempted Eve,
Gifted with speech,—he spake but to deceive.

Let pity o'er his errors cast a veil!
Haste to the sequel of his tragic tale.
Sabat became a vagabond on earth;
—He chose the sinner's way, the scorner's mirth;
Now feign'd contrition with obdurate tears,
Then wore a bravery that betray'd his fears!
With oaths and curses now his Lord denied,
And strangled guilty shame with desperate pride;
While inly-rack'd he proved what culprits feel,
When conscience breaks remembrance on the wheel.
At length an outlaw through the orient isles,
Snared in the subtilty of his own wiles,
He perish'd in an unexpected hour,
To glut the vengeance of barbarian power;
With sackcloth shrouded, to a millstone bound,
And in the' abysses of the ocean drown'd.
—Oh! what a plunge into the dark was there!
How ended life?—In blasphemy or prayer?
The winds are fled that heard his parting cry,
The waves that stifled it make no reply.

When, at the resurrection of the Just,
Earth shall yield back Abdallah from the dust,
The sea, like rising clouds, give up its dead,
Then from the deep shall Sabat lift his head.
With waking millions round the judgment-seat,
Once, and but once again, those twain shall meet,
To part for ever,—or to part no more:
—But who the' eternal secret shall explore,
When Justice seals the gates of heaven and hell?
The rest—that day, that day alone, will tell.

1821.

232

THE STRANGER AND HIS FRIEND.

“Ye have done it unto me.”
—Matt. xxv. 40.

A poor wayfaring Man of grief
Hath often cross'd me on my way,
Who sued so humbly for relief,
That I could never answer “Nay:”
I had not power to ask his name,
Whither he went, or whence he came,
Yet was there something in his eye
That won my love, I knew not why.

Once, when my scanty meal was spread,
He enter'd;—not a word he spake;—
Just perishing for want of bread;
I gave him all; he bless'd it, brake,
And ate,—but gave me part again;
Mine was an angel's portion then,
For while I fed with eager haste,
That crust was manna to my taste.

I spied him, where a fountain burst
Clear from the rock; his strength was gone;
The heedless water mock'd his thirst,
He heard it, saw it hurrying on;
I ran to raise the sufferer up;
Thrice from the stream he drain'd my cup,
Dipp'd and return'd it running o'er;
I drank, and never thirsted more.

'Twas night, the floods were out; it blew
A winter hurricane aloof;
I heard his voice abroad, and flew
To bid him welcome to my roof;
I warm'd, I clothed, I cheer'd my guest,
Laid him on my own couch to rest;
Then made the hearth my bed, and seem'd
In Eden's garden while I dream'd.

Stript, wounded, beaten, nigh to death,
I found him by the highway-side:
I roused his pulse, brought back his breath,
Revived his spirit, and supplied
Wine, oil, refreshment; he was heal'd;
—I had myself a wound conceal'd;
But from that hour forgot the smart,
And Peace bound up my broken heart.

In prison I saw him next, condemn'd
To meet a traitor's doom at morn;
The tide of lying tongues I stemm'd,
And honour'd him midst shame and scorn:
My friendship's utmost zeal to try,
He ask'd if I for him would die;
The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill,
But the free spirit cried, “I will.”

Then in a moment to my view
The stranger darted from disguise;
The tokens in his hands I knew,
My Saviour stood before mine eyes:
He spake; and my poor name He named;
“Of me thou hast not been ashamed:
These deeds shall thy memorial be;
Fear not, thou didst them unto Me.”

Scarborough, Dec. 1826.

THE ADVENTURE OF A STAR.

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY.

A star would be a flower;
So down from heaven it came,
And in a honeysuckle bower
Lit up its little flame.
There on a bank, beneath the shade,
By sprays, and leaves, and blossoms made,
It overlook'd the garden-ground,—
A landscape stretching ten yards round;
O what a change of place
From gazing through the' eternity of space!

Gay plants on every side
Unclosed their lovely blooms,
And scatter'd far and wide
Their ravishing perfumes:
The butterfly, the bee,
And many an insect on the wing,
Full of the spirit of the Spring,
Flew round and round in endless glee,
Alighting here, ascending there,
Ranging and revelling every where.

Now all the flowers were up and drest
In robes of rainbow-colour'd light;

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The pale primroses look'd their best,
Peonies blush'd with all their might;
Dutch tulips from their beds
Flaunted their stately heads;
Auriculas, like belles and beaux,
Glittering with birthnight splendour, rose;
And polyanthuses display'd
The brilliance of their gold brocade:
Here hyacinths of heavenly blue
Shook their rich tresses to the morn,
While rose-buds scarcely show'd their hue,
But coyly linger'd on the thorn,
Till their loved nightingale, who tarried long,
Should wake them into beauty with his song.
The violets were past their prime,
Yet their departing breath
Was sweeter, in the blast of death,
Than all the lavish fragrance of the time.

Amidst this gorgeous train,
Our truant star shone forth in vain;
Though in a wreath of periwinkle,
Through whose fine gloom it strove to twinkle,
It seem'd no bigger to the view
Than the light spangle in a drop of dew.
—Astronomers may shake their polls,
And tell me every orb that rolls
Through heaven's sublime expanse
Is sun or world, whose speed and size
Confound the stretch of mortal eyes,
In Nature's mystic dance:
It may be so
For aught I know,
Or aught indeed that they can show;
Yet, till they prove what they aver,
From this plain truth I will not stir,—
A star's a star!—but when I think
Of sun or world, the star I sink;
Wherefore in verse, at least in mine,
Stars like themselves, in spite of fate, shall shine.

Now, to return (for we have wander'd far)
To what was nothing but a simple star;
—Where all was jollity around,
No fellowship the stranger found.
Those lowliest children of the earth,
That never leave their mother's lap,
Companions in their harmless mirth,
Were smiling, blushing, dancing there,
Feasting on dew, and light, and air,
And fearing no mishap,
Save from the hand of lady fair,
Who, on her wonted walk,
Pluck'd one and then another,
A sister or a brother,
From its elastic stalk;
Happy, no doubt, for one sharp pang, to die
On her sweet bosom, withering in her eye.

Thus all day long, that star's hard lot,
While bliss and beauty ran to waste,
Was but to witness on the spot
Beauty and bliss it could not taste.
At length the sun went down, and then
Its faded glory came again;
With brighter, bolder, purer light,
It kindled through the deepening night,
Till the green bower, so dim by day,
Glow'd like a fairy-palace with its beams;
In vain, for sleep on all the borders lay,
The flowers were laughing in the land of dreams.
Our star, in melancholy state,
Still sigh'd to find itself alone,
Neglected, cold, and desolate,
Unknowing and unknown.
Lifting at last an anxious eye,
It saw that circlet empty in the sky
Where it was wont to roll
Within a span-breadth of the pole:
In that same instant, sore amazed,
On the strange blank all Nature gazed;
Travellers, bewilder'd for their guide,
In glens and forests lost their way;
And ships, on ocean's trackless tide,
Went fearfully astray.
The star, now wiser for its folly, knew
Its duty, dignity, and bliss at home;
So up to heaven again it flew,
Resolved no more to roam.

One hint the humble bard may send
To her for whom these lines are penn'd:
—O may it be enough for her
To shine in her own character!
O may she be content to grace,
On earth, in heaven, her proper place!

1825.

234

THE SAND AND THE ROCK.

“I will open my dark saying upon the harp.”—

—Psalm xlix. 4.

Part I. DESTRUCTION.

I built my house upon the sand,
And saw its image in the sea,
That seem'd as stable as the land,
And beautiful as heaven to me.

For in the clear and tranquil tide,
As in a nether firmament,
Sun, moon, and stars, appear'd to glide,
And lights and shadows came and went.

I ate and drank, I danced and sung,
Reclined at ease, at leisure stroll'd,
Collecting shells and pebbles, flung
Upon the beach for gems and gold.

I said unto my soul, “Rejoice
In safety, wealth, and pleasure here!”
But, while I spake, a secret voice
Within my bosom whisper'd, “Fear!”

I heeded not, and went to rest,
Prayerless, once more, beneath my roof,
Nor deem'd the eagle on his nest
More peril-free, more tempest-proof.

But in the dead and midnight hour
A storm came down upon the deep;
Wind, rain, and lightning, such a stour,
Methought 'twas doomsday in my sleep.

I strove, but could not wake,—the stream
Beat vehemently on my wall;
I felt it tottering in my dream;
It fell, and dreadful was the fall.

Swept with the ruins down the flood,
I woke; home, hope, and heart were gone:
My brain flash'd fire, ice thrill'd my blood;
Life, life, was all I thought upon.

Death, death, was all that met my eye;
Deep swallow'd deep, wave buried wave:
I look'd in vain for land and sky;
All was one sea,—that sea one grave.

I struggled through the strangling tide,
As though a bowstring wrung my neck;
“Help! help!” voice fail'd,—I fain had cried,
And clung convulsive to the wreck.

Not long,—for suddenly a spot
Of darkness fell upon my brain,
Which spread and press'd, till I forgot
All pain in that excess of pain.

Part II. TRANSITION.

Two woes were past; a worse befell:
When I revived, the sea had fled;
Beneath me yawn'd the gulf of hell,
Broad as the vanish'd ocean's bed.

Downward I seem'd to plunge through space,
As lightning flashes and expires,
Yet—how, I knew not—turn'd my face
Away from those terrific fires;—

And saw in glory, throned afar,
A human form yet all divine;
Beyond the track of sun or star,
High o'er all height it seem'd to shine.

'Twas He who in the furnace walk'd
With Shadrach, and controll'd its power;
'Twas He with whom Elias talk'd,
In his transfiguration-hour.

'Twas He whom, in the lonely Isle
Of Patmos, John in spirit saw,
And, at the lightning of his smile,
Fell down as dead, entranced with awe.

From his resplendent diadem,
A ray shot through mine inmost soul;
“Could I but touch his garment's hem,”
Methought, “like her whom faith made whole!”

Faith, faith, was given;—though nigh and nigher,
Swift verging tow'rds the gulf below,

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I stretch'd my hand;—but high and higher,
Ah me! the vision seem'd to go.

“Save, Lord, I perish!”—while I cried,
Some miracle of mercy drew
My spirit upward;—hell yawn'd wide,
And follow'd;—upwards still I flew:—

And upwards still the surging flame
Pursued;—yet all was clear above,
Whence brighter, sweeter, kindlier came
My blessed Saviour's looks of love.

Till with a sudden flash forth beam'd
The fulness of the Deity:—
Hell's jaws collapsed; I felt redeem'd;
The snare was broken, I was free.

A voice from heaven proclaim'd,—“Tis done!”
Then, like a homeward ray of light
From the last planet to the sun,
I darted through the abyss of night.

Till He put forth his hand, to meet
Mine, grasping at infinity;
He caught me, set me on my feet;
I fell at his in ecstasy.

What follow'd, human tongue in vain
Would question language to disclose:
Enough,—that I was born again;
From death to life that hour I rose.

Part III. RESTITUTION.

I built once more, but on a rock
(Faith's strong foundation, firm and sure)
Fix'd mine abode, the heaviest shock
Of time and tempest to endure.

Not small, nor large, not low, nor high,
Midway it stands upon the steep,
Beneath the storm-mark of the sky,
Above the flood-mark of the deep.

And here I humbly wait while He,
Who pluck'd me from the lowest hell,
Prepares a heavenly house for me,
Then calls me home with Him to dwell.

THE CHRONICLE OF ANGELS.

[_]

The following Poem having been suggested by the perusal of a manuscript treatise on “The Holy Angels,” by the Author's late highly esteemed friend, R. C. Brackenbury, of Raithby, is most respectfully inscribed to Mrs. Brackenbury.

I. Part I.

All that of angels God to man makes known,
Here by the light of his clear word is shown.
'Tis Jacob's dream;—behold the ladder rise,
Resting on earth, but reaching to the skies,
Where faith the radiant hierarchies may trace
Abroad in nature, providence, and grace,
Descending and returning by that path,
On embassies of mercy or of wrath;
Here the stone pillow and the desert-sod
Become the gate of heaven, the house of God;
—Put off thy shoes, approach with awe profound,
The place on which thou stand'st is holy ground.

Spirit made perfect, spirit of the just!
Thy hand which traced these leaves is fall'n to dust,
Yet, in the visions of eternity,
Things unconceiv'd by mortals thou canst see,
—Angels as angels stand before the throne,
By thee are without veil or symbol known:
Oh! couldst thou add one brilliant page, and tell
What those pure beings are who never fell,
—Those first-born sons of God, ere time began,
Though elder, greater, not more loved than man,
Thrones, principalities, dominions, powers,
Cherub or seraph, midst empyreal bowers,
Who in themselves their Maker only see,
And live, and move, and dwell in Deity:
—But 'tis forbidden;—earthly eye nor ear
Heaven's splendours may behold, heaven's secrets hear;
To flesh and blood that world to come is seal'd,
Or but in hieroglyphic shades reveal'd.

We follow thee, bless'd saint! our tongues, ere long,
May learn from thine the church triumphant's song;
For well, I ween, thy minstrel soul of fire
Can compass all the notes of Raphael's lyre;
—That soul, which once, beneath the body's cloud,
Sang like an unseen sky-lark, sweet and loud;
Louder and sweeter now thy raptures rise,
Where cloud nor sun are seen in purer skies,

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But what of angels know we?—search that book
On which the eyes of angels love to look,
Desiring, through its opening seals, to trace
The heights and depths of that transcendent grace,
Which from the Father's bosom sent the Son,
Himself the ransom for a world undone.

First, with the morning stars when nature sprang,
These sons of God for joy together sang;
Diviner wonders day by day explored,
Night after night with deeper awe adored;
Till, o'er his finish'd work, Jehovah placed
Man, with the stamp of His own image graced:
Even angels paused a moment then to gaze,
Ere burst from all their choirs such shouts of praise,
As not in heaven at their own birth were known,
Nor heard when Satan's host were overthrown.

When man lost Eden for his first offence,
The swords of cherubim expell'd him thence,
Those flaming signs of heaven with earth at strife
Turn'd every way to guard the tree of life.

Angels, thenceforth, who in God's presence stand,
As ministering spirits, travel sea and land;
Onward or upward, rapt through air and sky,
From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven they fly;
Like rays diverging from the central sun,
Which through the darkness of creation run,
Enlightening moons and planets in their course,
And thence reflected seek their glorious source.

II. Part II.

When Abraham dwelt in Mamre, angels spoke,
As friend to friend, with him beneath the oak:
With flocks and herds, with wealth and servants blest,
Of almost more than heart could wish possest,
One want the old man felt,—an hopeless one!
Oh! what was all he had without a son?
Heaven's messengers brought tidings to his ear,
Which nature, dead in him, found hard to hear;
Which faith itself could scarce receive for joy,
But he believed,—and soon embraced a boy;
Nor, while the line of Adam shall extend,
Will faithful Abraham's promised issue end.

Hence, when his lifted arm the death-stroke aim'd
At him, whom God mysteriously reclaim'd,
At him, whom God miraculously gave,
An angel cried from heaven the youth to save,
And he who found a son when he believed,
That son again as from the dead received.

When Hagar, woe-begone and desolate,
Alone, beside the desert-fountain sate,
And o'er her unborn babe shed bitter tears,
The angel of the Lord allay'd her fears,
And pledged in fee to her unportion'd child
The lion's range o'er Araby the wild:
“Here have I look'd for Him whom none can see!”
She cried;—“and found, for thou, God, seest me!”
—Again, when fainting in the wilderness,
An angel-watcher pitied her distress,
To Ishmael's lips a hidden well unseal'd,
And the long wanderings of his race reveal'd,
Who still, as hunters, warriors, spoilers, roam,
Their steeds their riches, sands and sky their home.

Angels o'erthrew the cities of the plain,
With fire and brimstone in tempestuous rain,
And from the wrath which heartless sinners braved,
Lot, with the violence of mercy, saved;
Now where the region breathed with life before,
Stands a dead sea where life can breathe no more.

When Jacob, journeying with his feeble bands,
Trembled to fall into a brother's hands;
At twilight, lingering in the rear he saw
God's host around his tents their 'campment draw:
—While, with a stranger, in mysterious strife,
Wrestling till break of day for more than life;
He pray'd, he wept, he cried in his distress,
“I will not let thee go except thou bless!”
Lame with a touch, he halted on his thigh,
Yet like a prince had power with God Most High.

Nine plagues in vain had smitten Pharaoh's land
Ere the destroying angel stretch'd his hand,
Whose sword, wide flashing through Egyptian gloom,
Lighted and struck their first-born to the tomb;
Through all the realm a cry at midnight spread,
For not a house was found without one dead.

When Balaam, blinded by the lure of gold
To curse whom God would bless, his heart had sold,
A wrathful angel, with high-brandish'd blade,
Invisible to him, his progress stay'd,

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Nor, till with human voice his own dumb ass
Rebuked the prophet's madness, let him pass.

When Joshua led the tribes o'er Jordan's flood,
The captain of God's host before him stood,
He fell, and own'd, adoring on his face,
A Power whose presence sanctified the place.

When Deborah from beneath her palm-tree rose,
God into woman's hands sold Israel's foes;
They fought from heaven,—'twas heaven deliverance wrought,
Stars in their courses against Sisera fought.

They sinn'd again, and fell beneath the yoke;
To Gideon then their guardian angel spoke:
Three hundred warriors chosen at the brook,
Pitchers for arms, with lamps and trumpets, took;
They brake the vessels, raised the lights, and blew
A blast which Midian's startled hosts o'erthrew;
Foe fell on foe, and friend his friend assail'd;
—The sword of God and Gideon thus prevail'd.

When David's heart was lifted up with pride,
And more on multitudes than God relied,
Three days, an angel arm'd with pestilence
Smote down the people for the king's offence;
Yet when his humbled soul for Israel pray'd,
Heaven heard his groaning, and the plague was stay'd;
He kneel'd between the living and the dead,
Even as the sword came down o'er Zion's head;
Then went the' Almighty's voice throughout the land,
“It is enough; avenger! rest thine hand.”

Elijah, with his mantle, smote the flood,
And Jordan's hastening waves divided stood;
The fiery chariot, on the further shore,
Deathless to heaven the' ascending prophet bore:
“My father!” cried Elisha, as he flew;
“Lo! Israel's chariot and his horsemen too:”
Then with the mantle, as it dropp'd behind,
Came down a power, like mighty rushing wind,
And as he wrapt the trophy round his breast,
Elijah's spirit Elisha's soul possess'd.
—He, when the Syrian bands, as with a net
Of living links, close drawn, his home beset,
Pray'd,—and his trembling servant saw amazed,
How Dothan's mountain round the prophet blazed;
Chariots of fire and horses throng'd the air,
And more were for them than against them there.

When pale Jerusalem heard Sennacherib's boast,
How, in their march of death, his locust host
Swept field and forest, rivers turn'd aside,
Crush'd idols, and the living God defied,
—While fear within the walls sad vigils kept,
And the proud foe without securely slept,
At midnight, through the camp, as with a blast
Hot from Arabian sands, an angel pass'd;
And when the city rose at dawn of day,
An army of dead men around it lay!

Down in the raging furnace, bound they fell,
Three Hebrew youths,—when, lo! a miracle;
At large amidst the sevenfold flames they walk'd,
And, as in Eden, with an angel talk'd:
Up rose the king astonied and in haste;
“Three men,” he cried, “into the fires we cast;
Four I behold,—and in the fourth the mien
And semblance of the Son of God are seen.”

While Daniel lay beneath the lions' paws,
An angel shut the death-gates of their jaws,
Which, ere his headlong foes had reach'd the floor,
Crush'd all their bones, and revell'd in their gore.

Angels to prophets things to come reveal'd,
And things yet unfulfill'd in symbols seal'd,
When in deep visions of the night they lay,
And hail'd the dawn of that millennial day
For which the Church looks out with earnest eye,
And counts the moments as the hour draws nigh.

Thus angels oft to man's rebellious race
Were ministers of vengeance or of grace;
And, in the fulness of the time decreed,
Glad heralds of the woman's promised seed.

III. Part III.

To Zacharias, with his spouse grown old,
John the forerunner's course an angel told;
Struck dumb for unbelief, the father's tongue
At the babe's birth for joy brake loose and sung.

To Mary, highly favour'd, Gabriel brought
An embassy of love transcending thought;

238

With fear and meekness, hearkening to his word,
“Behold,” said she, “the handmaid of the Lord.”

When Christ was born, that messenger once more
Good tidings to the Bethlehem shepherds bore;
When suddenly with him the' angelic throngs
Turn'd night to morning, earth to heaven, with songs.

When Herod sought the young child's life,—by night
An angel warn'd his foster-sire to flight;
But when the murderer's race of blood was run,
Jehovah out of Egypt call'd his Son.

When by the Spirit to the desert led,
Our Saviour had not where to lay his head;
With hunger, thirst, fatigue, and watching worn,
When he the tempter's dire assaults had borne,
Still with the written word his wiles repell'd,
Though long in that mysterious conflict held,
Till the foil'd fiend at length shrunk back with shame,
—Angels to minister unto him came.

In lone Gethsemane's most dolorous shade,
When in such agony of soul he pray'd,
That like great blood-drops falling to the ground
Burst the dark sweat from every pore around,
An angel,—from twelve legions marshall'd nigh,
Who waited but the signal of his eye,—
Cast o'er the Son of God his shadowing wing,
To strengthen him whom angels call their King.

Round the seal'd sepulchre where Jesus slept,
Angels their watch till the third morning kept;
They hail'd the earthquake, they beheld him rise,
Death's victim, now death's victor, to the skies.

While woman's faithful love the tomb survey'd
In which her hands his lifeless limbs had laid;
With lightning looks, and raiment snowy-white,
At whom as dead the guards fell down in fright,
A mighty angel—he who roll'd the stone
From the cave's mouth—the Lord's uprise made known.

Angels, to his disciples, while they saw
Their glorious Master in a cloud withdraw,
Ascend and vanish through the' expanding skies,
And follow'd him with failing hearts and eyes,
Foretold his second advent, in that day
When heaven and earth themselves shall pass away.

Angels unseen, as ministering spirits went,
When forth the chosen witnesses were sent,
With power from high to preach, where'er they trod,
The glorious Gospel of the blessed God.
Angels made straight their paths o'er land and sea,
Threw wide their prison-doors and let them free,
Smote slaughter-breathing Herod on his throne,
Led Philip where the Eunuch sat alone,
Taught meek Cornelius from what lips his ear
Might “words whereby he must be saved” hear,
And stood by fearless Paul, when, tempest-driven,
The whole ship's company to him were given.

Good angels still conduct, from age to age,
Salvation's heirs, on nature's pilgrimage;
Cherubic swords, no longer signs of strife,
Now point the way, and keep the tree of life;
Seraphic hands, with coals of living fire,
The lips of God's true messengers inspire;
Angels, who see their heavenly Father's face,
Watch o'er his little ones with special grace;
Still o'er repenting sinners they rejoice,
And blend their myriad voices as one voice.

Angels, with healing virtue in their wings,
Trouble dead pools, unsluice earth's bosom-springs,
Till fresh as new-born life the waters roll;
Lepers and lame step in and are made whole.

Angels, the saints from noon-day perils keep,
And pitch their tents around them while they sleep;
Uphold them when they seem to walk alone,
Nor let them dash their foot against a stone;
They teach the dumb to speak, the blind to see,
Comfort the dying in their agony,
And to the rest of paradise convey
Spirits enfranchised from the crumbling clay.

Strong angels, arm'd by righteous Providence,
Judgments on guilty nations still dispense,
Pour out their full-charged vials of despair
And death, o'er sun, and sea, and earth, and air;
Or sound their trumpets, while at every blast
Plague follows plague, woe treads on woe gone past.

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Bright angels, through mid-heaven shall hold their flight
Till all that sit in darkness see the light,
Still the good tidings of great joy proclaim
Till every tongue confess a Saviour's name.

The' archangel's voice, the trump of God, the cry
Of startled nature, rending earth and sky,
Shall change the living, raise the dead, and bring
All nations to the presence of their King,
Whose flaming ministers, on either hand,
Ten thousand times ten thousand angels, stand,
To witness time's full roll for ever seal'd,
And that eternity to come reveal'd,
—That era in the reign of Deity,
When sin, the curse, and death, no more can be.
Angels who fell not, men who fell restored,
Shall then rejoice in glory with the Lord;
—Hearts, harps, and voices, in one choir shall raise
The new, the old, the' eternal song of praise.

May ye who read, with him who wrote this strain,
Join in that song, and worship in that train!

1829.

ELIJAH IN THE WILDERNESS.

[_]

1 Kings, xix.

Thus pray'd the prophet in the wilderness:
“God of my fathers! look on my distress;
My days are spent in vanity and strife,
O that the Lord would please to take my life!
Beneath the clods through this lone valley spread,
Fain would I join the generations dead!”

Heav'n deign'd no answer to that murmuring prayer,
Silence that thrill'd the blood alone was there;
Down sunk his weary limbs, slow heaved his breath,
And sleep fell on him with a weight like death;
Dreams, raised by evil spirits, hover'd near,
Throng'd with strange thoughts, and images of fear;
The' abominations of the Gentiles came;—
Detested Chemosh, Moloch clad with flame,
Ashtaroth, queen of heaven, with moony crest,
And Baäl, sun-like, high above the rest,
Glared on him, gnash'd their teeth, then sped away,
Like ravening vultures to their carrion-prey,
Where every grove grew darker with their rites,
And blood ran reeking down the mountain-heights;
But to the living God, throughout the land,
He saw no altar blaze, no temple stand;
Jerusalem was dust, and Zion's hill,
Like Tophet's valley, desolate and still:
The prophet drew one deep desponding groan,
And his heart died within him, like a stone.

An angel's touch the dire entrancement broke,
“Arise and eat, Elijah!”—He awoke,
And found a table in the desert spread,
With water in the cruise beside his head;
He bless'd the Lord, who turn'd away his prayer,
And feasted on the heaven-provided fare;
Then sweeter slumber o'er his senses stole,
And sunk like life new-breathed into his soul.
A dream brought David's city on his sight,
—Shepherds were watching o'er their flocks by night;
Around them uncreated splendour blazed,
And heavenly hosts their hallelujahs raised;
A theme unknown since sin to death gave birth,
“Glory to God! good-will and peace on earth!”
They sang; his heart responded to the strain,
Though memory sought to keep the words in vain:
The vision changed;—amid the gloom serene,
One star above all other stars was seen;
It had a light, a motion, of its own,
And o'er a humble shed in Bethlehem shone;
He look'd, and lo! an infant newly born,
That seem'd cast out to poverty and scorn,
Yet Gentile kings its advent came to greet,
Worshipp'd, and laid their treasures at its feet.
Musing what this mysterious babe might be,
He saw a sufferer stretch'd upon a tree;
Yet while the victim died, by men abhorr'd,
Creation's agonies confess'd him Lord.
Again the angel smote the slumberer's side;
“Arise and eat, the way is long and wide.”
He rose and ate, and, with unfainting force,
Through forty days and nights upheld his course.
Horeb, the mount of God, he reach'd, and lay
Within a cavern till the cool of day.
“What dost thou here, Elijah?”—Like the tide,
Brake that deep voice through silence. He replied,
“I have been very jealous for thy cause,
Lord God of hosts! for men make void thy laws;
Thy people have thrown down thine altars, slain
Thy prophets,—I, and I alone, remain;

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My life with reckless vengeance they pursue,
And what can I against a nation do?”

“Stand on the mount before the Lord, and know,
That wrath or mercy at my will I show.”
Anon the power that holds the winds let fly
Their devastating armies through the sky;
Then shook the wilderness, the rocks were rent,
As when Jehovah bow'd the firmament,
And trembling Israel, while He gave the law,
Beheld his symbols, but no image saw.
The storm retired, nor left a trace behind;
The Lord pass'd by; He came not with the wind.

Beneath the prophet's feet, the shuddering ground
Clave, and disclosed a precipice profound,
Like that which open'd to the gates of hell
When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram fell:
Again the Lord pass'd by, but unreveal'd;
He came not with the earthquake, all was seal'd.

A new amazement! vale and mountain turn'd
Red as the battle-field with blood, then burn'd
Up to the stars, as terrible a flame
As shall devour this universal frame;
Elijah watch'd it kindle, spread, expire;
The Lord pass'd by; He came not with the fire.

A still small whisper breathed upon his ear;
He wrapp'd his mantle round his face with fear;
Darkness that might be felt involved him,—dumb
With expectation of a voice to come,
He stood upon the threshold of the cave,
As one long dead, just risen from the grave,
In the last judgment.—Came the voice and cried,
“What dost thou here, Elijah?”—He replied,
“I have been very jealous for thy cause,
Lord God of hosts! for men make void thy laws;
Thy people have thrown down thine altars, slain
Thy prophets,—I, and I alone, remain;
My life with ruthless violence they pursue,
And what can I against a nation do?”

“My day of vengeance is at hand: the year
Of my redeem'd shall suddenly appear:
Go thou,—anoint two kings,—and in thy place
A prophet to stand up before my face:
Then he who 'scapes the Syrian's sword shall fall
By his whom to Samaria's throne I call;
And he who 'scapes from Jehu, in that day,
Him shall the judgment of Elisha slay.
Yet hath a remnant been preserved by me,
Seven thousand souls, who never bow'd the knee
To Baäl's image, nor have kiss'd his shrine;
These are my jewels, and they shall be mine
When to the world my righteousness is shown,
And, root and branch, idolatry o'erthrown.

So be it, God of truth, yet why delay?
With thee a thousand years are as one day;
O crown thy people's hopes, dispel their fears,
And be to-day with Thee a thousand years!
Cut short the evil, bring the blessed time,
Avenge thine own elect from clime to clime;
Let not an idol in thy path be spared;
All share the fate which Bäal long hath shared;
Nor let seven thousand only worship Thee;
Make every tongue confess, bow every knee;
Now o'er the promised kingdoms reign thy Son,
One Lord through all the earth,—his name be one!
Hast Thou not spoken? shall it not be done?

1824.

MORNA.

[_]

Macpherson's Ossian has had many admirers; and it cannot be denied, that the compositions attributed to the son of Fingal abound with striking imagery, heroic sentiment, and hardy expression, the effect of which, on young minds especially, may be highly exhilarating for a while. But, independent of the obscurity, sameness, and repetition, which were probably characteristic of the originals— whatever those originals may have been—the translation is “done into English” in such a “Babylonish dialect,” that it might be presumed, no ear accustomed to the melody of pure prose, or the freedom of eloquent verse, could endure the incongruities of a style in which broken verse of various measures, and halting prose of almost unmanageable cadences, compound sentences as difficult to read and as dissonant to hear as a strain of music would be in execution and effect if every bar were set to a different time and in a different key. If for such wild works of imagination a corresponding diction be desirable, a style between prose and verse, not a heterogeneous jumbling of both, might perhaps be invented. For this we must have a poetical foundation with a prose superstructure: the former, that the vehicle of thought may admit of florid embellishment; the latter, that full licence may be obtained of accommodating, by expansion or contraction, the scope of the ideas, unincumbered with rhyme, and unrestricted by infrangible metrical trammels.

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The episode of Morna is, perhaps, the most truly beautiful and pathetic, as well as simple and intelligible, narrative among these rhapsodical productions. In the following experiment, which is submitted to the curious, the anapæstic foot is adopted as the groundwork, because cadences of that measure have peculiar fluency. There is some difficulty, indeed, to the reader, in hitting the right accents at all times, from the great laxity of our language in that respect, and the carelessness of writers; yet as this movement admits of the utmost variety of subdivisions, and the lines may be lengthened or shortened, according to the burden of the matter of each, it is well suited to a mode of composition which would blend the harmony of song with the freedom of discourse, if such union were compatible. This, to some extent, has been proved practicable in many passages of several English translations of the Psalms and the Prophecies; of which a very perfect specimen may be found in the first seven verses of the ninety-fifth Psalm, according to the Common Prayer-book rendering. When read with simplicity, and the due accent laid upon the long syllables, nothing perhaps in human speech can be quoted more delicately implicated than the clauses, or more melodious than the sequence of plain Saxon sounds that compose the diction, while the variety of cadence and the change of cesura in every turn of the thought is not less admirable. The strain passes into entirely another key from the eighth verse inclusive to the end, the theme in fact suggesting a correspondent change to the minstrel's hand, when he drops the hortatory preamble, and proceeds to the historical argument, or, rather, when he gives way abruptly at the sound of the very voice to which he is calling upon his hearers to hearken; while Jehovah himself from between the cherubim (for the scene is in the temple) speaks out, “Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation . . . . when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw my works,” &c. to the fearful close of the psalm.

The following attempt to tame what has been called “prose run mad,” into what may easily be designated by a phrase not less opprobrious, is made upon a principle more strictly rhythmical than the measured style of our vernacular translations of Scripture poetry; and in behalf of it a claim to be received with indulgence by the admirers of Gaelic legends may be fairly preferred, since the offence, if it be one, against good taste is not likely to be imitated, nor will the original culprit soon be induced to repeat it, being himself of opinion, that though a few pages got up in this manner may not be unpleasing, a volume would be intolerable.

It may be necessary to add, that this experiment on the tale of Morna has not been made from Macpherson, but from a version of Fingal of which a few copies only were printed at Edinburgh, some years ago, for private circulation. Whether the work has ever been further published, the present writer knows not; but it appeared to him, on the hasty perusal of a lent copy, preferable to the old one.

THE ARGUMENT.

Cathbat and Morna are lovers. Duchômar, the rival of Cathbat, having slain the latter in the chase, meets Morna, tells her what he has done, and woos her for himself. In the course of the interview they fall by each other's hands, and die together.—The story is supposed to be related to Cuchullin, general of the tribes of Erin, who, at the conclusion, laments the premature loss of the two valiant warriors, and the death of the maiden.

Cathbat fell by the sword of Duchômar,
At the oak of the loud-rolling stream;
Duchômar came to the cave of the forest,
And spake to the gentle maid.

“Morna! fairest of women!
Beautiful daughter of high-born Cormac!
Wherefore alone in the circle of stones,
Alone at the cave of the mountain?
The old oak sounds in the wind,
That ruffles the distant lake;
Black clouds engirdle the gloomy horizon;
But thou art like snow on the heath;
Thy ringlets resemble the light mist of Cromla,
When it winds round the sides of the hill,
In the beams of the evening sun.”

“Whence comest thou, sternest of men?”
Said the maid of the graceful locks;
“Evermore dark was thy brow;
Now red is thine eye, and ferocious;
Doth Swaram appear on the sea?
What tidings from Lochlin?”

“No tidings from Lochlin, O Morna!
I come from the mountains;
I come from the chase of the fleet-footed hind:
Three red deer have fallen by my arrows;
One fell for thee, fair daughter of Cormac!
As my soul do I love thee, white-handed maiden!
Queen of the hearts of men!”

“Duchômar!” the maiden replied,
“None of my love is for thee:
Dark is thine eyebrow, thy bosom is darker,
And hard as the rock is thine heart:
But thou, the dear offspring of Armin,
Cathbat! art Morna's love.
Bright as the sunbeams thy beautiful locks,
When the mist of the valley is climbing the mountain:—
Saw'st thou the chief, the young hero,
Cathbat the brave, in thy course on the hill?
The daughter of Cormac the mighty
Tarries to welcome her love from the field.”

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“Long shalt thou tarry, O Morna!”
Sullenly, fiercely, Duchômar replied:
“Long shalt thou tarry, O Morna!
To welcome the rude son of Armin.
Lo! on this sharp-edged sword,
Red to the hilt is the life-blood of Cathbat:
Slain is thine hero,
By me he was slain:
His cairn will I build upon Cromla.
—Daughter of blue-shielded Cormac!
Turn on Duchômar thine eye.”

“Fallen in death is the brave son of Armin?”
The maiden exclaim'd with the voice of love:
“Fallen in death on the pine-crested hill?
The loveliest youth of the host!
Of heroes the first in the chase!
The direst of foes to the sea-roving stranger!—
Dark is Duchômar in wrath;
Deadly his arm to me;
Foe unto Morna!—but lend me thy weapon,
Cathbat I loved, and I love his blood.”

He yielded the sword to her tears;
She plunged the red blade through his side;
He fell by the stream;
He stretch'd forth his hand, and his voice was heard:
“Daughter of blue-shielded Cormac!
Thou hast cut off my youth from renown;
Cold is the sword, the glory of heroes,
Cold in my bosom, O Morna!
—Ah! give me to Moina the maiden,
For I am her dream in the darkness of night;
My tomb she will build in the midst of the camp,
That the hunter may hail the bright mark of my fame.
—But draw forth the sword from my bosom,
For cold is the blade, O Morna!”

Slowly and weeping she came,
And drew forth the sword from his side;
He seized it, and struck the red steel to her heart;
She fell;—on the earth lay her tresses dishevell'd,
The blood gurgled fast from the wound,
And crimson'd her arm of snow.

“Tell me no more of the maiden!”
Cuchullin, the war-chief of Erin, replied:
—“Peace to the souls of the heroes!
Their prowess was great in the conflict of swords;
Let them glide by my chariot in war!
Let their spirits appear in the clouds o'er the valley!
So shall my breast be undaunted in danger!

“Be thou like a moon-beam, O Morna!
When my sight is beginning to fail;
When my soul is reposing in peace,
And the tumult of war is no more.”

“PERILS BY THE HEATHEN.”

[_]

2 Corinthians, xi. 26.

Lines in memory of the Rev. William Threlfall, Wesleyan Missionary, who, with two native converts (Jacob Links and Johannes Jagger), set out in June, 1825, to carry the Gospel into Great Namaqua-land, on the western coast of South Africa. The last communication received from him by his brethren was the following brief note, dated “Warm Baths, August 6. 1825. Being rather unkindly handled by this people, in their not finding or not permitting us to have a guide, we returned hither yesterday, after having been to the north four days' journey, and losing one of the oxen. I feel great need of your prayers, and my patience is much tried. These people are very unfeeling and deceitful; but, thank God, we are all in good health, though we doubt of success. Our cattle are so poor that they cannot, I think, bring us home again; but we shall yet try to get further; and then it is not unlikely I shall despatch Johannes to you to send oxen to fetch us away. Do not be uneasy about us; we all feel much comforted in our souls, and the Lord give us patience. We are obliged to beg hard to buy meat. Peace be with you! —William Threlfall.”

No further intelligence arrived concerning the wanderers for seven months, except unauthorised rumours that they had, in some way, perished in the desert. In the sequel it was ascertained, that Mr. Threlfall and his faithful companions had left the Warm Baths above mentioned about the 9th or 10th of August, having obtained a vagabond guide to the Great Fish River. This wretch, meeting with two others as wicked as himself, conducted them to a petty kraal of Bushmen (the outcasts of all the Caffre tribes), and there murdered them in the night after they had lain down to sleep, for the sake of the few trifling articles which they carried with them for the purchase of food by the way. Two of the assassins were long afterwards taken by some of their own wild countrymen, and by them delivered up to the colonial authorities. One of these was the arch-traitor, called Naangaap, who with his own hand hurled the stone which caused the death of the missionary. He was tried at Clanwilliam, and condemned to be shot. On their way to the place appointed for execution, the escort halted at Lily Fountain, where the relatives of his murdered companion Jacob Links resided. These came

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out of their dwellings and spoke to the criminal upon his awful situation, of which he seemed little heedful. Martha, Jacob's sister, was especially concerned to awaken him to a sense of his guilt and peril, saying to him, with true Christian meekness and sympathy,—“I am indeed very sorry for you, though you have killed my brother, because you are indifferent about the salvation of your own sinful soul.” On the 30th of September 1827, he was shot, according to his sentence, by six men of his own tribe, at Silver Fountain, on the border of the colony, with the entire concurrence of the chief, who had come from his distant residence to witness the execution.

Mr. Threlfall was a young man who had served on several missionary stations in South Africa, from the year 1822, under great bodily affliction for the most part of the time, but with unquenchable fervency of spirit, and devotion to the work of God among the heathen. His two fellow-labourers and fellow-sufferers, Jacob Links and Johannes Jagger, had voluntarily offered themselves to the same service and sacrifice with him, for the sake of carrying the gospel of the grace of God to their benighted countrymen in the farther regions of Namaqua-land.

Not by the lion's paw, the serpent's tooth,
By sudden sun-stroke, or by slow decay,
War, famine, plague,—meek messenger of truth!—
Wert thou arrested on thy pilgrim-way.

The sultry whirlwind spared thee in its wrath,
The lightning flash'd before thee, and pass'd by,
The brooding earthquake paused beneath thy path,
The mountain-torrent shunn'd thee, or ran dry.

Thy march was through the savage wilderness,
Thine errand thither, like thy gracious Lord's,
To seek and save the lost, to heal and bless
Its blind and lame, diseased and dying hordes.

How did the love of Christ, that, like a chain,
Drew Christ himself to Bethlehem from his throne,
And bound Him to the cross, thine heart constrain,
Thy willing heart, to make that true love known!

But not to build, was thine appointed part,
Temple where temple never stood before;
Yet was it well the thought was in thine heart,
—Thou know'st it now,—thy Lord required no more.

The wings of darkness round thy tent were spread,
The wild beast's howlings brake not thy repose,
The silent stars were watching over-head,
Thy friends were nigh thee,—nigh thee were thy foes.

The sun went down upon thine evening-prayer,
He rose upon thy finish'd sacrifice;
The house of God, the gate of heaven, was there;
Angels and fiends on thee had fix'd their eyes.

At midnight, in a moment, open stood
The' eternal doors to give thy spirit room;
At morn the earth had drunk thy guiltless blood,
—But where on earth may now be found thy tomb?

At rest beneath the ever-shifting sand,
This thine unsculptured epitaph remain,
Till the last trump shall summon sea and land,—
“To me to live was Christ; to die was gain.”

And must with thee thy slain companions lie,
Unmourn'd, unsung, forgotten where they fell?
O for the spirit and power of prophecy,
Their life, their death, the fruits of both, to tell!
They took the cross, they bore it, they lay down
Beneath it, woke, and found that cross their crown.

O'er their lost relics, on the spot where guilt
Slew sleeping innocence, and hid the crime,
A church of Christ, amidst the desert built,
May gather converts till the end of time,
And there, with them, their kindred, dust to dust,
Await the resurrection of the just.

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SONGS ON THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES, August 1. 1834.

No. I. THE RAINBOW.

Sign of the passing storm,
Symbol of wrath gone by,
Born of the cloud and sun,—what form
Of beauty tracks the sky?
From Afric to the isles of slaves
The rainbow spans the' Atlantic waves.

Black, white, and bond, and free,
Castes and proscriptions, cease;
The Negro wakes to liberty,
The Negro sleeps in peace;
Read the great charter on his brow,
“I AM a MAN, a BROTHER, now.’

No. II. THE NEGRO IS FREE.

[_]

[To Moore's Melody of “Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea.”]

Blow ye the trumpet abroad o'er the sea;
Britannia hath conquer'd, the Negro is free:
Sing, for the pride of the tyrant is broken,
His scourges and fetters, all clotted with blood,
Are wrench'd from his grasp, for the word was but spoken,
And fetters and scourges were plunged in the flood:
Blow ye the trumpet abroad o'er the sea,
Britannia hath conquer'd, the Negro is free.

Hail to Britannia, fair liberty's isle!
Her frown quail'd the tyrant, the slave caught her smile:
Fly on the winds to tell Afric the story;
Say to the mother of mourners, “Rejoice!”
Britannia went forth, in her beauty, her glory,
And slaves sprang to men at the sound of her voice:
—Praise to the God of our fathers; 'twas He,
Jehovah, that conquer'd, my country! by thee.

No. III. SLAVERY THAT WAS.

Ages, ages have departed
Since the first dark vessel bore
Afric's children, broken-hearted,
To the Caribbèan shore;
She like Rachel,
Weeping, for they were no more.

Millions, millions, have been slaughter'd
In the fight and on the deep;
Millions, millions more have water'd,
With such tears as captives weep,
Fields of travail,
Where their bones till doomsday sleep.

Mercy, mercy, vainly pleading,
Rent her garments, smote her breast,
Till a voice from heaven proceeding,
Gladden'd all the gloomy west,—
“Come, ye weary!
Come, and I will give you rest!”

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Tidings, tidings of salvation!
Britons rose with one accord,
Purged the plague-spot from our nation,
Negroes to their rights restored;
Slaves no longer,
Free-men,—Free-men of the Lord.

No. IV. SLAVERY THAT IS NOT.

God made all his creatures free;
Life itself is liberty;
God ordain'd no other bands
Than united hearts and hands.

Sin the' eternal charter broke,
—Sin, itself earth's heaviest yoke;
Tyranny with sin began,
Man o'er brute, and man o'er man.

Pass five thousand pagan years
Of creation's groans and tears;
To oppression's climax come,
In the crimes of Christendom.

What were these?—Let Afric's sands,
Ocean's depths, West Indian strands,
In the day of wrath declare:
—Oh! the mercy that they were;—

For they are not,—cannot be;
Life again is liberty;
And the Negro's only bands
Love-knit hearts, and love-link'd hands.

So the plague of slavery cease!
So return primeval peace!
While the ransom'd tribes record
All the goodness of the Lord.

No. V. THE NEGRO'S VIGIL,

On the Eve of the First of August, 1834.

“They that watch for the morning:—they that watch for the morning.”
Psalm cxxx. 6.

Hie to the mountain afar
All in the cool of the even;
Led by yon beautiful star,
First of the daughters of heaven:
Sweet to the slave is the season of rest,
Something far sweeter he looks for to-night;
His heart lies awake in the depth of his breast,
And listens till God shall say, “Let there be light!”

Climb we the mountain, and stand
High in mid-air, to inhale,
Fresh from our old father-land,
Balm in the ocean-borne gale:
Darkness yet covers the face of the deep;
Spirit of freedom! go forth in thy might,
To break up our bondage like infancy's sleep,
The moment when God shall say, “Let there be light!”

Gaze we, meanwhile, from this peak;
Praying in thought while we gaze;
Watch for the morning's first streak,
Prayer then be turn'd into praise:
Shout to the valleys, “Behold ye the morn,
Long, long desired, but denied to our sight:”
Lo! myriads of slaves into men are new-born;
The word was omnipotent, “Let there be light!”

Hear it and hail it;—the call,
Island to island prolong;
Liberty! liberty!—all
Join in the jubilee-song:
Hark! 'tis the children's hosannas that ring;
Hark! they are free-men whose voices unite;
While England, the Indies, and Africa, sing
“Amen, Hallelujah!” at “Let there be light!”

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Verses to the Memory OF THE LATE RICHARD REYNOLDS, OF BRISTOL.

257

I. THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

This place is holy ground;
World, with thy cares, away!
Silence and darkness reign around,
But, lo! the break of day:
What bright and sudden dawn appears,
To shine upon this scene of tears?

'Tis not the morning light,
That wakes the lark to sing;
'Tis not a meteor of the night,
Nor track of angel's wing:
It is an uncreated beam,
Like that which shone on Jacob's dream.

Eternity and Time
Met for a moment here;
From earth to heaven, a scale sublime
Rested on either sphere,
Whose steps a saintly figure trod,
By Death's cold hand led home to God.

He landed in our view,
'Midst flaming hosts above;
Whose ranks stood silent, while he drew
Nigh to the throne of love,
And meekly took the lowest seat,
Yet nearest his Redeemer's feet.

Thrill'd with ecstatic awe,
Entranced our spirits fell,
And saw—yet wist not what they saw,
And heard—no tongue can tell
What sounds the ear of rapture caught,
What glory fill'd the eye of thought.

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Thus far above the pole,
On wings of mounting fire,
Faith may pursue the' enfranchised soul,
But soon her pinions tire;
It is not given to mortal man
Eternal mysteries to scan.

—Behold the bed of death;
This pale and lovely clay;
Heard ye the sob of parting breath?
Mark'd ye the eye's last ray?
No;—life so sweetly ceased to be,
It lapsed in immortality.

Could tears revive the dead,
Rivers should swell our eyes!
Could sighs recall the spirit fled,
We would not quench our sighs
Till love relumed this alter'd mien,
And all the' embodied soul were seen.

Bury the dead;—and weep
In stillness o'er the loss;
Bury the dead;—in Christ they sleep,
Who bore on earth His cross,
And from the grave their dust shall rise,
In His own image to the skies.

II. THE MEMORY OF THE JUST.

Strike a louder, loftier lyre;
Bolder, sweeter strains employ;
Wake, Remembrance!—and inspire
Sorrow with the song of joy.

Who was He, for whom our tears
Flow'd, and will not cease to flow?
Full of honours and of years,
In the dust his head lies low.

Yet resurgent from the dust,
Springs aloft his mighty name;
For the memory of the Just
Lives in everlasting fame.

He was One, whose open face
Did his inmost heart reveal;
One, who wore with meekest grace,
On his forehead, Heaven's broad seal.

Kindness all his looks express'd,
Charity was every word;
Him the eye beheld, and bless'd;
And the ear rejoiced that heard.

Like a patriarchal sage,
Holy, humble, courteous, mild,
He could blend the awe of age
With the sweetness of a child.

As a cedar of the Lord,
On the height of Lebanon,
Shade and shelter doth afford,
From the tempest and the sun:—

While in green luxuriant prime,
Fragrant airs its boughs diffuse,
From its locks it shakes sublime,
O'er the hills, the morning dews:—

Thus he flourish'd, tall and strong,
Glorious in perennial health;
Thus he scatter'd, late and long,
All his plenitude of wealth!—

Wealth, which prodigals had deem'd
Worth the soul's uncounted cost;
Wealth, which misers had esteem'd
Cheap, though heaven itself were lost.

This, with free unsparing hand
To the poorest child of need,
This he threw around the land,
Like the sower's precious seed.

In the world's great harvest-day,
Every grain on every ground,
Stony, thorny, by the way,
Shall an hundred-fold be found.

Yet, like noon's refulgent blaze,
Though he shone from east to west,
Far withdrawn from public gaze,
Secret goodness pleased him best.

As the sun, retired from sight,
Through the purple evening gleams,
Or, unrisen, clothes the night
In the morning's golden beams;—

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Thus, beneath the' horizon dim,
He would hide his radiant head,
And, on eyes that saw not him,
Light and consolation shed.

Oft his silent spirit went,
Like an angel from the throne,
On benign commissions bent,
In the fear of God alone.

Then the widow's heart would sing,
As she turn'd her wheel, for joy;
Then the bliss of hope would spring
On the outcast orphan-boy.

To the blind, the deaf, the lame,
To the ignorant and vile,
Stranger, captive, slave, he came
With a welcome and a smile.

Help to all he did dispense,
Gold, instruction, raiment, food,
Like the gifts of Providence,
To the evil and the good.

Deeds of mercy, deeds unknown,
Shall eternity record,
Which he durst not call his own,
For he did them to the Lord.

As the Earth puts forth her flowers,
Heaven-ward breathing from below;
As the clouds descend in showers,
When the southern breezes blow;—

Thus his renovated mind,
Warm with pure celestial love,
Shed its influence on mankind,
While its hopes aspired above.

Full of faith at length he died,
And, victorious in the race,
Won the crown for which he vied—
Not of merit, but of grace.

III. A GOOD MAN'S MONUMENT.

The pyre, that burns the aged Bramin's bones,
Runs cold in blood, and issues living groans,
When the whole Haram with the husband dies,
And demons dance around the sacrifice.

In savage realms, when tyrants yield their breath,
Herds, flocks, and slaves, attend their lord in death;
Arms, chariots, carcasses, a horrid heap,
Rust at his side, or share his mouldering sleep.

When heroes fall triumphant on the plain;
For millions conquer'd, and ten thousands slain;
For cities levell'd, kingdoms drench'd in blood,
Navies annihilated on the flood;
—The pageantry of public grief requires
The splendid homage of heroic lyres
And genius moulds impassion'd brass to breathe
The deathless spirit of the dust beneath,
Calls marble honour from its cavern'd bed,
And bids it live—the proxy of the dead.

Reynolds expires, a nobler chief than these;
No blood of widows stains his obsequies;
But widows' tears, in sad bereavement, fall,
And foundling voices on their father call:
No slaves, no hecatombs, his relics crave,
To gorge the worm, and crowd his quiet grave;
But sweet repose his slumbering ashes find,
As if in Salem's sepulchre enshrined,
And watching angels waited for the day
When Christ should bid them roll the stone away.

Not in the fiery hurricane of strife,
'Midst slaughter'd legions, he resign'd his life;
But peaceful as the twilight's parting ray,
His spirit vanish'd from its house of clay,
And left on kindred souls such power imprest,
They seem'd with him to enter into rest.
Hence no vain pomp, his glory to prolong,
No airy immortality of song;
No sculptured imagery, of bronze or stone,
To make his lineaments for ever known,
Reynolds requires:—his labours, merits, name,
Demand a monument of surer fame;
Not to record and praise his virtues past,
But show them living, while the world shall last;

260

Not to bewail one Reynolds, snatch'd from earth,
But give, in every age, a Reynolds birth;
In every age a Reynolds; born to stand
A prince among the worthies of the land,
By Nature's title, written in his face:
More than a Prince—a sinner saved by grace,
Prompt at his meek and lowly Master's call
To prove himself the minister of all.

Bristol! to thee the eye of Albion turns;
At thought of thee thy country's spirit burns;
For in thy walls, as on her dearest ground,
Are “British minds and British manners” found:
And, 'midst the wealth which Avon's waters pour
From every clime on thy commercial shore,
Thou hast a native mine of worth untold;
Thine heart is not encased in rigid gold,
Wither'd to mummy, steel'd against distress;
No—free as Severn's waves, that spring to bless
Their parent hills, but as they roll expand
In argent beauty through a lovelier land,
And widening, brightening to the western sun,
In floods of glory through thy channel run;
Thence, mingling with the boundless tide, are hurl'd
In ocean's chariot round the utmost world:
Thus flow thine heart-streams, warm and unconfined,
At home, abroad, to woe of every kind.
Worthy wert thou of Reynolds;—worthy he
To rank the first of Britons even in thee.
Reynolds is dead;—thy lap receives his dust
Until the resurrection of the just:
Reynolds is dead; but while thy rivers roll,
Immortal in thy bosom live his soul!

Go, build his monument:—and let it be
Firm as the land, but open as the sea;
Low in his grave the strong foundations lie,
Yet be the dome expansive as the sky,
On crystal pillars resting from above,
Its sole supporters—works of faith and love;
So clear, so pure, that to the keenest sight
They cast no shadow; all within be light:
No walls divide the area, nor enclose;
Charter the whole to every wind that blows;
Then rage the tempest, flash the lightnings blue,
And thunders roll,—they pass unharming through.

One simple altar in the midst be placed,
With this, and only this, inscription graced,
The song of angels at Immanuel's birth,—
“Glory to God! good-will and peace on earth.”
There be thy duteous sons a tribe of priests,
Not offering incense, nor the blood of beasts,
But with their gifts upon that altar spread;
—Health to the sick, and to the hungry bread,
Beneficence to all, their hands shall deal,
With Reynolds' single eye and hallow'd zeal.
Pain, want, misfortune, thither shall repair;
Folly and vice reclaim'd shall worship there
The God of him—in whose transcendent mind
Stood such a temple, free to all mankind:
Thy God, thrice-honour'd city! bids thee raise
That fallen temple, to the end of days:
Obey His voice; fulfil thine high intent;
—Yea, be thyself the Good Man's Monument!

1818.

261

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

“O laborum
Dulce lenimen, mihi cunque salve
Rite vocanti.”
Horat. ad Lyram, Od. XXXII. Lib. 1.

THE GRAVE.

There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found,
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground.

The storm that wrecks the winter sky
No more disturbs their deep repose,
Than summer-evening's latest sigh
That shuts the rose.

I long to lay this painful head
And aching heart beneath the soil,
To slumber in that dreamless bed
From all my toil.

For Misery stole me at my birth,
And cast me helpless on the wild:
I perish;—O my Mother Earth!
Take home thy child.

On thy dear lap these limbs reclined
Shall gently moulder into thee;
Nor leave one wretched trace behind
Resembling me.

Hark!—a strange sound affrights mine ear;
My pulse,—my brain runs wild,—I rave;
—Ah! who art thou whose voice I hear?
—“I am THE GRAVE!

“The GRAVE, that never spake before,
Hath found at length a tongue to chide;
O listen!—I will speak no more:—
Be silent, Pride!

“Art thou a WRETCH of hope forlorn,
The victim of consuming care?
Is thy distracted conscience torn
By fell despair?

“Do foul misdeeds of former times
Wring with remorse thy guilty breast?
And ghosts of unforgiven crimes
Murder thy rest?

“Lash'd by the furies of the mind,
From Wrath and Vengeance wouldst thou flee?
Ah! think not, hope not, fool, to find
A friend in me.

“By all the terrors of the tomb,
Beyond the power of tongue to tell;
By the dread secrets of my womb;
By Death and Hell;

“I charge thee, LIVE!—repent and pray;
In dust thine infamy deplore;
There yet is mercy;—go thy way,
And sin no more.

“Art thou a MOURNER?—Hast thou known
The joy of innocent delights,
Endearing days for ever flown,
And tranquil nights?

“O LIVE!—and deeply cherish still
The sweet remembrance of the past:
Rely on Heaven's unchanging will
For peace at last.

“Art thou a WANDERER?—Hast thou seen
O'erwhelming tempests drown thy bark?
A shipwreck'd sufferer hast thou been,
Misfortune's mark?

“Though long of winds and waves the sport,
Condemn'd in wretchedness to roam,
LIVE!—thou shalt reach a sheltering port,
A quiet home.

262

“To FRIENDSHIP didst thou trust thy fame,
And was thy friend a deadly foe,
Who stole into thy breast to aim
A surer blow?

“LIVE!—and repine not o'er his loss,
A loss unworthy to be told:
Thou hast mistaken sordid dross
For friendship's gold.

“Seek the true treasure seldom found,
Of power the fiercest griefs to calm,
And soothe the bosom's deepest wound
With heavenly balm.

“Did WOMAN's charms thy youth beguile,
And did the fair one faithless prove?
Hath she betray'd thee with a smile,
And sold thy love?

“LIVE!—'twas a false bewildering fire:
Too often Love's insidious dart
Thrills the fond soul with wild desire,
But kills the heart.

“Thou yet shalt know how sweet, how dear,
To gaze on listening Beauty's eye;
To ask,—and pause in hope and fear
Till she reply.

“A nobler flame shall warm thy breast,
A brighter maiden faithful prove;
Thy youth, thine age, shall yet be blest
In woman's love.

“—Whate'er thy lot,—whoe'er thou be,—
Confess thy folly,—kiss the rod,
And in thy chastening sorrows see
The hand of GOD.

“A bruised reed He will not break;
Afflictions all his children feel:
He wounds them for his mercy's sake,
He wounds to heal.

“Humbled beneath his mighty hand,
Prostrate his Providence adore:
'Tis done!—Arise! HE bids thee stand,
To fall no more.

“Now, Traveller in the vale of tears,
To realms of everlasting light,
Through Time's dark wilderness of years,
Pursue thy flight.

“There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found;
And while the mouldering ashes sleep
Low in the ground,

“The Soul, of origin divine,
GOD's glorious image, freed from clay,
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine
A star of day.

“The SUN is but a spark of fire,
A transient meteor in the sky;
The SOUL, immortal as its Sire,
SHALL NEVER DIE.”

1804.

THE LYRE.

“Ah! who would love the lyre!”
W. B. Stevens.

Where the roving rill meander'd
Down the green retiring vale,
Poor forlorn Alcæus wander'd,
Pale with thought, serenely pale:
Timeless sorrow o'er his face
Breathed a melancholy grace,
And fix'd on every feature there
The mournful resignation of despair.

O'er his arm, his lyre neglected,
Once his dear companion, hung,
And, in spirit deep dejected,
Thus the pensive poet sung;
While, at midnight's solemn noon,
Sweetly shone the cloudless moon,
And all the stars, around his head,
Benignly bright, their mildest influence shed.

“Lyre! O Lyre! my chosen treasure,
Solace of my bleeding heart;
Lyre! O Lyre! my only pleasure,
We must now for ever part;

263

For in vain thy poet sings,
Woos in vain thine heavenly strings;
The Muse's wretched sons are born
To cold neglect, and penury, and scorn.

“That which Alexander sigh'd for,
That which Cæsar's soul possess'd,
That which heroes, kings, have died for—
Glory!—animates my breast:
Hark! the charging trumpets' throats
Pour their death-defying notes;
‘To arms!’ they call: to arms I fly,
Like Wolfe to conquer, and like Wolfe to die.

“Soft!—the blood of murder'd legions
Summons vengeance from the skies;
Flaming towns and ravaged regions,
All in awful judgment rise.—
O then, innocently brave,
I will wrestle with the wave;
Lo! Commerce spreads the daring sail,
And yokes her naval chariots to the gale.

“Blow, ye breezes!—gently blowing,
Waft me to that happy shore
Where, from fountains ever flowing,
Indian realms their treasures pour;
Thence returning, poor in health,
Rich in honesty and wealth,
O'er thee, my dear paternal soil,
I'll strew the golden harvest of my toil.

“Then shall Misery's sons and daughters
In their lowly dwellings sing:
Bounteous as the Nile's dark waters,
Undiscover'd as their spring,
I will scatter o'er the land
Blessings with a secret hand;
For such angelic tasks design'd,
I give the lyre and sorrow to the wind.”

On an oak, whose branches hoary
Sigh'd to every passing breeze,
Sigh'd and told the simple story
Of the patriarch of trees;
High in air his harp he hung,
Now no more to rapture strung;
Then, warm in hope, no longer pale,
He blush'd adieu, and rambled down the dale.

Lightly touch'd by fairy fingers,
Hark!—the Lyre enchants the wind;
Fond Alcæus listens, lingers—
Lingering, listening, looks behind.
Now the music mounts on high,
Sweetly swelling through the sky;
To every tone, with tender heat,
His heart-strings vibrate, and his pulses beat.

Now the strains to silence stealing,
Soft in ecstasies expire;
Oh! with what romantic feeling
Poor Alcæus grasps the Lyre:
Lo! his furious hand he flings
In a tempest o'er the strings;
He strikes the chords so quick, so loud,
'Tis Jove that scatters lightning from a cloud.

“Lyre! O Lyre! my chosen treasure,
Solace of my bleeding heart;
Lyre! O Lyre! my only pleasure,
We will never, never part:
Glory, Commerce, now in vain
Tempt me to the field, the main;
The Muse's sons are blest, though born
To cold neglect, and penury, and scorn.

“What though all the world neglect me,
Shall my haughty soul repine?
And shall poverty deject me,
While this hallow'd Lyre is mine?
Heaven—that o'er my helpless head
Many a wrathful vial shed,—
Heaven gave this Lyre,—and thus decreed,
Be thou a bruised, but not a broken reed.”

1803.

REMONSTRANCE TO WINTER.

Ah! why, unfeeling Winter, why
Still flags thy torpid wing?
Fly, melancholy season, fly,
And yield the year to Spring.

Spring,—the young harbinger of love,
An exile in disgrace,—
Flits o'er the scene, like Noah's dove,
Nor finds a resting-place.

264

When on the mountain's azure peak
Alights her fairy form,
Cold blow the winds,—and dark and bleak
Around her rolls the storm.

If to the valley she repair
For shelter and defence,
Thy wrath pursues the mourner there,
And drives her, weeping, thence.

She seeks the brook;—the faithless brook,
Of her unmindful grown,
Feels the chill magic of thy look,
And lingers into stone.

She woos her embryo-flowers in vain
To rear their infant heads;—
Deaf to her voice, her flowers remain
Enchanted in their beds.

In vain she bids the trees expand
Their green luxuriant charms;—
Bare in the wilderness they stand,
And stretch their withering arms.

Her favourite birds, in feeble notes,
Lament thy long delay;
And strain their little stammering throats
To charm thy blasts away.

Ah! Winter, calm thy cruel rage,
Release the struggling year;
Thy power is past, decrepit Sage,
Arise and disappear!

The stars that graced thy splendid night
Are lost in warmer rays;
The Sun, rejoicing in his might,
Unrolls celestial days.

Then why, usurping Winter, why
Still flags thy frozen wing?
Fly, unrelenting tyrant, fly!
And yield the year to Spring.

SONG.

Round Love's Elysian bowers
The fairest prospects rise;
There bloom the sweetest flowers,
There shine the purest skies:
And joy and rapture gild awhile
The cloudless heaven of Beauty's smile.

Round Love's deserted bowers
Tremendous rocks arise;
Cold mildews blight the flowers,
Tornadoes rend the skies:
And Pleasure's waning moon goes down
Amid the night of Beauty's frown.

Then Youth, thou fond believer!
The wily Siren shun;
Who trusts the dear Deceiver
Will surely be undone:
When Beauty triumphs, ah! beware;—
Her smile is hope—her frown despair.

LINES WRITTEN UNDER A DRAWING OF YARDLEY OAK,

CELEBRATED BY COWPER.

[_]

See Hayley's Life and Letters of W. Cowper, Esq.

This sole survivor of a race
Of giant oaks, where once the wood
Rang with the battle or the chase,
In stern and lonely grandeur stood.

From age to age it slowly spread
Its gradual boughs to sun and wind;
From age to age its noble head
As slowly wither'd and declined.

A thousand years are like a day,
When fled;—no longer known than seen;
This tree was doom'd to pass away,
And be as if it ne'er had been;—

But mournful Cowper, wandering nigh,
For rest beneath its shadow came,
When, lo! the voice of days gone by
Ascended from its hollow frame.

265

O that the Poet had reveal'd
The words of those prophetic strains,
Ere death the eternal mystery seal'd!
—Yet in his song the Oak remains.

And, fresh in undecaying prime,
There may it live, beyond the power
Of storm and earthquake, Man and Time,
Till Nature's conflagration-hour.

SONG

WRITTEN FOR A SOCIETY WHOSE MOTTO WAS “FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, AND TRUTH.”

When “Friendship, Love, and Truth” abound
Among a band of Brothers,
The cup of joy goes gaily round,
Each shares the bliss of others:
Sweet roses grace the thorny way
Along this vale of sorrow;
The flowers that shed their leaves to-day
Shall bloom again to-morrow:
How grand in age, how fair in youth,
Are holy “Friendship, Love, and Truth!”

On halcyon wings our moments pass,
Life's cruel cares beguiling;
Old Time lays down his scythe and glass,
In gay good-humour smiling:
With ermine beard and forelock grey
His reverend front adorning,
He looks like Winter turn'd to May,
Night soften'd into Morning.
How grand in age, how fair in youth,
Are holy “Friendship, Love, and Truth!”

From these delightful fountains flow
Ambrosial rills of pleasure:
Can man desire, can Heaven bestow,
A more resplendent treasure?
Adorn'd with gems so richly bright,
We'll form a Constellation,
Where every Star with modest light
Shall gild his proper station.
How grand in age, how fair in youth,
Are holy “Friendship, Love, and Truth!”

1799.

RELIGION.

AN OCCASIONAL HYMN.

Through shades and solitudes profound
The fainting traveller winds his way;
Bewildering meteors glare around,
And tempt his wandering feet astray.

Welcome, thrice welcome, to his eye
The sudden moon's inspiring light,
When forth she sallies through the sky,
The guardian-angel of the night.

Thus mortals, blind and weak, below
Pursue the phantom Bliss, in vain;
The world's a wilderness of woe,
And life a pilgrimage of pain,

Till mild Religion, from above,
Descends, a sweet engaging form—
The messenger of heavenly love,
The bow of promise in a storm.

Then guilty passions wing their flight,
Sorrow, remorse, affliction, cease;
Religion's yoke is soft and light,
And all her paths are paths of peace.

Ambition, pride, revenge, depart,
And folly flies her chastening rod;
She makes the humble contrite heart
A temple of the living God.

Beyond the narrow vale of time,
Where bright celestial ages roll,
To scenes eternal, scenes sublime,
She points the way, and leads the soul.

At her approach the Grave appears
The Gate of Paradise restored;
Her voice the watching Cherub hears,
And drops his double-flaming sword.

Baptized with her renewing fire,
May we the crown of glory gain;
Rise when the Host of Heaven expire,
And reign with God, for ever reign!

1799.

266

“THE JOY OF GRIEF.”

Ossian.

Sweet the hour of tribulation,
When the heart can freely sigh,
And the tear of resignation
Twinkles in the mournful eye.

Have you felt a kind emotion
Tremble through your troubled breast,
Soft as Evening o'er the ocean
When she charms the waves to rest?

Have you lost a friend or brother?
Heard a father's parting breath?
Gazed upon a lifeless mother,
Till she seem'd to wake from death?

Have you felt a spouse expiring
In your arms before your view?
Watch'd the lovely soul retiring
From her eyes that broke on you?

Did not grief then grow romantic,
Raving on remember'd bliss?
Did you not, with fervour frantic,
Kiss the lips that felt no kiss?

Yes! but when you had resign'd her,
Life and you were reconciled;
Anna left—she left behind her—
One, one dear, one only child.

But, before the green moss, peeping,
His poor mother's grave array'd,
In that grave the infant sleeping
On the mother's lap was laid.

Horror then, your heart congealing,
Chill'd you with intense despair:
Can you call to mind the feeling?
No! there was no feeling there.

From that gloomy trance of sorrow
When you woke to pangs unknown,
How unwelcome was the morrow,
For it rose on you alone!

Sunk in self-consuming anguish,
Can the poor heart always ache?
No; the tortured nerve will languish,
Or the strings of life must break.

O'er the yielding brow of Sadness
One faint smile of comfort stole;
One soft pang of tender gladness
Exquisitely thrill'd your soul.

While the wounds of woe are healing,
While the heart is all resign'd;
'Tis the solemn feast of feeling,
'Tis the sabbath of the mind.

Pensive memory then retraces
Scenes of bliss for ever fled,
Lives in former times and places,
Holds communion with the dead.

And when night's prophetic slumbers
Rend the veil to mortal eyes,
From their tombs the sainted numbers
Of our lost companions rise.

You have seen a friend, a brother,
Heard a dear dead father speak;
Proved the fondness of a mother,
Felt her tears upon your cheek.

Dreams of love your grief beguiling,
You have clasp'd a consort's charms,
And received your infant smiling
From his mother's sacred arms.

Trembling, pale, and agonising,
While you mourn'd the vision gone,
Bright the morning-star arising,
Open'd heaven, from whence it shone.

Thither all your wishes bending,
Rose in ecstasy sublime;
Thither all your hopes ascending,
Triumph'd over death and time.

Thus afflicted, bruised, and broken,
Have you known such sweet relief?
Yes, my friend; and, by this token,
You have felt “the joy of grief.”

1803.

267

THE BATTLE OF ALEXANDRIA.

[_]

At Thebes, in Ancient Egypt, was erected a statue of Memnon, with a harp in his hand, which is said to have hailed with delightful music the rising sun, and in melancholy tones to have mourned his departure. The introduction of this celebrated Lyre on a modern occasion will be censured as an anachronism by those only who think that its chords have been touched unskilfully.

Harp of Memnon! sweetly strung
To the music of the spheres;
While the Hero's dirge is sung,
Breathe enchantment to our ears.

As the Sun's descending beams,
Glancing o'er thy feeling wire,
Kindle every chord that gleams,
Like a ray of heavenly fire:

Let thy numbers, soft and slow,
O'er the plain with carnage spread,
Soothe the dying while they flow
To the memory of the dead.

Bright as Beauty, newly born,
Blushing at her maiden charms;
Fresh from Ocean rose the Morn,
When the trumpet blew to arms.

Terrible soon grew the light
On the Egyptian battle-plain,
As the darkness of that night
When the eldest born was slain.

Lash'd to madness by the wind,
As the Red Sea surges roar,
Leave a gloomy gulf behind,
And devour the shrinking shore;

Thus, with overwhelming pride,
Gallia's brightest, boldest boast,
In a deep and dreadful tide,
Roll'd upon the British host.

Dauntless these their station held,
Though with unextinguish'd ire
Gallia's legions thrice repell'd,
Thrice return'd through blood and fire.

Thus, above the storms of time,
Towering to the sacred spheres,
Stand the Pyramids sublime,—
Rocks amid the flood of years.

Now the veteran Chief drew nigh,
Conquest towering on his crest,
Valour beaming from his eye,
Pity bleeding in his breast.

Britain saw him thus advance
In her Guardian-Angel's form;
But he lower'd on hostile France,
Like the Demon of the Storm.

On the whirlwind of the war
High he rode in vengeance dire;
To his friends a leading star,
To his foes consuming fire.

Then the mighty pour'd their breath,
Slaughter feasted on the brave!
'Twas the Carnival of Death;
'Twas the Vintage of the Grave.

Charged with Abercrombie's doom,
Lightning wing'd a cruel ball:
'Twas the Herald of the Tomb,
And the Hero felt the call—

Felt—and raised his arm on high;
Victory well the signal knew,
Darted from his awful eye,
And the force of France o'erthrew.

But the horrors of that fight
Were the weeping Muse to tell,
O 'twould cleave the womb of night,
And awake the dead that fell!

Gash'd with honourable scars,
Low in Glory's lap they lie;
Though they fell, they fell like stars,
Streaming splendour through the sky.

Yet shall Memory mourn that day,
When, with expectation pale,
Of her soldier far away
The poor widow hears the tale.

268

In imagination wild
She shall wander o'er this plain,
Rave,—and bid her orphan-child
Seek his sire among the slain.

Gently, from the western deep,
O ye evening breezes, rise!
O'er the Lyre of Memnon sweep,
Wake its spirit with your sighs.

Harp of Memnon! sweetly strung
To the music of the spheres;
While the Hero's dirge is sung,
Breathe enchantment to our ears.

Let thy numbers, soft and slow,
O'er the plain with carnage spread,
Soothe the dying while they flow
To the memory of the dead.

None but solemn, tender tones
Tremble from thy plaintive wires:
Hark! the wounded Warrior groans:
Hush thy warbling!—he expires.

Hush!—while Sorrow wakes and weeps:
O'er his relics cold and pale,
Night her silent vigil keeps,
In a mournful moonlight veil.

Harp of Memnon! from afar,
Ere the lark salute the sky,
Watch the rising of the star
That proclaims the morning nigh.

Soon the Sun's ascending rays,
In a flood of hallow'd fire,
O'er thy kindling chords shall blaze,
And thy magic soul inspire.

Then thy tones triumphant pour,
Let them pierce the Hero's grave;
Life's tumultuous battle o'er,
O how sweetly sleep the brave!

From the dust their laurels bloom,
High they shoot and flourish free;
Glory's Temple is the tomb;
Death is immortality.

1801.

THE PILLOW.

The head that oft this Pillow press'd,
That aching head, is gone to rest;
Its little pleasures now no more,
And all its mighty sorrows o'er,
For ever, in the worm's dark bed,
For ever sleeps that humble head!

My friend was young, the world was new;
The world was false, my friend was true;
Lowly his lot, his birth obscure,
His fortune hard, my friend was poor;
To wisdom he had no pretence,
A child of suffering, not of sense;
For Nature never did impart
A weaker or a warmer heart.
His fervent soul, a soul of flame,
Consumed its frail terrestrial frame;
That fire from Heaven so fiercely burn'd,
That whence it came it soon return'd:
And yet, O Pillow! yet to me,
My gentle friend survives in thee;
In thee, the partner of his bed,
In thee, the widow of the dead.

On Helicon's inspiring brink,
Ere yet my friend had learn'd to think,
Once as he pass'd the careless day
Among the whispering reeds at play,
The Muse of Sorrow wander'd by;
Her pensive beauty fix'd his eye;
With sweet astonishment he smiled;
The Gipsy saw—she stole the child;
And soft on her ambrosial breast
Sang the delighted babe to rest;
Convey'd him to her inmost grove,
And loved him with a Mother's love.
Awaking from his rosy nap,
And gaily sporting on her lap,
His wanton fingers o'er her lyre
Twinkled like electric fire:
Quick and quicker as they flew,
Sweet and sweeter tones they drew;
Now a bolder hand he flings,
And dives among the deepest strings;
Then forth the music brake like thunder;
Back he started, wild with wonder.
The Muse of Sorrow wept for joy,
And clasp'd and kiss'd her chosen boy.

269

Ah! then no more his smiling hours
Were spent in Childhood's Eden-bowers;
The fall from Infant-innocence,
The fall to knowledge, drives us thence:
O Knowledge! worthless at the price,
Bought with the loss of Paradise.
As happy ignorance declined,
And reason rose upon his mind,
Romantic hopes and fond desires
(Sparks of the soul's immortal fires)
Kindled within his breast the rage
To breathe through every future age,
To clasp the flitting shade of fame,
To build an everlasting name,
O'erleap the narrow vulgar span,
And live beyond the life of man.

Then Nature's charms his heart possess'd,
And Nature's glory fill'd his breast:
The sweet Spring-morning's infant rays,
Meridian Summer's youthful blaze,
Maturer Autumn's evening mild,
And hoary Winter's midnight wild,
Awoke his eye, inspired his tongue;
For every scene he loved, he sung.
Rude were his songs, and simple truth,
Till Boyhood blossom'd into Youth:
Then nobler themes his fancy fired,
To bolder flights his soul aspired;
And as the new moon's opening eye
Broadens and brightens through the sky,
From the dim streak of western light
To the full orb that rules the night,—
Thus, gathering lustre in its race,
And shining through unbounded space,
From earth to heaven his Genius soar'd,
Time and eternity explored,
And hail'd, where'er its footsteps trod,
In Nature's temple, Nature's God:
Or pierced the human breast to scan
The hidden majesty of Man;
Man's hidden weakness too descried,
His glory, grandeur, meanness, pride:
Pursued along their erring course
The streams of passion to their source;
Or in the mind's creation sought
New stars of fancy, worlds of thought.
—Yet still through all his strains would flow
A tone of uncomplaining woe,
Kind as the tear in Pity's eye,
Soft as the slumbering Infant's sigh,
So sweetly, exquisitely wild,
It spake the Muse of Sorrow's child.

O Pillow! then, when light withdrew,
To thee the fond enthusiast flew;
On thee, in pensive mood reclined,
He pour'd his contemplative mind,
Till o'er his eyes with mild control
Sleep like a soft enchantment stole,
Charm'd into life his airy schemes,
And realised his waking dreams.

Soon from those waking dreams he woke,
The fairy spell of fancy broke;
In vain he breathed a soul of fire
Through every chord that strung his lyre.
No friendly echo cheer'd his tongue;
Amidst the wilderness he sung:
Louder and bolder bards were crown'd,
Whose dissonance his music drown'd:
The public ear, the public voice,
Despised his song, denied his choice,
Denied a name,—a life in death,
Denied—a bubble and a breath.

Stript of his fondest, dearest claim,
And disinherited of fame,
To thee, O Pillow! thee alone,
He made his silent anguish known;
His haughty spirit scorn'd the blow
That laid his high ambition low;
But, ah! his looks assumed in vain
A cold ineffable disdain,
While deep he cherish'd in his breast
The scorpion that consumed his rest.

Yet other secret griefs had he,
O Pillow! only told to thee:
Say, did not hopeless love intrude
On his poor bosom's solitude?
Perhaps on thy soft lap reclined,
In dreams the cruel Fair was kind,
That more intensely he might know
The bitterness of waking woe.

Whate'er those pangs from me conceal'd,
To thee in midnight groans reveal'd,

270

They stung remembrance to despair:
“A wounded spirit who can bear!”
Meanwhile disease, with slow decay,
Moulder'd his feeble frame away;
And as his evening sun declined,
The shadows deepen'd o'er his mind.
What doubts and terrors then possess'd
The dark dominion of his breast!
How did delirious fancy dwell
On Madness, Suicide, and Hell!
There was on earth no Power to save:
—But, as he shudder'd o'er the grave,
He saw from realms of light descend
The friend of him who has no friend,
Religion!—Her almighty breath
Rebuked the winds and waves of death;
She bade the storm of frenzy cease,
And smiled a calm, and whisper'd peace:
Amidst that calm of sweet repose,
To Heaven his gentle Spirit rose.

1803.

VERSES TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE JOSEPH BROWNE, OF LOTHERSDALE,

ONE OF THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS,

[_]

Who, with seven others of his religious community, had suffered a long confinement in the Castle of York, and loss of all his worldly property, for conscience sake, in the years 1795 and 1796. He was a thoughtful, humble-minded man, and occasionally solaced himself with “Prison Amusements” in verse, at the time when the Author of these Stanzas, in a neighbouring room, was whiling away the hours of a shorter captivity in the same manner.

“Spirit, leave thine house of clay;
Lingering Dust, resign thy breath!
Spirit, cast thy chains away;
Dust, be thou dissolved in death!”

Thus thy Guardian Angel spoke,
As he watch'd thy dying bed;
As the bonds of life he broke;
And the ransom'd captive fled.

“Prisoner, long detain'd below;
Prisoner, now with freedom blest;
Welcome from a world of woe,
Welcome to a land of rest!”

Thus thy Guardian Angel sang,
As he bore thy soul on high;
While with Hallelujahs rang
All the region of the sky.

—Ye that mourn a Father's loss,
Ye that weep a Friend no more,
Call to mind the Christian cross
Which your Friend, your Father, bore.

Grief, and penury, and pain
Still attended on his way;
And Oppression's scourge and chain,
More unmerciful than they.

Yet, while travelling in distress
('Twas the eldest curse of sin)
Through the world's waste wilderness,
He had paradise within.

And along that vale of tears
Which his humble footsteps trod,
Still a shining path appears
Where the Mourner walk'd with GOD.

Till his Master, from above,
When the promised hour was come,
Sent the chariot of his love
To convey the Wanderer home.

Saw ye not the wheels of fire,
And the steeds that cleft the wind?
Saw ye not his soul aspire,
When his mantle dropp'd behind?

Ye who caught it as it fell,
Bind that mantle round your breast;
So in you his meekness dwell,
So on you his spirit rest!

Yet, rejoicing in his lot,
Still shall Memory love to weep
O'er the venerable spot
Where his dear cold relics sleep.

Grave! the guardian of his dust,
Grave! the treasury of the skies,
Every atom of thy trust
Rests in hope again to rise.

271

Hark! the judgment-trumpet calls—
“Soul, rebuild thine house of clay:
Immortality thy walls,
And Eternity thy day!”

THE THUNDER-STORM.

O for Evening's brownest shade!
Where the breezes play by stealth
In the forest-cinctured glade,
Round the hermitage of Health:
While the noon-bright mountains blaze
In the sun's tormenting rays.

O'er the sick and sultry plains,
Through the dim delirious air,
Agonising silence reigns,
And the wanness of despair:
Nature faints with fervent heat,
Ah! her pulse hath ceased to beat.

Now, in deep and dreadful gloom,
Clouds on clouds portentous spread,
Black as if the day of doom
Hung o'er Nature's shrinking head:
Lo! the lightning breaks from high,
God is coming!—God is nigh!

Hear ye not his chariot-wheels,
As the mighty thunder rolls?
Nature, startled Nature, reels
From the centre to the poles:
Tremble!—Ocean, Earth, and Sky,
Tremble!—God is passing by!

Darkness, wild with horror, forms
His mysterious hiding-place;
Should He, from his ark of storms,
Rend the veil, and show his face,
At the judgment of his eye
All the universe would die.

Brighter, broader lightnings flash,
Hail and rain tempestuous fall;
Louder, deeper thunders crash,
Desolation threatens all;
Struggling Nature gasps for breath
In the agony of death.

God of Vengeance, from above
While thine awful bolts are hurl'd,
O remember thou art Love!
Spare! O spare a guilty world!
Stay Thy flaming wrath awhile,
See Thy bow of promise smile.

Welcome in the eastern cloud,
Messenger of Mercy still;
Now, ye winds, proclaim aloud,
“Peace on Earth, to Man good-will.”
Nature! God's repenting child,
See thy Parent reconciled.

Hark the nightingale, afar,
Sweetly sings the sun to rest,
And awakes the evening star
In the rosy-tinted west:
While the moon's enchanting eye
Opens Paradise on high.

Cool and tranquil is the night,
Nature's sore afflictions cease,
For the storm, that spent its might,
Was a covenant of peace;
Vengeance drops her harmless rod:
Mercy is the POWER OF GOD.

1805.

ODE TO THE VOLUNTEERS OF BRITAIN

ON THE PROSPECT OF INVASION.

O for the death of those
Who for their country die,
Sink on her bosom to repose,
And triumph where they lie!

How beautiful in death
The Warrior's corse appears,
Embalm'd by fond Affection's breath,
And bathed in Woman's tears!

Their loveliest native earth
Enshrines the fallen brave;
In the dear land that gave them birth
They find their tranquil grave.

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—But the wild waves shall sweep
Britannia's foes away,
And the blue monsters of the deep
Be surfeited with prey.—

No!—they have 'scaped the waves,
'Scaped the sea-monsters' maws;
They come! but O! shall Gallic Slaves
Give English Freemen laws?

By Alfred's Spirit, No!
—Ring, ring the loud alarms;
Ye drums, awake! ye clarions, blow!
Ye heralds, shout “To arms!”

To arms our heroes fly;
And, leading on their lines,
The British Banner in the sky,
The star of conquest shines.

The lowering battle forms
Its terrible array;
Like clashing clouds in mountain-storms,
That thunder on their way:—

The rushing armies meet;
And while they pour their breath,
The strong earth shudders at their feet,
The day grows dim with death.

—Ghosts of the mighty dead!
Your children's hearts inspire;
And while they on your ashes tread,
Rekindle all your fire.

The dead to life return;
Our fathers' spirits rise;
—My brethren, in your breasts they burn,
They sparkle in your eyes.

Now launch upon the foe
The lightning of your rage;
Strike, strike the assailing giants low,
The Titans of the age.

They yield,—they break,—they fly;
The victory is won:
Pursue!—they faint,—they fall,—they die:
O stay!—the work is done.

Spirit of Vengeance! rest:
Sweet Mercy cries, “Forbear!”
She clasps the vanquish'd to her breast;
Thou wilt not pierce them there?

—Thus vanish Britain's foes
From her consuming eye;
But rich be the reward of those
Who conquer,—those who die.

O'ershadowing laurels deck
The living Hero's brows;
But lovelier wreaths entwine his neck,
—His children and his spouse.

Exulting o'er his lot,
The dangers he has braved,
He clasps the dear ones, hails the cot,
Which his own valour saved.

Daughters of Albion! weep:
On this triumphant plain
Your fathers, husbands, brethren sleep,
For you and freedom slain.

O gently close the eye
That loved to look on you;
O seal the lip whose earliest sigh,
Whose latest breath, was true:

With knots of sweetest flowers
Their winding-sheet perfume;
And wash their wounds with true-love showers,
And dress them for the tomb.

For beautiful in death
The Warrior's corse appears,
Embalm'd by fond Affection's breath,
And bathed in Woman's tears.

—Give me the death of those
Who for their country die;
And O! be mine like their repose,
When cold and low they lie!

Their loveliest mother Earth
Enshrines the fallen brave;
In her sweet lap who gave them birth
They find their tranquil grave.

1804.

273

HANNAH.

At fond sixteen my roving heart
Was pierced by Love's delightful dart:
Keen transport throbb'd through every vein,
—I never felt so sweet a pain!

Where circling woods embower'd the glade,
I met the dear romantic maid:
I stole her hand,—it shrunk,—but no;
I would not let my captive go.

With all the fervency of youth,
While passion told the tale of truth,
I mark'd my Hannah's downcast eye—
'Twas kind, but beautifully shy:

Not with a warmer, purer ray,
The Sun, enamour'd, woos young May;
Nor May, with softer maiden grace,
Turns from the Sun her blushing face.

But, swifter than the frighted dove,
Fled the gay morning of my love;
Ah! that so bright a morn, so soon,
Should vanish in so dark a noon.

The angel of Affliction rose,
And in his grasp a thousand woes;
He pour'd his vial on my head,
And all the heaven of rapture fled.

Yet, in the glory of my pride,
I stood,—and all his wrath defied;
I stood,—though whirlwinds shook my brain,
And lightnings cleft my soul in twain.

I shunn'd my nymph;—and knew not why
I durst not meet her gentle eye;
I shunn'd her, for I could not bear
To marry her to my despair.

Yet, sick at heart with hope delay'd,
Oft the dear image of that maid
Glanced, like the rainbow, o'er my mind,
And promised happiness behind.

The storm blew o'er, and in my breast
The halcyon Peace rebuilt her nest:
The storm blew o'er, and clear and mild
The sea of Youth and Pleasure smiled.

'Twas on the merry morn of May,
To Hannah's cot I took my way:
My eager hopes were on the wing,
Like swallows sporting in the Spring.

Then, as I climb'd the mountains o'er,
I lived my wooing days once more;
And fancy sketch'd my married lot,—
My wife, my children, and my cot.

I saw the village steeple rise,—
My soul sprang, sparkling, in my eyes:
The rural bells rang sweet and clear,—
My fond heart listen'd in mine ear.

I reach'd the hamlet:—all was gay;
I love a rustic holyday;
I met a wedding,—stepp'd aside;
It pass'd,—my Hannah was the bride.

—There is a grief that cannot feel;
It leaves a wound that will not heal;
—My heart grew cold,—it felt not then:
When shall it cease to feel again?

1801.

A FIELD FLOWER.

ON FINDING ONE IN FULL BLOOM, ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1803.

There is a flower, a little flower,
With silver crest and golden eye,
That welcomes every changing hour,
And weathers every sky.

The prouder beauties of the field
In gay but quick succession shine,
Race after race their honours yield,
They flourish and decline.

But this small flower, to Nature dear,
While moons and stars their courses run,
Wreathes the whole circle of the year,
Companion of the Sun.

It smiles upon the lap of May,
To sultry August spreads its charms,
Lights pale October on his way,
And twines December's arms.

274

The purple heath and golden broom
On moory mountains catch the gale,
O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume,
The violet in the vale.

But this bold floweret climbs the hill,
Hides in the forest, haunts the glen,
Plays on the margin of the rill,
Peeps round the fox's den.

Within the garden's cultured round
It shares the sweet carnation's bed;
And blooms on consecrated ground
In honour of the dead.

The lambkin crops its crimson gem,
The wild-bee murmurs on its breast,
The blue-fly bends its pensile stem
Light o'er the sky-lark's nest.

'Tis Flora's page;—in every place,
In every season fresh and fair,
It opens with perennial grace,
And blossoms every where.

On waste and woodland, rock and plain,
Its humble buds unheeded rise;
The Rose has but a summer-reign,
The DAISY never dies.

1805.

THE SNOW-DROP.

Winter, retire,
Thy reign is past!
Hoary Sire,
Yield the sceptre of thy sway,
Sound thy trumpet in the blast,
And call thy storms away.
Winter, retire;
Wherefore do thy wheels delay?
Mount the chariot of thine ire,
And quit the realms of day;
On thy state
Whirlwinds wait;
And blood-shot meteors lend thee light;
Hence to dreary arctic regions
Summon thy terrific legions;
Hence to caves of northern night
Speed thy flight.

From halcyon seas
And purer skies,
O southern breeze!
Awake, arise:
Breath of heaven, benignly blow,
Melt the snow;
Breath of heaven, unchain the floods,
Warm the woods,
And make the mountains flow.

Auspicious to the Muse's prayer,
The freshening gale
Embalms the vale,
And breathes enchantment through the air;
On its wing
Floats the Spring,
With glowing eye, and golden hair:
Dark before her Angel-form
She drives the demon of the storm,
Like Gladness chasing Care.

Winter's gloomy night withdrawn,
Lo! the young romantic Hours
Search the hill, the dale, the lawn,
To behold the SNOW-DROP white
Start to light,
And shine in Flora's desert bowers,
Beneath the vernal dawn,
The Morning Star of Flowers.

O welcome to our isle,
Thou Messenger of Peace!
At whose bewitching smile
The embattled tempests cease:
Emblem of Innocence and Truth,
First-born of Nature's womb,
When, strong in renovated youth,
She bursts from Winter's tomb;
Thy parent's eye hath shed
A precious dew-drop, on thine head
Frail as a mother's tear
Upon her infant's face,
When ardent hope to tender fear
And anxious love gives place.
But lo! the dew-drop flits away,
The sun salutes thee with a ray
Warm as a mother's kiss
Upon her infant's cheek,
When the heart bounds with bliss
And joy that cannot speak.

275

—When I meet thee by the way,
Like a pretty sportive child,
On the winter-wasted wild,
With thy darling breeze at play,
Opening to the radiant sky
All the sweetness of thine eye;
—Or bright with sunbeams, fresh with showers,
O thou Fairy-Queen of flowers!
Watch thee o'er the plain advance
At the head of Flora's dance;
Simple SNOW-DROP, then in thee
All thy sister-train I see;
Every brilliant bud that blows,
From the blue-bell to the rose:
All the beauties that appear
On the bosom of the Year,
All that wreathe the locks of Spring,
Summer's ardent breath perfume,
Or on the lap of Autumn bloom,
—All to thee their tribute bring,
Exhale their incense at thy shrine,
—Their hues, their odours, all are thine.
For while thy humble form I view,
The Muse's keen prophetic sight
Brings fair Futurity to light,
And Fancy's magic makes the vision true.

—There is a Winter in my soul,
The Winter of despair;
O when shall Spring its rage control?
When shall the SNOW-DROP blossom there?
Cold gleams of comfort sometimes dart
A dawn of glory on my heart,
But quickly pass away:
Thus Northern-lights the gloom adorn,
And give the promise of a morn
That never turns to day!

—But, hark! methinks I hear
A still small whisper in mine ear;
“Rash youth, repent:
Afflictions, from above,
Are angels sent
On embassies of love.
A fiery legion, at thy birth,
Of chastening woes were given,
To pluck the flowers of hope from earth,
And plant them high
O'er yonder sky,
Transform'd to stars,—and fix'd in heaven.”

1805.

THE OCEAN.

WRITTEN AT SCARBOROUGH, IN THE SUMMER OF 1805.

All hail to the ruins, the rocks and the shores!
Thou wide-rolling Ocean, all hail!
Now brilliant with sunbeams, and dimpled with oars,
Now dark with the fresh-blowing gale,
While soft o'er thy bosom the cloud-shadows sail,
And the silver-wing'd sea-fowl on high,
Like meteors bespangle the sky,
Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride
Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.

From the tumult and smoke of the city set free,
With eager and awful delight,
From the crest of the mountain I gaze upon thee;
I gaze,—and am changed at the sight;
For mine eye is illumined, my Genius takes flight,
My soul, like the sun, with a glance
Embraces the boundless expanse,
And moves on thy waters, wherever they roll,
From the day-darting zone to the night-shadow'd pole.

My spirit descends where the day-spring is born,
Where the billows are rubies on fire,
And the breezes that rock the light cradle of morn
Are sweet as the Phœnix's pyre:
O regions of beauty, of love, and desire!
O gardens of Eden! in vain
Placed far on the fathomless main,
Where Nature with Innocence dwelt in her youth,
When pure was her heart, and unbroken her truth.

But now the fair rivers of Paradise wind
Through countries and kingdoms o'erthrown;
Where the giant of Tyranny crushes mankind,
Where he reigns,—and will soon reign alone;
For wide and more wide, o'er the sun-beaming zone,
He stretches his hundred-fold arms,
Despoiling, destroying its charms;
Beneath his broad footstep the Ganges is dry,
And the mountains recoil from the flash of his eye.

Thus the pestilent Upas, the Demon of trees,
Its boughs o'er the wilderness spreads,

276

And, with livid contagion polluting the breeze,
Its mildewing influence sheds:
The birds on the wing, and the flowers in their beds,
Are slain by its venomous breath,
That darkens the noonday with death;
And pale ghosts of travellers wander around,
While their mouldering skeletons whiten the ground.

Ah! why hath Jehovah, in forming the world,
With the waters divided the land,
His ramparts of rocks round the continent hurl'd,
And cradled the Deep in his hand,
If man may transgress His eternal command,
And leap o'er the bounds of his birth,
To ravage the uttermost earth,
And violate nations and realms that should be
Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea?

There are, gloomy Ocean! a brotherless clan,
Who traverse thy banishing waves,
The poor disinherited outcasts of man,
Whom Avarice coins into slaves:
From the homes of their kindred, their forefathers' graves,
Love, friendship, and conjugal bliss,
They are dragg'd on the hoary abyss;
The shark hears their shrieks, and, ascending to day,
Demands of the spoiler his share of the prey.

Then joy to the tempest that whelms them beneath,
And makes their destruction its sport!
But woe to the winds that propitiously breathe,
And waft them in safety to port,
Where the vultures and vampires of Mammon resort;
Where Europe exultingly drains
The life-blood from Africa's veins;
Where man rules o'er man with a merciless rod,
And spurns at his footstool the image of God!

The hour is approaching,—a terrible hour!
And Vengeance is bending her bow;
Already the clouds of the hurricane lour,
And the rock-rending whirlwinds blow:
Back rolls the huge Ocean, Hell opens below:
The floods return headlong,—they sweep
The slave-cultured lands to the deep;
In a moment entomb'd in the horrible void,
By their Maker Himself in his anger destroy'd!

Shall this be the fate of the cane-planted isles,
More lovely than clouds in the west,
When the sun o'er the ocean descending in smiles
Sinks softly and sweetly to rest?
—NO!—Father of mercy! befriend the opprest;
At the voice of thy Gospel of peace
May the sorrows of Africa cease;
And the slave and his master devoutly unite
To walk in thy freedom, and dwell in thy light!

As homeward my weary-wing'd fancy extends
Her star-lighted course through the skies,
High over the mighty Atlantic ascends,
And turns upon Europe her eyes;
Ah me! what new prospects, new horrors, arise!
I see the war-tempested flood
All foaming and panting with blood;
The panic-struck Ocean in agony roars,
Rebounds from the battle, and flies to his shores:

For Britannia is wielding the trident to-day,
Consuming her foes in her ire,
And hurling the thunder of absolute sway
From her wave-ruling chariots of fire:
—She triumphs;—the winds and the waters conspire
To spread her invincible name;
—The universe rings with her fame;
—But the cries of the fatherless mix with her praise,
And the tears of the widow are shed on her bays.

O Britain! dear Britain! the land of my birth;
O Isle, most enchantingly fair!
Thou Pearl of the Ocean! Thou Gem of the Earth!
O my Mother! my Mother! beware;
For wealth is a phantom, and empire a snare:
O let not thy birthright be sold
For reprobate glory and gold!
Thy distant dominions like wild graftings shoot,
They weigh down thy trunk—they will tear up thy root:—

277

The root of thine OAK, O my country! that stands
Rock-planted, and flourishing free;
Its branches are stretch'd o'er the uttermost lands,
And its shadow eclipses the sea:
The blood of our ancestors nourish'd the tree;
From their tombs, from their ashes, it sprung;
Its boughs with their trophies are hung;
Their spirit dwells in it:—and, hark! for it spoke;
The voice of our fathers ascends from their Oak!

‘Ye Britons, who dwell where we conquer'd of old,
Who inherit our battle-field graves;
Though poor were your fathers,—gigantic and bold,
We were not, we could not be, slaves;
But, firm as our rocks, and as free as our waves,
The spears of the Romans we broke,
We never stoop'd under their yoke;
In the shipwreck of nations we stood up alone,—
The world was great Cæsar's—but Britain our own.

“For ages and ages, with barbarous foes,
The Saxon, Norwegian, and Gaul,
We wrestled, were foil'd, were cast down, but we rose
With new vigour, new life, from each fall;
By all we were conquer'd:—WE CONQUER'D THEM ALL!
—The cruel, the cannibal mind,
We soften'd, subdued, and refined:
Bears, wolves, and sea monsters, they rush'd from their den;
We taught them, we tamed them, we turn'd them to men.

“Love led the wild hordes in his flower-woven bands,
The tenderest, strongest of chains;
Love married our hearts, he united our hands,
And mingled the blood in our veins;
One race we became:—on the mountains and plains
Where the wounds of our country were closed,
The Ark of Religion reposed,
The unquenchable Altar of Liberty blazed,
And the Temple of Justice in Mercy was raised.

“Ark, Altar, and Temple, we left with our breath,
To our children, a sacred bequest:
O guard them, O keep them, in life and in death!
So the shades of your fathers shall rest,
And your spirits with ours be in Paradise blest:
—Let Ambition, the sin of the brave,
And Avarice, the soul of a slave,
No longer seduce your affections to roam
From Liberty, Justice, Religion, AT HOME.”

THE COMMON LOT.

[_]

A Birthday Meditation, during a solitary Winter walk, of seven miles, between a village in Derbyshire and Sheffield, when the ground was covered with snow, the sky serene, and the morning air intensely pure.

Once, in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man:—and WHO was HE?—
Mortal! howe'er thy lot be cast,
That Man resembled Thee.

Unknown the region of his birth,
The land in which he died unknown:
His name has perish'd from the earth;
This truth survives alone:—

That joy and grief, and hope and fear,
Alternate triumph'd in his breast;
His bliss and woe,—a smile, a tear!—
Oblivion hides the rest.

The bounding pulse, the languid limb,
The changing spirits' rise and fall;
We know that these were felt by him,
For these are felt by all.

He suffer'd,—but his pangs are o'er;
Enjoy'd,—but his delights are fled;
Had friends,—his friends are now no more;
And foes,—his foes are dead.

He loved,—but whom he loved, the grave
Hath lost in its unconscious womb:
O, she was fair!—but nought could save
Her beauty from the tomb.

He saw whatever thou hast seen;
Encounter'd all that troubles thee:
He was—whatever thou hast been;
He is—what thou shalt be.

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The rolling seasons, day and night,
Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main,
Erewhile his portion, life and light,
To him exist in vain.

The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye
That once their shades and glory threw,
Have left in yonder silent sky
No vestige where they flew.

The annals of the human race,
Their ruins since the world began,
Of HIM afford no other trace
Than this,—THERE LIVED A MAN!

Nov. 4. 1805.

THE HARP OF SORROW.

I gave my Harp to Sorrow's hand,
And she has ruled the chords so long,
They will not speak at my command;—
They warble only to her song.

Of dear departed hours,
Too fondly loved to last,
The dew, the breath, the bloom of flowers,
Snapt in their freshness by the blast:

Of long, long years of future care,
Till lingering Nature yields her breath,
And endless ages of despair,
Beyond the judgment-day of death:—

The weeping Minstrel sings;
And while her numbers flow,
My spirit trembles with the strings,
Responsive to the notes of woe.

Would gladness move a sprightlier strain,
And wake this wild Harp's clearest tones,
The chords, impatient to complain,
Are dumb, or only utter moans.

And yet, to soothe the mind
With luxury of grief,
The soul to suffering all resign'd
In Sorrow's music feels relief.

Thus o'er the light Æolian lyre
The winds of dark November stray,
Touch the quick nerve of every wire,
And on its magic pulses play;—

Till all the air around,
Mysterious murmurs fill,
A strange bewildering dream of sound,
Most heavenly sweet,—yet mournful still.

O! snatch the Harp from Sorrow's hand,
Hope! who hast been a stranger long;
O! strike it with sublime command,
And be the Poet's life thy song.

Of vanish'd troubles sing,
Of fears for ever fled,
Of flowers that hear the voice of Spring,
And burst and blossom from the dead;—

Of home, contentment, health, repose,
Serene delights, while years increase;
And weary life's triumphant close
In some calm sunset hour of peace;—

Of bliss that reigns above,
Celestial May of Youth,
Unchanging as Jehovah's love,
And everlasting as his truth:—

Sing, heavenly Hope!—and dart thine hand
O'er my frail Harp, untuned so long;
That Harp shall breathe, at thy command,
Immortal sweetness through thy song.

Ah! then, this gloom control,
And at thy voice shall start
A new creation in my soul,
A native Eden in my heart.

1807.

POPE'S WILLOW.

[_]

Verses written for an Urn made out of the trunk of the Weeping Willow, imported from the East, and planted by Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, where it flourished many years; but, falling into decay, it was lately cut down.

Ere Pope resign'd his tuneful breath,
And made the turf his pillow,
The minstrel hung his harp in death
Upon the drooping Willow;

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That Willow, from Euphrates' strand,
Had sprung beneath his training hand.

Long as revolving seasons flew,
From youth to age it flourish'd,
By vernal winds and starlight dew,
By showers and sunbeams, nourish'd;
And while in dust the Poet slept,
The Willow o'er his ashes wept.

Old Time beheld its silvery head
With graceful grandeur towering,
Its pensile boughs profusely spread,
The breezy lawn embowering.
Till, arch'd around, there seem'd to shoot
A grove of scions from one root.

Thither, at summer noon, he view'd
The lovely Nine retreating,
Beneath its twilight solitude
With songs their Poet greeting,
Whose spirit in the Willow spoke,
Like Jove's from dark Dodona's oak.

By harvest moonlight there he spied
The fairy bands advancing;
Bright Ariel's troop, on Thames's side,
Around the Willow dancing;
Gay sylphs among the foliage play'd,
And glow-worms glitter'd in the shade.

One morn, while Time thus mark'd the tree
In beauty green and glorious,
“The hand,” he cried, “that planted thee
O'er mine was oft victorious;
Be vengeance now my calm employ,—
One work of Pope's I will destroy.”

He spake, and struck a silent blow
With that dread arm whose motion
Lays cedars, thrones, and temples low,
And wields o'er land and ocean
The unremitting axe of doom,
That fells the forest of the tomb.

Deep to the Willow's root it went,
And cleft the core asunder,
Like sudden secret lightning, sent
Without recording thunder:
—From that sad moment, slow away
Began the Willow to decay.

In vain did Spring those bowers restore,
Where loves and graces revell'd,
Autumn's wild gales the branches tore,
The thin grey leaves dishevell'd,
And every wasting Winter found
The Willow nearer to the ground.

Hoary, and weak, and bent with age,
At length the axe assail'd it:
It bow'd before the woodman's rage;
The swans of Thames bewail'd it,
With softer tones, with sweeter breath,
Than ever charm'd the ear of death.

O Pope! hadst thou, whose lyre so long
The wondering world enchanted,
Amidst thy paradise of song
This Weeping Willow planted;
Among thy loftiest laurels seen,
In deathless verse for ever green,—

Thy chosen Tree had stood sublime,
The storms of ages braving,
Triumphant o'er the wrecks of Time
Its verdant banner waving,
While regal pyramids decay'd,
And empires perish'd in its shade.

An humbler lot, O Tree! was thine,
—Gone down in all thy glory,
The sweet, the mournful task be mine,
To sing thy simple story:
Though verse like mine in vain would raise
The fame of thy departed days.

Yet, fallen Willow! if to me
Such power of song were given,
My lips should breathe a soul through thee,
And call down fire from heaven,
To kindle in this hallow'd Urn
A flame that would for ever burn.

1806.

A WALK IN SPRING.

I wander'd in a lonely glade,
Where, issuing from the forest shade,
A little mountain stream
Along the winding valley play'd,
Beneath the morning beam.

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Light o'er the woods of dark-brown oak
The west-wind wreathed the hovering smoke,
From cottage-roofs conceal'd;
Below a rock abruptly broke,
In rosy light reveal'd.

'Twas in the infancy of May,—
The uplands glow'd in green array,
While from the ranging eye
The lessening landscape stretch'd away,
To meet the bending sky.

'Tis sweet in solitude to hear
The earliest music of the year,
The blackbird's loud wild note,
Or, from the wintry thicket drear,
The thrush's stammering throat.

In rustic solitude 'tis sweet
The earliest flowers of Spring to greet,—
The violet from its tomb,
The strawberry, creeping at our feet,
The sorrel's simple bloom.

Wherefore I love the walks of Spring,—
While still I hear new warblers sing,
Fresh-opening bells I see;
Joy flits on every roving wing,
Hope buds on every tree.

That morn I look'd and listen'd long,
Some cheering sight, some woodland song,
As yet unheard, unseen,
To welcome, with remembrance strong
Of days that once had been;—

When, gathering flowers, an eager child,
I ran abroad with rapture wild;
Or, on more curious quest,
Peep'd breathless through the copse, and smiled,
To see the linnet's nest.

Already had I watch'd the flight
Of swallows darting through the light,
And mock'd the cuckoo's call;
Already view'd, o'er meadows bright,
The evening rainbow fall.

Now in my walk, with sweet surprise,
I saw the first Spring cowslip rise,
The plant whose pensile flowers
Bend to the earth their beauteous eyes,
In sunshine as in showers.

Lone on a mossy bank it grew,
Where lichens, purple, white, and blue,
Among the verdure crept;
Its yellow ringlets, dropping dew,
The breezes lightly swept.

A bee had nestled on its blooms,
He shook abroad their rich perfumes,
Then fled in airy rings;
His place a butterfly assumes,
Glancing his glorious wings.

O, welcome, as a friend! I cried;
A friend through many a season tried,
Nor ever sought in vain,
When May, with Flora at her side,
Is dancing on the plain.

Sure as the Pleiades adorn
The glittering coronet of morn,
In calm delicious hours,
Beneath their beams thy buds are born,
'Midst love-awakening showers.

Scatter'd by Nature's graceful hand,
In briary glens or pasture-land,
Thy fairy tribes we meet;
Gay in the milk-maid's path they stand,
They kiss her tripping feet.

From Winter's farm-yard bondage freed,
The cattle, bounding o'er the mead
Where green the herbage grows,
Among thy fragrant blossoms feed,
Upon thy tufts repose.

Tossing his forelock o'er his mane,
The foal, at rest upon the plain,
Sports with thy flexile stalk,
But stoops his little neck in vain
To crop it in his walk.

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Where thick thy primrose blossoms play,
Lovely and innocent as they,
O'er coppice lawns and dells,
In bands the rural children stray,
To pluck thy nectar'd bells;

Whose simple sweets, with curious skill,
The frugal cottage-dames distil,
Nor envy France the vine,
While many a festal cup they fill
With Britain's homely wine.

Unchanging still from year to year,
Like stars returning in their sphere,
With undiminish'd rays,
Thy vernal constellations cheer
The dawn of lengthening days.

Perhaps from Nature's earliest May,
Imperishable 'midst decay,
Thy self-renewing race
Have breathed their balmy lives away
In this neglected place.

And O, till Nature's final doom,
Here unmolested may they bloom,
From scythe and plough secure;
This bank their cradle and their tomb,
While earth and skies endure!

Yet, lowly Cowslip, while in thee
An old unalter'd friend I see,
Fresh in perennial prime;
From Spring to Spring behold in me
The woes and waste of Time.

This fading eye and withering mien
Tell what a sufferer I have been,
Since, more and more estranged,
From hope to hope, from scene to scene,
Through Folly's wiles I ranged.

Then fields and woods I proudly spurn'd;
From Nature's maiden love I turn'd,
And woo'd the enchantress Art;
Yet while for her my fancy burn'd,
Cold was my wretched heart,—

Till, distanced in Ambition's race,
Weary of Pleasure's joyless chase,
My peace untimely slain,
Sick of the world,—I turn'd my face
To fields and woods again.

'Twas Spring;—my former haunts I found,
My favourite flowers adorn'd the ground,
My darling minstrels play'd;
The mountains were with sunset crown'd,
The valleys dun with shade.

With lorn delight the scene I view'd,
Past joys and sorrows were renew'd;
My infant hopes and fears
Look'd lovely, through the solitude
Of retrospective years.

And still, in Memory's twilight bowers,
The spirits of departed hours,
With mellowing tints, portray
The blossoms of life's vernal flowers
For ever fall'n away.

Till youth's delirious dream is o'er,
Sanguine with hope, we look before,
The future good to find;
In age, when error charms no more,
For bliss we look behind.

1808.

THE SWISS COWHERD'S SONG IN A FOREIGN LAND.

IMITATED FROM THE FRENCH.

O, when shall I visit the land of my birth,
The loveliest land on the face of the earth?
When shall I those scenes of affection explore,
Our forests, our fountains,
Our hamlets, our mountains,
With the pride of our mountains, the maid I adore?
O, when shall I dance on the daisy-white mead,
In the shade of an elm to the sound of the reed?

When shall I return to that lowly retreat,
Where all my fond objects of tenderness meet,—

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The lambs and the heifers, that follow my call,
My father, my mother,
My sister, my brother,
And dear Isabella, the joy of them all?
O, when shall I visit the land of my birth?
—'Tis the loveliest land on the face of the earth.

THE OAK.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF METASTASIO.

The tall oak, towering to the skies,
The fury of the wind defies,
From age to age in virtue strong,
Inured to stand, and suffer wrong.

O'erwhelm'd at length upon the plain,
It puts forth wings, and sweeps the main;
The self-same foe undaunted braves,
And fights the wind upon the waves.

THE DIAL.

This shadow on the Dial's face,
That steals from day to day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,
Moments, and months, and years away;
This shadow, which, in every clime,
Since light and motion first began,
Hath held its course sublime;
What is it?—Mortal Man!
It is the scythe of Time:
—A shadow only to the eye;
Yet, in its calm career,
It levels all beneath the sky;
And still, through each succeeding year,
Right onward with resistless power,
Its stroke shall darken every hour,
Till Nature's race be run,
And Time's last shadow shall eclipse the sun.

Nor only o'er the Dial's face,
This silent phantom, day by day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,
Steals moments, months, and years away;
From hoary rock and aged tree,
From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls,
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea,
From every blade of grass it falls;
For still, where'er a shadow sweeps,
The scythe of Time destroys,
And man at every footstep weeps
O'er evanescent joys;
Like flow'rets glittering with the dews of morn,
Fair for a moment, then for ever shorn:
—Ah! soon, beneath the inevitable blow,
I too shall lie in dust and darkness low.

Then Time, the Conqueror, will suspend
His scythe, a trophy o'er my tomb,
Whose moving shadow shall portend
Each frail beholder's doom:
O'er the wide earth's illumined space,
Though Time's triumphant flight be shown,
The truest index on its face
Points from the churchyard stone.

1807.

THE ROSES.

ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND ON THE BIRTH OF HIS FIRST CHILD.

Two Roses on one slender spray
In sweet communion grew,
Together hail'd the morning ray,
And drank the evening dew;
While, sweetly wreathed in mossy green,
There sprang a little bud between.

Through clouds and sunshine, storms and showers,
They open'd into bloom,
Mingling their foliage and their flowers,
Their beauty and perfume;
While, foster'd on its rising stem,
The bud became a purple gem.

But soon their summer splendour pass'd,
They faded in the wind;
Yet were these Roses to the last
The loveliest of their kind,
Whose crimson leaves, in falling round,
Adorn'd and sanctified the ground.

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When thus were all their honours shorn,
The bud unfolding rose,
And blush'd and brighten'd as the morn
From dawn to sunrise glows,
Till o'er each parent's drooping head
The daughter's crowning glory spread.

My Friends! in youth's romantic prime,
The golden age of man,
Like these twin Roses spend your time,—
Life's little, lessening span;
Then be your breasts as free from cares,
Your hours as innocent, as theirs.

And in the infant bud that blows
In your encircling arms,
Mark the dear promise of a Rose,
The pledge of future charms,
That o'er your withering hours shall shine,
Fair, and more fair, as you decline;—

Till, planted in that realm of rest
Where Roses never die,
Amidst the gardens of the Blest,
Beneath a stormless sky,
You flower afresh, like Aaron's rod,
That blossom'd at the sight of God.

1808.

TO AGNES.

REPLY TO SOME LINES, BEGINNING, “ARREST, O TIME! THY FLEETING COURSE.”

Time will not check his eager flight,
Though gentle Agnes scold,
For 'tis the Sage's dear delight
To make young ladies old.

Then listen, Agnes, friendship sings;
Seize fast his forelock grey,
And pluck from his careering wings
A feather every day.

Adorn'd with these, defy his rage,
And bid him plough your face,
For every furrow of old age
Shall be a line of grace.

Start not;—old age is Virtue's prime;
Most lovely she appears,
Clad in the spoils of vanquish'd Time,
Down in the vale of years.

Beyond that vale, in boundless bloom,
The eternal mountains rise;
Virtue descends not to the tomb,
Her rest is in the skies.

1804.

AN EPITAPH.

Art thou a man of honest mould,
With fervent heart, and soul sincere?
A husband, father, friend?—Behold,
Thy brother slumbers here.

The sun that wakes yon violet's bloom,
Once cheer'd his eye, now dark in death;
The wind that wanders o'er his tomb
Was once his vital breath.

The roving wind shall pass away,
The warming sun forsake the sky;
Thy brother, in that dreadful day,
Shall live and never die.

THE OLD MAN'S SONG.

Shall Man of frail fruition boast?
Shall life be counted dear,
Oft but a moment, and at most
A momentary year?

There was a time,—that time is past,—
When, youth! I bloom'd like thee!
A time will come,—'tis coming fast,—
When thou shalt fade like me:—

Like me through varying seasons range,
And past enjoyments mourn;—
The fairest, sweetest Spring shall change
To Winter in its turn.

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In infancy, my vernal prime,
When life itself was new,
Amusement pluck'd the wings of Time,
Yet swifter still he flew.

Summer my youth succeeded soon,
My sun ascended high,
And pleasure held the reins till noon,
But grief drove down the sky.

Like Autumn, rich in ripening corn,
Came manhood's sober reign;
My harvest-moon scarce fill'd her horn,
When she began to wane.

Close follow'd age, infirm old age,
The Winter of my year;
When shall I fall before his rage,
To rise beyond the sphere!

I long to cast the chains away
That hold my soul a slave,
To burst these dungeon-walls of clay,
Enfranchised from the grave.

Life lies in embryo,—never free
Till Nature yields her breath,
Till Time becomes Eternity,
And Man is born in Death.

1804.

THE GLOW-WORM.

[_]

The male of this insect is said to be a fly, which the female caterpillar attracts in the night by the lustre of her train.

When Evening closes Nature's eye,
The Glow-worm lights her little spark,
To captivate her favourite fly,
And tempt the rover through the dark.

Conducted by a sweeter star
Than all that deck the fields above,
He fondly hastens from afar,
To soothe her solitude with love.

Thus in this wilderness of tears,
Amidst the world's perplexing gloom,
The transient torch of Hymen cheers
The pilgrim journeying to the tomb.

Unhappy he whose hopeless eye
Turns to the light of love in vain;
Whose cynosure is in the sky,
He on the dark and lonely main.

1804.

BOLEHILL TREES.

[_]

A conspicuous plantation, encompassing a school-house and play-ground, on a bleak eminence, at Barlow, in Derbyshire: on the one hand facing the high moors; on the other, overlooking a richly-cultivated, well-wooded, and mountainous country, near the seat of a gentleman where the writer has spent many happy hours.

Now peace to his ashes who planted yon trees,
That welcome my wandering eye!
In lofty luxuriance they wave with the breeze,
And resemble a grove in the sky;
On the brow of the mountain, uncultured and bleak,
They flourish in grandeur sublime,
Adorning its bald and majestical peak,
Like the lock on the forehead of Time.

A land-mark they rise;—to the stranger forlorn,
All night on the wild heath delay'd,
'Tis rapture to spy the young beauties of morn
Unveiling behind their dark shade:
The homeward-bound husbandman joys to behold,
On the line of the grey evening scene,
Their branches yet gleaming with purple and gold,
And the sunset expiring between.

The maidens that gather the fruits of the moor,
While weary and fainting they roam,
Through the blue dazzling distance of noon-light explore
The trees that remind them of home:
The children that range in the valley suspend
Their sports, and in ecstasy gaze,
When they see the broad moon from the summit ascend,
And their school-house and grove in a blaze.

O! sweet to my soul is that beautiful grove,
Awakening remembrance most dear;—
When lonely in anguish and exile I rove,
Wherever its glories appear,

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It gladdens my spirit, it soothes from afar
With tranquil and tender delight,
It shines through my heart, like a hope-beaming star
Alone in the desert of night.

It tells me of moments of innocent bliss,
For ever and ever gone o'er;
Like the light of a smile, like the balm of a kiss,
They were,—but they will be no more:
Yet wherefore of pleasures departed complain,
That leave such endearment behind?
Though the sun of their sweetness be sunk in the main,
Their twilight still rests on the mind.

Then peace to his ashes who planted those trees!
Supreme o'er the landscape they rise,
With simple and lovely magnificence please
All bosoms, and gladden all eyes:
Nor marble nor brass could emblazon his fame
Like his own sylvan trophies, that wave
In graceful memorial, and whisper his name,
And scatter their leaves on his grave.

Ah! thus, when I sleep in the desolate tomb,
May the laurels I planted endure,
On the mountain of high immortality bloom,
'Midst lightning and tempest secure!
Then ages unborn shall their verdure admire,
And nations sit under their shade,
While my spirit, in secret, shall move o'er my lyre,
Aloft in their branches display'd.

Hence dream of vain glory!—the light drop of dew
That glows in the violet's eye,
In the splendour of morn, to a fugitive view,
May rival a star of the sky;
But the violet is pluck'd, and the dew-drop is flown,
The star unextinguish'd shall shine:
Then mine be the laurels of virtue alone,
And the glories of Paradise mine.

1807.

THE MOLE-HILL.

Tell me, thou dust beneath my feet,
Thou dust that once hadst breath!
Tell me how many mortals meet
In this small hill of death?

The mole that scoops with curious toil
Her subterranean bed,
Thinks not she ploughs a human soil,
And mines among the dead.

But, O! where'er she turns the ground,
My kindred earth I see:
Once every atom of this mound
Lived, breathed, and felt, like me.

Like me these elder-born of clay
Enjoy'd the cheerful light,
Bore the brief burden of a day,
And went to rest at night.

Far in the regions of the morn,
The rising sun surveys
Palmyra's palaces forlorn,
Empurpled with his rays.

The spirits of the desert dwell
Where eastern grandeur shone,
And vultures scream, hyænas yell
Round Beauty's mouldering throne.

There the pale pilgrim, as he stands,
Sees, from the broken wall,
The shadow tottering on the sands,
Ere the loose fragment fall.

Destruction joys, amid those scenes,
To watch the sport of Fate,
While Time between the pillars leans,
And bows them with his weight.

But towers and temples, crush'd by Time,
Stupendous wrecks! appear
To me less mournfully sublime
Than the poor Mole-hill here.

Through all this hillock's crumbling mould
Once the warm life-blood ran:
Here thine original behold,
And here thy ruins, Man!

Methinks this dust yet heaves with breath;
Ten thousand pulses beat;
Tell me,—in this small hill of death,
How many mortals meet?

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By wafting winds and flooding rains,
From ocean, earth, and sky,
Collected here, the frail remains
Of slumbering millions lie.

What scene of terror and amaze
Breaks through the twilight gloom?
What hand invisible displays
The secrets of the tomb?

All ages and all nations rise,
And every grain of earth
Beneath my feet, before mine eyes,
Is startled into birth.

Like gliding mists the shadowy forms
Through the deep valley spread,
And like descending clouds in storms
Lower round the mountain's head.

O'er the wild champaign while they pass,
Their footsteps yield no sound,
Nor shake from the light trembling grass
A dew-drop to the ground.

Among the undistinguish'd hosts,
My wondering eyes explore
Awful, sublime, terrific ghosts,
Heroes and kings of yore:—

Tyrants, the comets of their kind,
Whose withering influence ran
Through all the promise of the mind,
And smote and mildew'd man:—

Sages, the Pleiades of earth,
Whose genial aspects smiled,
And flowers and fruitage sprang to birth
O'er all the human wild.

Yon gloomy ruffian, gash'd and gored,
Was he, whose fatal skill
First beat the plough-share to a sword,
And taught the art to kill.

Behind him skulks a shade, bereft
Of fondly worshipp'd fame;
He built the Pyramids, but left
No stone to tell his name.

Who is the chief, with visage dark
As tempests when they roar?
—The first who push'd his daring bark
Beyond the timid shore.

Through storms of death and seas of graves
He steer'd with steadfast eye;
His path was on the desert waves,
His compass in the sky.

That youth who lifts his graceful hand,
Struck the unshapen block,
And beauty leap'd, at his command,
A Venus from the rock.

Trembling with ecstasy of thought,
Behold the Grecian maid,
Whom love's enchanting impulse taught
To trace a slumberer's shade.

Sweet are the thefts of love;—she stole
His image while he lay,
Kindled the shadow to a soul,
And breathed that soul through clay.

Yon listening nymph, who looks behind,
With countenance of fire,
Heard midnight music in the wind,—
And framed the Æolian lyre.

All hail!—The Sire of Song appears
The Muse's eldest born;
The skylark in the dawn of years,
The poet of the morn.

He from the depth of cavern'd woods,
That echoed to his voice,
Bade mountains, valleys, winds, and floods,
And earth and heaven, rejoice.

Though, charm'd to meekness while he sung,
The wild beasts round him ran,
This was the triumph of his tongue,—
It tamed the heart of man.

Dim through the mist of twilight times
The ghost of Cyrus walks;
Behind him, red with glorious crimes,
The son of Ammon stalks.

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Relentless Hannibal, in pride
Of sworn fix'd hatred, lowers;
Cæsar,—'tis Brutus at his side,—
In peerless grandeur towers.

With moonlight softness Helen's charms
Dissolve the spectred gloom,
The leading star of Greece in arms,
Portending Ilion's doom.

But Homer;—see the bard arise!
And hark!—he strikes the lyre;
The Dardan warriors lift their eyes,
The Argive Chiefs respire.

And while his music rolls along,
The towers of Troy sublime,
Raised by the magic breath of song,
Mock the destroyer Time.

For still around the eternal walls
The storms of battle rage:
And Hector conquers, Hector falls,
Bewept in every age.

Genius of Homer! Were it mine
To track thy fiery car,
And in thy sunset course to shine
A radiant evening star,—

What theme, what laurel, might the Muse
Reclaim from ages fled?
What realm-restoring hero choose
To summon from the dead?

Yonder his shadow flits away:
—Thou shalt not thus depart;
Stay, thou transcendent spirit, stay,
And tell me who thou art!

'Tis Alfred!—In the rolls of Fame,
And on a midnight page,
Blazes his broad refulgent name,
The watch-light of his age.

A Danish winter, from the north,
Howl'd o'er the British wild,
But Alfred, like the spring, brake forth,
And all the desert smiled.

Back to the deep he roll'd the waves,
By mad invasion hurl'd;
His voice was liberty to slaves,
Defiance to the world.

And still that voice o'er land and sea
Shall Albion's foes appal;
The race of Alfred will be free;
Hear it, and tremble, Gaul!

But lo! the phantoms fade in flight,
Like fears that cross the mind,
Like meteors gleaming through the night,
Like thunders on the wind.

The vision of the tomb is past;
Beyond it who can tell
In what mysterious region cast
Immortal spirits dwell?

I know not,—but I soon shall know,
When life's sore conflicts cease,
When this desponding heart lies low,
And I shall rest in peace.

For see, on Death's bewildering wave,
The rainbow Hope arise,
A bridge of glory o'er the grave,
That bends beyond the skies.

From earth to heaven it swells and shines
The pledge of bliss to Man;
Time with Eternity combines,
And grasps them in a span.

1807.

M. S. TO THE MEMORY OF “A FEMALE WHOM SICKNESS HAD RECONCILED TO THE NOTES OF SORROW,”

[_]

Who corresponded with the Author under this signature, on the first publication of his Poems, in 1806, but died soon after; when her real name and merits were disclosed to him by one of her surviving friends.

My Song of Sorrow reach'd her ear;
She raised her languid head to hear,
And, smiling in the arms of Death,
Consoled me with her latest breath.

288

What is the Poet's highest aim,
His richest heritage of fame?
—To track the warrior's fiery road,
With havoc, spoil, destruction, strow'd,
While nations bleed along the plains,
Dragg'd at his chariot-wheels in chains?
—With fawning hand to woo the lyre,
Profanely steal celestial fire,
And bid an idol's altar blaze
With incense of unhallow'd praise?
—With syren strains, Circean art,
To win the ear, beguile the heart,
Wake the wild passions into rage,
And please and prostitute the age?

NO!—to the generous Bard belong
Diviner themes and purer song:
—To hail Religion from above,
Descending in the form of Love,
And pointing through a world of strife
The narrow way that leads to life:
—To pour the balm of heavenly rest
Through Sorrow's agonising breast;
With Pity's tender arms embrace
The orphans of a kindred race;
And in one zone of concord bind
The lawless spoilers of mankind:
—To sing in numbers boldly free
The wars and woes of Liberty;
The glory of her triumphs tell,
Her nobler suffering when she fell,
Girt with the phalanx of the brave,
Or widow'd on the patriot's grave,
Which tyrants tremble to pass by,
Even on the car of Victory.

These are the Bard's sublimest views,
The angel-visions of the Muse,
That o'er his morning slumbers shine;
These are his themes,—and these were mine.
But pale Despondency, that stole
The light of gladness from my soul,
While youth and folly blindfold ran
The giddy circle up to Man,
Breathed a dark spirit through my lyre,
Dimm'd the noon-radiance of my fire,
And cast a mournful evening hue
O'er every scene my fancy drew.
Then though the proud despised my strain,
It flow'd not from my heart in vain;
The lay of freedom, fervour, truth,
Was dear to undissembling youth,
From manly breasts drew generous sighs,
And Virtue's tears from Beauty's eyes.

My Song of Sorrow reach'd HER ear;
She raised her languid head to hear,
And, smiling in the arms of Death,
She bless'd me with her latest breath.

A secret hand to me convey'd
The thoughts of that inspiring Maid;
They came like voices on the wind,
Heard in the stillness of the mind,
When round the Poet's twilight walk
Aërial beings seem to talk:
Not the twin-stars of Leda shine
With vernal influence more benign,
Nor sweeter, in the sylvan vale,
Sings the lone warbling nightingale,
Than through my shades her lustre broke,
Than to my griefs her spirit spoke.

My fancy form'd her young and fair,
Pure as her sister-lilies were,
Adorn'd with meekest maiden grace,
With every charm of soul and face,
That Virtue's awful eye approves,
And fond Affection dearly loves;
Heaven in her open aspect seen,
Her Maker's image in her mien.

Such was the picture fancy drew,
In lineaments divinely true;
The Muse, by her mysterious art,
Had shown her likeness to my heart,
And every faithful feature brought
O'er the clear mirror of my thought.
—But she was waning to the tomb;
The worm of death was in her bloom:
Yet, as the mortal frame declined,
Strong through the ruins rose the mind;
As the dim moon when night ascends,
Slow in the east the darkness rends,
Through melting clouds, by gradual gleams.
Pours the mild splendour of her beams,
Then bursts in triumph o'er the pole,
Free as a disembodied soul!

289

Thus, while the veil of flesh decay'd,
Her beauties brighten'd through the shade;
Charms which her lowly heart conceal'd,
In nature's weakness were reveal'd;
And still the unrobing spirit cast
Diviner glories to the last,
Dissolved its bonds, and clear'd its flight,
Emerging into perfect light.

Yet shall the friends who loved her weep,
Though shrined in peace the sufferer sleep,
Though rapt to heaven the saint aspire,
With seraph guards on wings of fire;
Yet shall they weep;—for oft and well
Remembrance shall her story tell,
Affection of her virtues speak,
With beaming eye and burning cheek,
Each action, word, and look recall,
The last, the loveliest of all,
When on the lap of death she lay,
Serenely smiled her soul away,
And left surviving Friendship's breast
Warm with the sunset of her rest.

O thou, who wert on earth unknown,
Companion of my thought alone!
Unchanged in heaven to me thou art,
Still hold communion with my heart;
Cheer thou my hopes, exalt my views,
Be the good angel of my Muse;
—And if to thine approving ear
My plaintive numbers once were dear;
If, falling round thy dying hours,
Like evening dews on closing flowers,
They soothed thy pains, and through thy soul
With melancholy sweetness stole,
HEAR ME:—When slumber from mine eyes,
That roll in irksome darkness, flies;
When the lorn spectre of unrest
At conscious midnight haunts my breast;
When former joys, and present woes,
And future fears, are all my foes;
Spirit of my departed friend,
Calm through the troubled gloom descend,
With strains of triumph on thy tongue,
Such as to dying saints are sung;
Such as in Paradise the ear
Of God himself delights to hear;
—Come, all unseen; be only known
By Zion's harp of higher tone,
Warbling to thy mysterious voice;
Bid my desponding powers rejoice;
And I will listen to thy lay,
Till night and sorrow flee away,
Till gladness o'er my bosom rise,
And morning kindle round the skies.

If thus to me, sweet saint, be given
To learn from thee the hymns of heaven,
Thine inspiration will impart
Seraphic ardours to my heart;
My voice thy music shall prolong,
And echo thy entrancing song;
My lyre with sympathy divine
Shall answer every chord of thine,
Till their consenting tones give birth
To harmonies unknown on earth.
Then shall my thoughts, in living fire
Sent down from heaven, to heaven aspire;
My verse through lofty measures rise,
A scale of glory to the skies,
Resembling, on each hallow'd theme,
The ladder of the Patriarch's dream,
O'er which descending angels shone,
On earthly missions from the Throne,
Returning by the steps they trod,
Up to the Paradise of God.

1808.

THE PEAK MOUNTAINS. IN TWO PARTS.

WRITTEN AT BUXTON, IN AUGUST, 1812.

[_]

It may be useful to remark, that the scenery in the neighbourhood of Buxton, when surveyed from any of the surrounding eminences, consists chiefly of numerous and naked hills, of which many are yet unenclosed, and the rest poorly cultivated; the whole district, except in the immediate precincts of the Baths and the village of Fairfield, being miserably bare of both trees and houses.

Part I.

Health on these open hills I seek,
By these delicious springs, in vain;
The rose on this deserted cheek
Shall never bloom again;
For youth is fled;—and, less by time
Than sorrow worn away,

290

The pride, the strength, of manhood's prime
Falls to decay.

Restless and fluttering to expire,
Life's vapour sheds a cold dim light,
Frail as the evanescent fire
Amidst the murky night,
That tempts the traveller from afar
To follow, o'er the heath,
Its baleful and bewildering star
To snares of death.

A dreary torpor numbs my brain;
Now shivering pale,—now flush'd with heat;
Hurried, then slow, from vein to vein
Unequal pulses beat;
Quick palpitations heave my heart,
Anon it seems to sink;
Alarm'd at sudden sounds I start,
From shadows shrink.

Bear me, my failing limbs! O! bear
A melancholy sufferer forth,
To breathe abroad the mountain air
Fresh from the vigorous north;
To view the prospect, waste and wild,
Tempestuous or serene,
Still dear to me, as to the child
The mother's mien.

Ah! who can look on Nature's face,
And feel unholy passions move?
Her forms of majesty and grace
I cannot choose but love:
Her frowns or smiles my woes disarm,
Care and repining cease;
Her terrors awe, her beauties charm
My thoughts to peace.

Already through mine inmost soul
A deep tranquillity I feel,
O'er every nerve, with mild control,
Her consolations steal;
This fever'd frame and fretful mind,
Jarring midst doubts and fears,
Are soothed to harmony:—I find
Delight in tears.

I quit the path, and track with toil
The mountains' unfrequented maze;
Deep moss and heather clothe the soil,
And many a springlet plays,
That, welling from its secret source,
Down rugged dells is tost,
Or spreads through rushy fens its course,
Silently lost.

The flocks and herds, that freely range
These moorlands, turn a jealous eye,
As if the form of man were strange,
To watch me stealing by;
The heifer stands aloof to gaze,
The colt comes boldly on:—
I pause,—he shakes his forelock, neighs,
Starts, and is gone.

I seek the valley:—all alone
I seem in this sequester'd place:
Not so; I meet unseen, yet known,
My Maker face to face;
My heart perceives his presence nigh,
And hears his voice proclaim,
While bright his glory passes by,
His noblest name.

LOVE is that name,—for GOD is LOVE;
—Here, where, unbuilt by mortal hands,
Mountains below and heaven above,
His awful temple stands,
I worship:—“Lord! though I am dust
And ashes in thy sight,
Be thou my strength; in Thee I trust:
Be thou my light.”

Part II.

Emerging from the cavern'd glen,
From steep to steep I slowly climb,
And, far above the haunts of men,
I tread in air sublime:
Beneath my path the swallows sweep;
Yet higher crags impend,
And wild flowers from the fissures peep,
And rills descend.

Now on the ridges bare and bleak,
Cool round my temples sighs the gale:
Ye winds! that wander o'er the Peak;
Ye mountain spirits! hail!

291

Angels of health! to man below
Ye bring celestial airs;
Bear back to Him, from whom ye blow,
Our praise and prayers.

Here, like the eagle from his nest,
I take my proud and dizzy stand;
Here, from the cliff's sublimest crest,
Look down upon the land:
O for the eagle's eye to gaze
Undazzled through this light!
O for the eagle's wings to raise
O'er all my flight!

The sun in glory walks the sky,
White fleecy clouds are floating round,
Whose shapes along the landscape fly,—
Here, chequering o'er the ground;
There, down the glens the shadows sweep,
With changing lights between;
Yonder they climb the upland steep,
Shifting the scene.

Above, beneath, immensely spread,
Valleys and hoary rocks I view,
Heights over heights exalt their head,
Of many a sombre hue;
No waving woods their flanks adorn,
No hedge-rows, gay with trees,
Encircle fields, where floods of corn
Roll to the breeze.

My soul this vast horizon fills,
Within whose undulated line
Thick stand the multitude of hills,
And clear the waters shine;
Grey mossy walls the slopes ascend;
While roads, that tire the eye,
Upward their winding course extend,
And touch the sky.

With rude diversity of form,
The insulated mountains tower;
—Oft o'er these cliffs the transient storm
And partial darkness lower,
While yonder summits far away
Shine sweetly through the gloom,
Like glimpses of eternal day
Beyond the tomb.

Hither, of old, the Almighty came;
Clouds were his car, his steeds the wind:
Before Him went devouring flame,
And thunder roll'd behind;
At his approach the mountains reel'd
Like vessels to and fro;
Earth, heaving like a sea, reveal'd
The gulfs below.

Borne through the wilderness in wrath,
He seem'd in power alone a God;
But blessings follow'd in his path,
For Mercy seized his rod;
She smote the rock,—and, as He pass'd,
Forth gush'd a living stream;
The fire, the earthquake, and the blast
Fled as a dream.

Behold the everlasting hills,
In that convulsion scatter'd round;
Hark! from their caves the issuing rills
With sweetest music sound:
Ye lame and impotent! draw near;
With healing on her wing,
The cherub Mercy watches here
Her ancient spring.

TO ANN AND JANE.

VERSES WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF IN THE SMALL VOLUME OF HYMNS FOR INFANT MINDS.

When the shades of night retire
From the morn's advancing beams,
Ere the hills are tipt with fire,
And the radiance lights the streams,
Lo! the lark begins her song,
Early on the wing, and long.

Summon'd by the signal notes,
Soon her sisters quit the lawn,
With their wildly warbling throats,
Soaring in the dappled dawn:
Brighter, warmer, spread the rays;
Louder, sweeter, swell their lays.

292

Nestlings, in their grassy beds,
Hearkening to the joyful sound,
Heavenward point their little heads,
Lowly twittering from the ground,
Ere their wings are fledged to fly
To the chorus in the sky.

Thus, fair Minstrels, while ye sing,
Teaching infant minds to raise
To the Universal King
Humble hymns of prayer and praise,
O may all who hear your voice
Look, and listen, and rejoice!

Faltering like the skylark's young,
While your numbers they record,
Soon may every heart and tongue
Learn to magnify the Lord;
And your strains divinely sweet,
Unborn millions thus repeat.

Minstrels! what reward is due
For this labour of your love?
—Through eternity may You,
In the Paradise above,
Round the dear Redeemer's feet,
All your infant readers meet!

OCCASIONAL ODE.

FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE ROYAL BRITISH SYSTEM OF EDUCATION,

Held at Freemasons' Hall, May 16. 1812.

The lion o'er his wild domains
Rules with the terror of his eye;
The eagle of the rock maintains
By force his empire in the sky;
The shark, the tyrant of the flood,
Reigns through the deep with quenchless rage:
Parent and young, unwean'd from blood,
Are still the same from age to age.

Of all that live, and move, and breathe,
Man only rises o'er his birth;
He looks above, around, beneath,
At once the heir of heaven and earth:
Force, cunning, speed, which Nature gave
The various tribes throughout her plan,
Life to enjoy, from death to save,—
These are the lowest powers of Man.

From strength to strength he travels on:
He leaves the lingering brute behind;
And when a few short years are gone,
He soars, a disembodied mind:
Beyond the grave, his course sublime
Destined through nobler paths to run,
In his career the end of Time
Is but Eternity begun.

What guides him in his high pursuit,
Opens, illumines, cheers his way,
Discerns the immortal from the brute,
God's image from the mould of clay?
'Tis Knowledge:—Knowledge to the soul
Is power, and liberty, and peace;
And while celestial ages roll,
The joys of Knowledge shall increase.

Hail to the glorious plan, that spread
The light with universal beams,
And through the human desert led
Truth's living, pure, perpetual streams!
—Behold a new creation rise,
New spirit breathed into the clod,
Where'er the voice of Wisdom cries,
“Man, know thyself, and fear thy God.”

A DAUGHTER (C. M.) TO HER MOTHER.

On her Birth-day, Nov. 25. 1811.

This the day to me most dear
In the changes of the year:
Spring, the fields and woods adorning,
Spring may boast a gayer morning;
Summer noon with brighter beams
Gild the mountains and the streams;
Autumn, through the twilight vale,
Breathe a more delicious gale:
Yet, though stern November reigns
Wild and wintry o'er the plains,
Never does the morning rise
Half so welcome to mine eyes;

293

Noontide glories never shed
Rays so beauteous round my head;
Never looks the evening-scene
So enchantingly serene,
As on this returning day,
When, in spirit rapt away,
Joys and sorrows I have known,
In the years for ever flown,
Wake at every sound and sight,
Reminiscence of delight;—
All around me, all above,
Witnessing a Mother's love.

Love, that watch'd my early years
With conflicting hopes and fears;
Love, that through life's flowery May
Led my childhood, prone to stray;
Love, that still directs my youth
With the constancy of Truth,
Heightens every bliss it shares,
Softens and divides the cares,
Smiles away my light distress,
Weeps for joy, or tenderness:
—May that love, to latest age,
Cheer my earthly pilgrimage!
May that love, o'er death victorious,
Rise beyond the grave more glorious!
Souls, united here, would be
One to all eternity.

When these eyes from native night
First unfolded to the light,
On what object, fair and new,
Did they fix their fondest view?
On my Mother's smiling mien;
All the mother there was seen.
When their weary lids would close,
And she sang me to repose,
Found I not the sweetest rest
On my Mother's peaceful breast?
When my tongue from hers had caught
Sounds to utter infant thought,
Readiest then what accents came?
Those that meant my Mother's name.
When my timid feet begun,
Strangely pleased, to stand or run,
'Twas my Mother's voice and eye
Most encouraged me to try,
Safe to run, and strong to stand,
Holding by her gentle hand.

Time since then hath deeper made
Lines, where youthful dimples play'd;
Yet to me my Mother's face
Wears a more angelic grace;
And her tresses thin and hoary,
Are they not a crown of glory?—
Cruel griefs have wrung that breast,
Once my Paradise of rest:
While in these I bear a part,
Warmer grows my Mother's heart,
Closer our affections twine,
Mine with hers, and hers with mine.
—Many a name, since hers I knew,
Have I loved with honour due,
But no name shall be more dear
Than my Mother's to mine ear.—
Many a hand that friendship plighted
Have I clasp'd, with all delighted,
But more faithful none can be
Than my Mother's hand to me.

Thus by every tie endear'd,
Thus with filial reverence fear'd,
Mother! on this day 'tis meet
That, with salutation sweet,
I should wish you years of health,
Worldly happiness and wealth,
And, when good old age is past,
Heaven's eternal peace at last!
But with these I frame a vow
For a double blessing now;
One, that richly shall combine
Your felicity with mine;
One, in which with soul and voice
Both together may rejoice:
O what shall that blessing be?
—Dearest Mother! may you see
All your prayers fulfill'd for me!

CHATTERTON.

[_]

Stanzas on reading the Verses entitled ‘Resignation,’ written by Chatterton a few days before his melancholy end.

A dying swan of Pindus sings
In wildly mournful strains;
As Death's cold fingers snap the strings,
His suffering lyre complains.

294

Soft as the mist of evening wends
Along the shadowy vale:
Sad as in storms the moon ascends,
And turns the darkness pale:

So soft the melting numbers flow
From his harmonious lips;
So sad his woe-wan features show,
Just fading in eclipse.

The Bard, to dark despair resign'd,
With his expiring art,
Sings, midst the tempest of his mind,
The shipwreck of his heart.

If Hope still seem to linger nigh,
And hover o'er his head,
Her pinions are too weak to fly,
Or Hope ere now had fled.

Rash Minstrel! who can hear thy songs,
Nor long to share thy fire?
Who read thine errors and thy wrongs,
Nor execrate the lyre?

The lyre, that sunk thee to the grave,
When bursting into bloom,—
That lyre, the power to Genius gave
To blossom in the tomb.

Yes, till his memory fail with years,
Shall Time thy strains recite;
And while thy story swells his tears,
Thy song shall charm his flight.

1802.

THE WILD ROSE.

ON PLUCKING ONE LATE IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER.

Thou last pale promise of the waning year,
Poor sickly Rose! what dost thou here?
Why, frail flower! so late a comer,
Hast thou slept away the Summer?
Since now, in Autumn's sullen reign,
When ev'ry breeze
Unrobes the trees,
And strews their annual garments on the plain,
Awaking from repose,
Thy fairy lids unclose.

Feeble, evanescent flower,
Smile away thy sunless hour;
Every daisy, in my walk,
Scorns thee from its humbler stalk:
Nothing but thy form discloses
Thy descent from royal roses:
How thine ancestors would blush
To behold thee on their bush,
Drooping thy dejected head
Where their bolder blossoms spread;
Withering in the frosty gale,
Where their fragrance fill'd the vale!

Last and meanest of thy race,
Void of beauty, colour, grace,
No bee delighted sips
Ambrosia from thy lips;
No spangling dew-drops gem
Thy fine elastic stem;
No living lustre glistens o'er thy bloom,
Thy sprigs no verdant leaves adorn,
Thy bosom breathes no exquisite perfume;
But pale thy countenance as snow,
While, unconceal'd below,
All naked glares the threatening thorn.

Around thy bell, o'er mildew'd leaves,
His ample web a spider weaves;
A wily ruffian, gaunt and grim,
His labyrinthine toils he spreads
Pensile and light;—their glossy threads
Bestrew'd with many a wing and limb;
Even in thy chalice he prepares
His deadly poison and delusive snares.

While I pause, a vagrant fly
Giddily comes buzzing by;
Round and round, on viewless wings,
Lo! the insect wheels and sings:
Closely couch'd, the fiend discovers,
Sets him with his sevenfold eyes,
And, while o'er the verge he hovers,
Seems to fascinate his prize,

295

As the snake's magnetic glare
Charms the flitting tribes of air,
Till the dire enchantment draws
Destined victims to his jaws.
Now midst kindred corses mangled,
On his feet alights the fly;
Ah! he feels himself entangled,
Hark! he pours a piteous cry.
Swift as Death's own arrows dart,
On his prey the spider springs,
Wounds his side,—with dexterous art
Winds the web about his wings;
Quick as he came, recoiling then,
The villain vanishes into his den.
The desperate fly perceives too late
The hastening crisis of his fate;
Disaster-crowds upon disaster,
And every struggle to get free
Snaps the hopes of liberty,
And draws the knots of bondage faster.

Again the spider glides along the line;
Hold, murderer! hold;—the game is mine.
—Captive! unwarn'd by danger, go,
Frolic awhile in light and air;
Thy fate 'tis easy to foreshow,
Preserved—to perish in a safer snare!
Spider! thy worthless life I spare;
Advice on thee 'twere vain to spend,
Thy wicked ways thou wilt not mend,—
Then haste thee, spoiler, mend thy net;
Wiser than I
Must be yon fly,
If he escapes thy trammels yet;
Most eagerly the trap is sought
In which a fool has once been caught.

And thou, poor Rose! whose livid leaves expand,
Cold to the sun, untempting to the hand,
Bloom unadmired, uninjured die;
Thine aspect, squalid and forlorn,
Ensures thy peaceful, dull decay:
Hadst thou with blushes hid thy thorn,
Grown “sweet to sense, and lovely to the eye,”
I might have pluck'd thy flower,
Worn it an hour,
“Then cast it like a loathsome weed away.”

1796.

ON FINDING THE FEATHERS OF A LINNET

SCATTERED ON THE GROUND IN A SOLITARY WALK.

These little relics, hapless bird!
That strew the lonely vale,
With silent eloquence record
Thy melancholy tale.

Like Autumn's leaves, that rustle round
From every withering tree,
These plumes, dishevell'd o'er the ground,
Alone remain of thee.

Some hovering kite's rapacious maw
Hath been thy timeless grave:
No pitying eye thy murder saw,
No friend appear'd to save.

Heaven's thunder smite the guilty foe!
No:—spare the tyrant's breath,
Till wintry winds, and famine slow,
Avenge thy cruel death!

But every feather of thy wing
Be quicken'd where it lies,
And at the soft return of Spring,
A fragrant cowslip rise!

Few were thy days, thy pleasures few,
Simple and unconfined;
On sunbeams every moment flew,
Nor left a care behind.

In Spring to build thy curious nest,
And woo thy merry bride,
Carol and fly, and sport and rest,
Was all thy humble pride.

Happy beyond the lot of kings,
Thy bosom knew no smart,
Till the last pang, that tore the strings
From thy dissever'd heart.

When late to secret griefs a prey,
I wander'd slowly here,
Wild from the copse an artless lay,
Like magic, won mine ear.

296

Perhaps 'twas thy last evening song,
That exquisitely stole
In sweetest melody along,
And harmonised my soul.

Now, blithe musician! now no more
The mellow pipe resounds,
But jarring drums at distance roar,
And yonder howl the hounds:—

The hounds, that through the echoing wood
The panting hare pursue;
The drums, that wake the cry of blood,
—The voice of glory too!

Here at my feet thy frail remains,
Unwept, unburied, lie,
Like victims on embattled plains,
Forsaken where they die.

Yet could the Muse, whose strains rehearse
Thine unregarded doom,
Enshrine thee in immortal verse,
Kings should not scorn thy tomb.

Though brief as thine my tuneful date,
When wandering near this spot,
The sad memorials of thy fate
Shall never be forgot.

While doom'd the lingering pangs to feel,
Of many a nameless fear,
One truant sigh from these I'll steal,
And drop one willing tear.

1796.

SONNET.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF P. SALANDRI.

TO A BRIDE.

The more divinely beautiful thou art,
Lady! of love's inconstancy beware;
Watch o'er thy charms, and with an angel's care
O guard thy maiden purity of heart:
At every whisper of temptation start;
The lightest breathings of unhallow'd air
Love's tender trembling lustre will impair,
Till all the light of innocence depart.

Fresh from the bosom of an Alpine hill,
When the coy fountain sparkles into day,
And sunbeams bathe and brighten in its rill;
If here a plant, and there a flower, in play,
Bending to sip, the little channel fill,
It ebbs, and languishes, and dies away.

SONNET.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF PETRARCH.

Lonely and thoughtful o'er deserted plains,
I pass with melancholy steps and slow,
Mine eyes intent to shun, where'er I go,
The track of man:—from him to hide my pains,
No refuge save the wilderness remains:
The curious multitude would quickly know,
Amidst affected smiles, the cherish'd woe
That wrings my bosom, and consumes my veins.

O that the rocks and streams of solitude,
The vales and woods, alone my griefs might see!
But paths, however secret, wild and rude,
I find not from tormenting passion free;
Where'er I wander, still by Love pursued,
With Him I hold communion, He with Me.

SONNET.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF GAETANA PASSERINI.

ON THE SIEGE OF GENOA BY THE FRENCH ARMY IN 1684.

Liberty speaks.

“My native Genoa! if with tearless eye,
Prone in the dust thy beauteous form I see,
Think not thy daughter's heart is dead to thee;
'Twere treason, O my mother! here to sigh,
For here, majestic though in ashes, lie
Trophies of valour, skill, and constancy;
Here at each glance, each footstep, I descry
The proud memorials of thy love to me.

“Conquest to noble suffering lost the day,
And glorious was thy vengeance on the foe,
—He saw thee perish, yet not feel the blow.”
Thus Liberty, exulting on her way,
Kiss'd the dear relics, mouldering as they lay,
And cried,—“In ruins?—Yes! In slavery?—No.”

297

SONNET.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO DALL' UVA.

ON THE SIEGE OF FAMAGUSTA, IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS, BY THE TURKS, IN 1571.

Thus saith the Lord:—“In whom shall Cyprus trust,
With all her crimes, her luxury, and pride?
In her voluptuous loves will she confide,
Her harlot-daughters, and her queen of lust?
My day is come when o'er her neck in dust
Vengeance and fury shall triumphant ride,
Death and captivity the spoil divide,
And Cyprus perish:—I the Lord am just.

“Then he that bought, and he that sold in thee,
Thy princely merchants, shall their loss deplore,
Brothers in ruin as in fraud before;
And thou, who madest thy rampart of the sea,
Less by thy foes cast down than crush'd by Me!
Thou, Famagusta! fall, and rise no more.”

DEPARTED DAYS: A RHAPSODY,

Written on visiting Fulneck, in Yorkshire (where the Author was educated), in the Spring of 1806.

Days of my childhood, hail!
Whose gentle spirits wandering here,
Down in the visionary vale,
Before mine eyes appear,
Benignly pensive, beautifully pale;
O days for ever fled, for ever dear,
Days of my childhood, hail!
Joys of my early hours!
The swallows on the wing,
The bees among the flowers,
The butterflies of Spring,
Light as their lovely moments flew,
Were not more gay, more innocent, than you:
And fugitive as they,
Like butterflies in Spring,
Like bees among the flowers,
Like swallows on the wing,
How swift, how soon, ye pass'd away,
Joys of my early hours!

The loud Atlantic ocean,
On Scotland's rugged breast,
Rocks, with harmonious motion,
His weary waves to rest,
And, gleaming round her emerald isles,
In all the pomp of sunset smiles.
On that romantic shore
My parents hail'd their first-born boy:
A mother's pangs my mother bore,
My father felt a father's joy:
My father, mother,—parents now no more!
Beneath the Lion-Star they sleep,
Beyond the western deep,
And when the sun's noon-glory crests the waves,
He shines without a shadow on their graves.

Sweet seas, and smiling shores!
When no tornado-demon roars,
Resembling that celestial clime
Where, with the spirits of the blest,
Beyond the hurricanes of Time,
From all their toils my parents rest:
There, skies eternally serene
Diffuse ambrosial balm
Through sylvan isles for ever green,
O'er seas for ever calm;

298

While saints and angels, kindling in his rays,
On the full glory of the Godhead gaze,
And taste and prove, in that transporting sight,
Joy without sorrow, without darkness light.

Light without darkness, without sorrow joy,
On earth are all unknown to man;
Here, while I roved, a heedless boy,
Here, while through paths of peace I ran,
My feet were vex'd with puny snares,
My bosom stung with insect-cares:
But ah! what light and little things
Are childhood's woes!—they break no rest;
Like dew-drops on the sky-lark's wings,
While slumbering in his grassy nest,
Gone in a moment, when he springs
To meet the morn with open breast,
As o'er the eastern hills her banners glow,
And veil'd in mist the valley sleeps below.

Like him, on these delightful plains,
I taught, with fearless voice,
The echoing woods to sound my strains,
The mountains to rejoice.
Hail! to the trees beneath whose shade,
Rapt into worlds unseen, I stray'd;
Hail! to the stream that purl'd along
In hoarse accordance to my song;
My song that pour'd uncensured lays,
Tuned to a dying Saviour's praise,
In numbers simple, wild, and sweet,
As were the flowers beneath my feet;—
Those flowers are dead,
Those numbers fled,
Yet o'er my secret thought,
From cold Oblivion's silent gloom,
Their music to mine ear is brought,
Like voices from the tomb.
As yet in this untainted breast
No baleful passion burn'd,
Ambition had not banish'd rest,
Nor Hope had earthward turn'd;
Proud Reason still in shadow lay,
And in my firmament alone,
Forerunner of the day,
The dazzling star of wonder shone,
By whose enchanting ray
Creation open'd on my earliest view,
And all was beautiful, for all was new.

Too soon my mind's awakening powers
Made the light slumbers flee,
Then vanish'd with the golden hours,
The morning dreams, of Infancy;
Sweet were those slumbers, dear those dreams, to me;
And yet to mournful Memory lingering here,
Sweet are those slumbers, and those dreams are dear;
For hither, from my native clime,
The hand that leads Orion forth,
And wheels Arcturus round the north,
Brought me, in Life's exulting prime:
—Blest be that hand!—Whether it shed
Mercies or judgments on my head,
Extend the sceptre or exalt the rod,—
Blest be that hand!—It is the hand of GOD.

299

HOPE.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF SERAFINO AQUILANO.

Hope, unyielding to despair,
Springs for ever fresh and fair;
Earth's serenest prospects fly,
Hope's enchantments never die.

At Fortune's frown, in evil hour,
Though honour, wealth, and friends depart,
She cannot drive, with all her power,
This lonely solace from the heart:
And while this the soul sustains,
Fortune still unchanged remains;
Wheresoe'er her wheel she guides,
Hope upon the circle rides.

The Syrens, deep in ocean's caves,
Sing while abroad the tempests roar,
Expecting soon the frantic waves
To ripple on a smiling shore:
In the whirlwind, o'er the spray,
They behold the halcyon play;
And through midnight clouds afar
Hope lights up the morning star.

This pledge of bliss in future years
Makes smooth and easy every toil;
The swain who sows the waste with tears,
In fancy reaps a teeming soil:
What though mildew blight his joy,
Frost or flood his crops destroy,
War compel his feet to roam,
Hope still carols Harvest Home!

The monarch exiled from his realm,
The slave in fetters at the oar,
The seaman sinking by the helm,
The captive on his dungeon floor;
All, through peril, pain, and death,
Fondly cling to parting breath:
Glory, freedom, power, are past,
But the dream of hope will last.

Weary and faint, with sickness worn,
Blind, lame, and deaf, and bent with age,
By man the load of life is borne
To his last step of pilgrimage:
Though the branch no longer shoot,
Vigour lingers at the root,
And in Winter's dreariest day
Hope foretels returning May.

When, wrung with guilt, the wretch would end
His gloomy days in sudden night,
Hope comes, an unexpected friend,
To win him back to hated light:
“Hold!” she cries; and from his hand
Plucks the suicidal brand;
“Now await a happier doom,
Hope will cheer thee to the tomb.”

When virtue droops, as comforts fail,
And sore afflictions press the mind,
Sweet Hope prolongs her pleasing tale,
Till all the world again looks kind:
Round the good man's dying bed,
Were the wreck of Nature spread,
Hope would set his spirit free,
Crying—“Immortality!”

A MOTHER'S LOVE.

A Mother's Love,—how sweet the name!
What is a Mother's Love?
—A noble, pure, and tender flame,
Enkindled from above,
To bless a heart of earthly mould;
The warmest love that can grow cold:
This is a Mother's Love.

To bring a helpless babe to light,
Then, while it lies forlorn,
To gaze upon that dearest sight,
And feel herself new-born,
In its existence lose her own,
And live and breathe in it alone:
This is a Mother's Love.

300

Its weakness in her arms to bear;
To cherish on her breast,
Feed it from Love's own fountain there,
And lull it there to rest;
Then, while it slumbers, watch its breath,
As if to guard from instant death:
This is a Mother's Love.

To mark its growth from day to day,
Its opening charms admire,
Catch from its eye the earliest ray
Of intellectual fire;
smile and listen while it talks,
And lend a finger when it walks:
This is a Mother's Love.

And can a Mother's Love grow cold?
Can she forget her boy?
His pleading innocence behold,
Nor weep for grief—for joy?
A Mother may forget her child,
While wolves devour it on the wild;
Is this a Mother's Love?

Ten thousand voices answer “No!”
Ye clasp your babes and kiss;
Your bosoms yearn, your eyes o'erflow;
Yet, ah! remember this,—
The infant, rear'd alone for earth,
May live, may die,—to curse his birth;
—Is this a Mother's Love?

A parent's heart may prove a snare;
The child she loves so well,
Her hand may lead, with gentlest care,
Down the smooth road to hell;
Nourish its frame,—destroy its mind:
Thus do the blind mislead the blind,
Even with a Mother's Love.

Blest infant! whom his mother taught
Early to seek the Lord,
And pour'd upon his dawning thought
The day-spring of the word;
This was the lesson to her son—
Time is Eternity begun:
Behold that Mother's Love.

Blest Mother! who, in wisdom's path
By her own parent trod,
Thus taught her son to flee the wrath,
And know the fear, of God:
Ah, youth! like him enjoy your prime;
Begin Eternity in time,
Taught by that Mother's Love.

That Mother's Love!—how sweet the name!
What was that Mother's Love?
—The noblest, purest, tenderest flame,
That kindles from above,
Within a heart of earthly mould,
As much of heaven as heart can hold,
Nor through eternity grows cold:
This was that Mother's Love.

1814.

THE TIME-PIECE.

Who is He, so swiftly flying,
His career no eye can see?
Who are They, so early dying,
From their birth they cease to be?
Time:—behold his pictured face!
Moments:—can you count their race?

Though, with aspect deep-dissembling,
Here he feigns unconscious sleep,
Round and round this circle trembling,
Day and night his symbols creep,
While, unseen, through earth and sky
His unwearying pinions ply.

Hark! what petty pulses, beating,
Spring new moments into light;
Every pulse, its stroke repeating,
Sends its moment back to night;
Yet not one of all the train
Comes uncall'd, or flits in vain.

In the highest realms of glory,
Spirits trace, before the Throne,

301

On eternal scrolls, the story
Of each little moment flown;
Every deed, and word, and thought,
Through the whole creation wrought.

Were the volume of a minute
Thus to mortal sight unroll'd,
More of sin and sorrow in it,
More of man, might we behold,
Than on History's broadest page
In the relics of an age.

Who could bear the revelation?
Who abide the sudden test?
—With instinctive consternation,
Hands would cover every breast,
Loudest tongues at once be hush'd,
Pride in all its writhings crush'd.

Who, with leer malign exploring
On his neighbour's shame durst look?
Would not each, intensely poring
On that record in the book,
Which his inmost soul reveal'd,
Wish its leaves for ever seal'd?

Seal'd they are for years, and ages,
Till,—the earth's last circuit run,
Empire changed through all its stages,
Risen and set the latest sun,—
On the sea and on the land
Shall a midnight Angel stand:—

Stand;—and, while the' abysses tremble,
Swear that Time shall be no more:
Quick and Dead shall then assemble,
Men and Demons range before
That tremendous judgment-seat
Where both worlds at issue meet.

Time himself, with all his legions,
Days, Months, Years, since Nature's birth,
Shall revive,—and from all regions,
Singling out the sons of earth,
With their glory or disgrace,
Charge their spenders face to face.

Every moment of my being
Then shall pass before mine eyes:
—God, all-searching! God, all-seeing!
Oh! appease them, ere they rise:
Warn'd I fly, I fly to Thee;
God be merciful to me!

Liverpool, 1816.

STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF THE REV. THOMAS SPENCER, OF LIVERPOOL,

WHO WAS DROWNED WHILE BATHING IN THE TIDE, ON THE 5TH OF AUGUST, 1811, IN HIS 21ST YEAR.

“Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters; and thy footsteps are not known.”— Psalm lxxvii. 19.

I will not sing a mortal's praise;
To Thee I consecrate my lays,
To whom my powers belong!
These gifts upon thine altar strown,
O God! accept—accept thine own;
My gifts are Thine,—be Thine alone
The glory of my song.

In earth and ocean, sky and air,
All that is excellent and fair,
Seen, felt, or understood,
From one eternal cause descends,
To one eternal centre tends,
With God begins, continues, ends,
The source and stream of good.

I worship not the Sun at noon,
The wandering Stars, the changing Moon,
The Wind, the Flood, the Flame;
I will not bow the votive knee
To Wisdom, Virtue, Liberty:
“There is no God but God” for me;
—Jehovah is his name.

Him through all nature I explore,
Him in his creatures I adore,
Around, beneath, above;
But clearest in the human mind,
His bright resemblance when I find,
Grandeur with purity combined,
I most admire and love.

302

Oh! there was One,—on earth a while
He dwelt;—but, transient as a smile
That turns into a tear,
His beauteous image pass'd us by;
He came like lightning from the sky,
He seem'd as dazzling to the eye,
As prompt to disappear.

Mild in his undissembling mien,
Were genius, candour, meekness seen;
—The lips, that loved the truth;
The single eye, whose glance sublime
Look'd to eternity through time;
The soul, whose hopes were wont to climb
Above the joys of youth.

Of old, before the lamp grew dark,
Reposing near the curtain'd ark,
The child of Hannah's prayer
Heard, through the temple's silent round,
A living voice, nor knew the sound,
—That thrice alarm'd him, ere he found
The Lord, who chose him there.

Thus early call'd, and strongly moved,
A prophet from a child, approved,
Spencer his course began;
From strength to strength, from grace to grace,
Swiftest and foremost in the race,
He carried victory in his face;
He triumph'd as he ran.

How short his day!—the glorious prize,
To our slow hearts and failing eyes,
Appear'd too quickly won:
—The warrior rush'd into the field,
With arm invincible to wield
The Spirit's sword, the Spirit's shield,
When, lo! the fight was done.

The loveliest star of evening's train
Sets early in the western main,
And leaves the world in night;
The brightest star of morning's host,
Scarce risen, in brighter beams is lost:
Thus sank his form on ocean's coast,
Thus sprang his soul to light.

Who shall forbid the eye to weep,
That saw him, from the ravening deep,
Pluck'd like the lion's prey?
For ever bow'd his honour'd head,
The spirit in a moment fled,
The heart of friendship cold and dead,
The limbs a wreath of clay!

Revolving his mysterious lot,
I mourn him, but I praise him not:
Glory to God be given,
Who sent him, like the radiant bow,
His covenant of peace to show;
Athwart the breaking storm to glow,
Then vanish into heaven.

O Church! to whom that youth was dear,
The Angel of thy mercies here,
Behold the path he trod,
“A milky way” through midnight skies!
—Behold the grave in which he lies;
Even from this dust thy prophet cries,
“Prepare to meet thy GOD.”

HUMAN LIFE.

[_]

Job, xiv.

How few and evil are thy days,
Man, of a woman born!
Trouble and peril haunt thy ways:
—Forth like a flower at morn
The tender infant springs to light,
Youth blossoms with the breeze,
Age, withering age, is cropt ere night,
—Man like a shadow flees.

And dost Thou look on such an one?
Will God to judgment call
A worm, for what a worm hath done
Against the Lord of all?
As fail the waters from the deep,
As summer brooks run dry,
Man lieth down in dreamless sleep:
—Our life is vanity.

Man lieth down, no more to wake,
Till yonder arching sphere

303

Shall with a roll of thunder break,
And Nature disappear.
—Oh! hide me, till thy wrath be past,
Thou, who canst kill or save;
Hide me, where hope may anchor fast,
In my Redeemer's grave.

THE VISIBLE CREATION.

The God of Nature and of Grace
In all his works appears;
His goodness through the earth we trace,
His grandeur in the spheres.

Behold this fair and fertile globe,
By Him in wisdom plann'd;
'Twas He who girded, like a robe,
The ocean round the land.

Lift to the firmament your eye,
Thither his path pursue;
His glory, boundless as the sky,
O'erwhelms the wondering view.

He bows the heavens—the mountains stand
A highway for their God;
He walks amidst the desert land,
—'Tis Eden where He trod.

The forests in his strength rejoice;
Hark! on the evening breeze,
As once of old, the Lord God's voice
Is heard among the trees.

Here on the hills He feeds his herds,
His flocks on yonder plains:
His praise is warbled by the birds;
—O could we catch their strains!

—Mount with the lark, and bear our song
Up to the gates of light,
Or with the nightingale prolong
Our numbers through the night!

In every stream His bounty flows,
Diffusing joy and wealth;
In every breeze His spirit blows,
—The breath of life and health.

His blessings fall in plenteous showers
Upon the lap of earth,
That teems with foliage, fruit, and flowers,
And rings with infant mirth.

If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will Paradise be found!

SONNET.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF GAETANA PASSERINI.

If in the field I meet a smiling flower,
Methinks it whispers, “God created me,
And I to Him devote my little hour,
In lonely sweetness and humility.”
If, where the forest's darkest shadows lower,
A serpent quick and venomous I see,
It seems to say,—“I, too, extol the power
Of Him who caused me, at his will, to be.”

The fountain purling, and the river strong,
The rocks, the trees, the mountains, raise one song;
“Glory to God!” re-echoes in mine ear:
Faithless were I, in wilful error blind,
Did I not Him in all his creatures find,
His voice through heaven, and earth, and ocean hear.

SONNET.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF GIAMBATTISTA COTTA.

I saw the' eternal God, in robes of light,
Rise from his throne,—to judgment forth he came;
His presence pass'd before me, like the flame
That fires the forest in the depth of night:
Whirlwind and storm, amazement and affright,
Compass'd his path, and shook all Nature's frame,
When from the heaven of heavens, with loud acclaim,
To earth he wing'd his instantaneous flight.

304

As some triumphal oak, whose boughs have spread
Their changing foliage through a thousand years,
Bows to the rushing wind its glorious head,
The universal arch of yonder spheres
Sunk with the pressure of its Maker's tread,
And earth's foundations quaked with mortal fears.

SONNET.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF CRESCIMBENI.

I ask'd the Heavens,—“What foe to God hath done
This unexampled deed?”—The Heavens exclaim,
“'Twas Man;—and we in horror snatch'd the sun
From such a spectacle of guilt and shame.”

I ask'd the Sea;—the Sea in fury boil'd,
And answer'd with his voice of storms, “'Twas Man:
My waves in panic at his crime recoil'd,
Disclosed the' abyss, and from the centre ran.”

I ask'd the Earth;—the Earth replied, aghast,
“'Twas Man;—and such strange pangs my bosom rent,
That still I groan and shudder at the past.”
—To Man, gay, smiling, thoughtless Man, I went,
And ask'd him next:—He turn'd a scornful eye,
Shook his proud head, and deign'd me no reply.

THE BIBLE.

What is the world!—A wildering maze,
Where Sin hath track'd ten thousand ways,
Her victims to ensnare;
All broad, and winding, and aslope,
All tempting with perfidious hope,
All ending in despair.

Millions of pilgrims throng those roads,
Bearing their baubles, or their loads,
Down to eternal night;
—One humble path, that never bends,
Narrow, and rough, and steep, ascends
From darkness into light.

Is there a Guide to show that path?
The Bible:—He alone, who hath
The Bible, need not stray:
Yet he who hath, and will not give
That heavenly Guide to all that live,
Himself shall lose the way.

1815.

INSTRUCTION.

From heaven descend the drops of dew,
From heaven the gracious showers,
Earth's Winter-aspect to renew,
And clothe the Spring with flowers;
From heaven the beams of morning flow,
That melt the gloom of night;
From heaven the evening breezes blow,
Health, fragrance, and delight.

Like genial dew, like fertile showers,
The words of wisdom fall,
Awaken man's unconscious powers,
Strength out of weakness call:
Like morning-beams they strike the mind,
Its loveliness reveal;
And softer than the evening wind
The wounded spirit heal.

As dew and rain, as light and air,
From heaven Instruction came,
The waste of Nature to repair,
Kindle a sacred flame;
A flame to purify the earth,
Exalt her sons on high,
And train them for their second birth,—
Their birth beyond the sky.

Albion! on every human soul,
By thee be knowledge shed,
Far as the ocean-waters roll,
Wide as the shores are spread:
Truth makes thy children free at home;
Oh! that thy flag, unfurl'd,
Might shine, where'er thy children roam,
Truth's banner round the world.

London, 1812.

305

THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER.

OCCASIONED BY THE SUDDEN DEATH OF THE REV. THOMAS TAYLOR; After having declared, in his last Sermon, on a preceding evening, that he hoped to die as an old soldier of Jesus Christ, with his sword in his hand.

“Servant of God! well done;
Rest from thy loved employ;
The battle fought, the victory won,
Enter thy Master's joy.”
—The voice at midnight came;
He started up to hear:
A mortal arrow pierced his frame,
He fell,—but felt no fear.

Tranquil amidst alarms,
It found him in the field,
A veteran slumbering on his arms,
Beneath his red-cross shield:
His sword was in his hand,
Still warm with recent fight,
Ready that moment at command,
Through rock and steel to smite.

It was a two-edged blade,
Of heavenly temper keen;
And double were the wounds it made,
Where'er it smote between:
'Twas death to sin;—'twas life
To all that mourn'd for sin;
It kindled and it silenced strife,
Made war and peace within.

Oft, with its fiery force,
His arm had quell'd the foe,
And laid, resistless in his course,
The alien-armies low
Bent on such glorious toils,
The world to him was loss;
Yet all his trophies, all his spoils,
He hung upon the cross.

At midnight came the cry,
“To meet thy God prepare!”
He woke, and caught his Captain's eye;
Then, strong in faith and prayer,
His spirit, with a bound,
Burst its encumbering clay;
His tent at sunrise, on the ground,
A darken'd ruin lay.

The pains of death are past,
Labour and sorrow cease,
And, life's long warfare closed at last,
His soul is found in peace.
Soldier of Christ! well done;
Praise be thy new employ;
And while eternal ages run,
Rest in thy Saviour's joy.

ON THE ROYAL INFANT,

Still-born, Nov. 5. 1817.

A throne on earth awaited thee;
A nation long'd to see thy face,
Heir to a glorious ancestry,
And father of a mightier race.

Vain hope! that throne thou must not fill;
Thee may that nation ne'er behold;
Thine ancient house is heirless still,
Thy line shall never be unroll'd.

Yet, while we mourn thy flight from earth,
Thine was a destiny sublime;
Caught up to Paradise in birth,
Pluck'd by Eternity from Time.

The Mother knew her offspring dead:
Oh! was it grief, or was it love,
That broke her heart?—The spirit fled
To seek her nameless child above.

Led by his natal star, she trod
The path to heaven:—the meeting there,
And how they stood before their God,
The day of judgment shall declare.

A MIDNIGHT THOUGHT.

In a land of strange delight,
My transported spirit stray'd;
I awake where all is night,
Silence, solitude, and shade.

306

Is the dream of Nature flown?
Is the universe destroy'd,
Man extinct, and I alone
Breathing through the formless void?

No:—my soul, in God rejoice!
Through the gloom his light I see,
In the silence hear his voice,
And his hand is over me.

When I slumber in the tomb,
He will guard my resting-place:
Fearless in the day of doom,
May I stand before his face!

INCOGNITA.

ON VIEWING THE PICTURE OF AN UNKNOWN LADY.

WRITTEN AT LEAMINGTON, IN 1817.

“She was a phantom of delight.” —Wordsworth.

Image of One, who lived of yore!
Hail to that lovely mien,
Once quick and conscious,—now no more
On land or ocean seen!
Were all earth's breathing forms to pass
Before me in Agrippa's glass,
Many as fair as Thou might be,
But, oh! not one—not one—like Thee.

Thou art no Child of Fancy;—Thou
The very look dost wear,
That gave enchantment to a brow,
Wreathed with luxuriant hair;
Lips of the morn embathed in dew,
And eyes of evening's starry blue;
Of all who e'er enjoy'd the sun,
Thou art the image of but One.

And who was she, in virgin prime,
And May of womanhood,
Whose roses here, unpluck'd by Time,
In shadowy tints have stood;
While many a winter's withering blast
Hath o'er the dark cold chamber pass'd,
In which her once-resplendent form
Slumber'd to dust beneath the storm?

Of gentle blood;—upon her birth
Consenting planets smiled,
And she had seen those days of mirth
That frolic round the child;
To bridal bloom her strength had sprung,
Behold her beautiful and young!
Lives there a record, which hath told
That she was wedded, widow'd, old?

How long her date, 'twere vain to guess:
The pencil's cunning art
Can but a single glance express,
One motion of the heart;
A smile, a blush,—a transient grace
Of air, and attitude, and face;
One passion's changing colours mix,
One moment's flight for ages fix.

Her joys and griefs alike in vain
Would fancy here recall;
Her throbs of ecstasy or pain
Lull'd in oblivion all;
With her, methinks, life's little hour
Pass'd like the fragrance of a flower,
That leaves upon the vernal wind
Sweetness we ne'er again may find.

Where dwelt she?—Ask yon aged tree,
Whose boughs embower the lawn,
Whether the birds' wild ministrelsy
Awoke her here at dawn?
Whether beneath its youthful shade,
At noon, in infancy she play'd?
—If from the oak no answer come,
Of her all oracles are dumb.

The Dead are like the stars by day;
—Withdrawn from mortal eye,
But not extinct, they hold their way
In glory through the sky:

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Spirits, from bondage thus set free,
Vanish amidst immensity,
Where human thought, like human sight,
Fails to pursue their trackless flight.

Somewhere within created space,
Could I explore that round,
In bliss, or woe, there is a place
Where she might still be found;
And oh! unless those eyes deceive,
I may, I must, I will believe,
That she, whose charms so meekly glow,
Is what she only seem'd below;—

An angel in that glorious realm
Where God himself is King:
—But awe and fear, that overwhelm
Presumption, check my wing;
Nor dare imagination look
Upon the symbols of that book,
Wherein eternity enrols
The judgments on departed souls.

Of Her of whom these pictured lines
A faint resemblance form;
Fair as the second rainbow shines
Aloof amid the storm;—
Of Her, this “shadow of a shade,”
Like its original, must fade,
And She, forgotten when unseen,
Shall be as if she ne'er had been.

Ah! then, perchance, this dreaming strain
Of all that e'er I sung,
A lorn memorial may remain,
When silent lies my tongue;
When shot the meteor of my fame,
Lost the vain echo of my name,
This leaf, this fallen leaf, may be
The only trace of her and me.

With One who lived of old, my song
In lowly cadence rose;
To One who is unborn, belong
The accents of its close:
Ages to come, with courteous ear,
Some youth my warning voice may hear;
And voices from the dead should be
The warnings of eternity.

When these weak lines thy presence greet,
Reader! if I am blest,
Again, as spirits, may we meet
In glory and in rest!
If not,—and I have lost my way,
Here part we,—go not Thou astray:
No tomb, no verse, my story tell;
Once, and for ever, Fare Thee well!

THE LITTLE CLOUD.

[_]

Seen in a country excursion among the woods and rocks of Wharncliffe and the adjacent park and pleasure-grounds of Wortley Hall, the seat of the Right Honourable Lord Wharncliffe, near Sheffield, on the 30th day of June, 1818.

The summer sun was in the west,
Yet far above his evening rest;
A thousand clouds in air display'd
Their floating isles of light and shade,—
The sky, like ocean's channels, seen
In long meandering streaks between.

Cultured and waste, the landscape lay,
Woods, mountains, valleys stretch'd away,
And throng'd the' immense horizon round,
With heaven's eternal girdle bound;
From inland towns, eclipsed with smoke,
Steeples in lonely grandeur broke;
Hamlets, and cottages, and streams
By glimpses caught the casual gleams,
Or blazed in lustre broad and strong
Beyond the picturing powers of song:
O'er all the eye enchanted ranged,
While colours, forms, proportions changed,
Or sunk in distance undefined,
Still as our devious course inclined,
—And oft we paused, and look'd behind.

One little cloud, and only one,
Seem'd the pure offspring of the sun,
Flung from his orb to show us here
What clouds adorn his hemisphere;
Unmoved, unchanging in the gale,
That bore the rest o'er hill and dale,
Whose shadowy shapes, with lights around,
Like living motions, swept the ground,

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This little cloud, and this alone,
Long in the highest ether shone;
Gay as a warrior's banner spread,
Its sunward margin ruby-red,
Green, purple, gold, and every hue
That glitters in the morning-dew,
Or glows along the rainbow's form,—
The apparition of the storm.
Deep in its bosom, diamond-bright,
Behind a fleece of pearly white,
It seem'd a secret glory dwelt,
Whose presence, while unseen, was felt:
Like Beauty's eye, in slumber hid
Beneath a half-transparent lid,
From whence a sound, a touch, a breath,
Might startle it,—as life from death.

Looks, words, emotions of surprise
Welcomed the stranger to our eyes:
Was it the phœnix, that from earth
In flames of incense sprang to birth?
Had ocean from his lap let fly
His loveliest halcyon through the sky?
No:—while we gazed, the pageant grew
A nobler object to our view;
We deem'd, if heaven with earth would hold
Communion as in days of old,
Such, on his journey down the sphere,
Benignant Raphael might appear,
In splendid mystery conceal'd,
Yet by his rich disguise reveal'd:
—That buoyant vapour, in mid-air,
An angel in its folds might bear,
Who, through the curtain of his shrine,
Betray'd his lineaments divine.
The wild, the warm illusion stole,
Like inspiration, o'er the soul,
Till thought was rapture, language hung
Silent but trembling on the tongue;
And fancy almost hoped to hail
The seraph rushing through his veil,
Or hear an awful voice proclaim
The embassy on which he came.

But ah! no minister of grace
Show'd from the firmament his face,
Nor, borne aloof on balanced wings,
Reveal'd unutterable things.
The sun went down:—the vision pass'd;
The cloud was but a cloud at last;
Yet, when its brilliancy decay'd,
The eye still linger'd on the shade,
And, watching till no longer seen,
Loved it for what it once had been.

That cloud was beautiful,—was one
Among a thousand round the sun;
The thousand shared the common lot;
They came,—they went,—they were forgot;
This fairy form alone impress'd
Its perfect image in my breast,
And shines as richly blazon'd there
As in its element of air.

The day on which that cloud appear'd,
Exhilarating scenes endear'd:
—The sunshine on the hills, the floods;
The breeze, the twilight of the woods;
Nature in every change of green,
Heaven in unnumber'd aspects seen;
Health, spirits, exercise, release
From noise and smoke; twelve hours of peace;
No fears to haunt, no cares to vex;
Friends, young and old, of either sex;
Converse familiar, sportive, kind,
Where heart meets heart, mind quickens mind,
And words and thoughts are all at play,
Like children on a holyday;
—Till themes celestial rapt the soul
In adoration o'er the pole,
Where stars are darkness in His sight
Who reigns invisible in light,
High above all created things,
The Lord of Lords, the King of Kings!
Faith, which could thus on wing sublime
Outsoar the bounded flight of time;
Hope full of immortality,
And God in all the eye could see;
—These, these endear'd that day to me,
And made it, in a thousand ways:
A day among a thousand days,
That share with clouds the common lot;
They come,—they go,—they are forgot:
This, like that plaything of the sun,
—The little, lonely, lovely one,—
This lives within me; this shall be
A part of my eternity.

Amidst the cares, the toils, the strife,
The weariness and waste of life,

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That day shall memory oft restore,
And in a moment live it o'er,
When, with a lightning flash of thought,
Morn, noon, and eve at once are brought
(As through the vision of a trance)
All in the compass of a glance.

Oh! should I reach a world above,
And sometimes think of those I love,
Of things on earth too dearly prized
(Nor yet by saints in heaven despised),
Though spirits made perfect may lament
Life's holier hours as half mis-spent,
Methinks I could not turn away
The fond remembrance of that day,
The bright idea of that cloud
(Survivor of a countless crowd),
Without a pause, perhaps a sigh,
To think such loveliness should die,
And clouds and days of storm and gloom
Scowl on Man's passage to the tomb.
—Not so:—I feel I have a heart,
Blessings to share, improve, impart,
In blithe, severe, or pensive mood,
At home, abroad, in solitude,
Whatever clouds are on the wing,
Whatever day the seasons bring.

That is true happiness below
Which conscience cannot turn to woe;
And though such happiness depends
Neither on clouds, nor days, nor friends,
When friends, and days, and clouds unite,
And kindred chords are tuned aright,
The harmonies of heaven and earth,
Through eye, ear, intellect, give birth
To joys too exquisite to last,
—And yet more exquisite when past!
When the soul summons by a spell
The ghosts of pleasures round her cell,
In saintlier forms than erst they wore,
And smiles benigner than before,
Each loved, lamented scene renews,
With warmer touches, tenderer hues;
Recalls kind words for ever flown,
But echoed in a soften'd tone;
Wakes, with new pulses in the breast,
Feelings forgotten or at rest;
—The thought how fugitive and fair,
How dear and precious, such things were!
That thought, with gladness more refined,
Deep, and transporting, thrills the mind,
Than all those pleasures of an hour,
When most the soul confess'd their power.
Bliss in possession will not last:
Remember'd joys are never past;
At once the fountain, stream, and sea,
They were,—they are,—they yet shall be.

THE ALPS:

A REVERIE.

Part I. Day.

The mountains of this glorious land
Are conscious beings to mine eye,
When at the break of day they stand
Like giants looking through the sky,
To hail the sun's unrisen car,
That gilds their diadems of snow;
While one by one, as star by star,
Their peaks in ether glow.

Their silent presence fills my soul,
When, to the horizontal ray,
The many-tinctured vapours roll
In evanescent wreaths away,
And leave them naked on the scene,
The emblems of eternity,
The same as they have ever been,
And shall for ever be.

Yet, through the valley while I range,
Their cliffs, like images in dreams,
Colour and shape and station change;
Here crags and caverns, woods and streams,
And seas of adamantine ice,
With gardens, vineyards, fields embraced,
Open a way to Paradise,
Through all the splendid waste.

The goats are hanging on the rocks,
Wide through their pastures roam the herds;
Peace on the uplands feeds her flocks,
Till suddenly the king of birds

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Pouncing a lamb, they start for fear;
He bears his bleating prize on high;
The well-known plaint his nestlings hear,
And raise a ravening cry.

The sun in morning freshness shines;
At noon behold his orb o'ercast;
Hollow and dreary o'er the pines,
Like distant ocean, moans the blast;
The mountains darken at the sound,
Put on their armour, and anon,
In panoply of clouds wrapt round,
Their forms from sight are gone.

Hark! war in heaven!—the battle-shout
Of thunder rends the echoing air;
Lo! war in heaven!—thick-flashing out
Through torrent-rains red lightnings glare,
As though the Alps, with mortal ire,
At once a thousand voices raised,
And with a thousand swords of fire
At once in conflict blazed.

Part II. Night.

Come, golden Evening, in the west
Enthrone the storm-dispelling sun,
And let the triple rainbow rest
O'er all the mountain-tops:—'Tis done;
The deluge ceases; bold and bright
The rainbow shoots from hill to hill;
Down sinks the sun; on presses night;
—Mont Blanc is lovely still.

There take thy stand, my spirit;—spread
The world of shadows at thy feet;
And mark how calmly, overhead,
The stars like saints in glory meet:
While hid in solitude sublime,
Methinks I muse on Nature's tomb,
And hear the passing foot of Time
Step through the gloom.

All in a moment, crash on crash,
From precipice to precipice,
An avalanche's ruins dash
Down to the nethermost abyss;
Invisible, the ear alone
Follows the uproar till it dies;
Echo on echo, groan for groan,
From deep to deep replies.

Silence again the darkness seals,—
Darkness that may be felt;—but soon
The silver-clouded east reveals
The midnight spectre of the moon;
In half-eclipse she lifts her horn,
Yet, o'er the host of heaven supreme,
Brings the faint semblance of a morn
With her awakening beam.

Ha! at her touch, these Alpine heights
Unreal mockeries appear;
With blacker shadows, ghastlier lights,
Enlarging as she climbs the sphere;
A crowd of apparitions pale!
I hold my breath in chill suspense,
—They seem so exquisitely frail,—
Lest they should vanish hence.

I breathe again, I freely breathe;
Lake of Geneva! thee I trace,
Like Dian's crescent far beneath,
And beautiful as Dian's face.
Pride of this land of liberty!
All that thy waves reflect I love;
Where heaven itself, brought down to thee,
Looks fairer than above.

Safe on thy banks again I stray,
The trance of poesy is o'er,
And I am here at dawn of day,
Gazing on mountains as before;
For all the strange mutations wrought
Were magic feats of my own mind;
Thus, in the fairy-land of thought,
Whate'er I seek I find.

Yet, O ye everlasting hills!
Buildings of God not made with hands,
Whose word performs whate'er He wills,
Whose word, though ye shall perish, stands;
Can there be eyes that look on you,
Till tears of rapture make them dim,
Nor in his works the Maker view,
Then lose his works in Him?

By me, when I behold Him not,
Or love Him not when I behold,

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Be all I ever knew forgot;
My pulse stand still, my heart grow cold;
Transform'd to ice, 'twixt earth and sky,
On yonder cliff my form be seen,
That all may ask, but none reply,
What my offence hath been.

1822.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

Flowers, wherefore do ye bloom?
—We strew thy pathway to the tomb.

Stars, wherefore do ye rise?
—To light thy spirit to the skies.

Fair Moon, why dost thou wane?
—That I may wax again.

O Sun, what makes thy beams so bright?
—The Word that said, “Let there be light.”

Planets, what guides you in your course?
—Unseen, unfelt, unfailing force.

Nature, whence sprang thy glorious frame?
—My Maker call'd me, and I came.

O Light, thy subtle essence who may know?
—Ask not; for all things but myself I show.

What is yon arch which everywhere I see?
—The sign of omnipresent Deity.

Where rests the horizon's all-embracing zone?
—Where earth, God's footstool, touches heaven, his throne.

Ye Clouds, what bring ye in your train?
—God's embassies,—storm, lightning, hail, or rain.

Winds, whence and whither do ye blow?
—Thou must be born again to know.

Bow in the cloud, what token dost thou bear?
—That Justice still cries “strike,” and Mercy “spare.”

Dews of the morning, wherefore were ye given?
—To shine on earth, then rise to heaven.

Rise, glitter, break; yet, Bubble, tell me why?
—To show the course of all beneath the sky.

Stay, Meteor, stay thy falling fire!
—No, thus shall all the host of heaven expire.

Ocean, what law thy chainless waves confined?
—That which in Reason's limits holds thy mind.

Time, whither dost thou flee?
—I travel to Eternity.

Eternity, what art thou,—say?
—Time past, time present, time to come,—to-day.

Ye Dead, where can your dwelling be?
—The house for all the living:—come and see.

O Life, what is thy breath?
—A vapour lost in death.

O Death, how ends thy strife?
—In everlasting life.

O Grave, where is thy victory?
—Ask Him who rose again for me.

YOUTH RENEWED.

Spring-flowers, spring-birds, spring-breezes,
Are felt, and heard, and seen;
Light trembling transport seizes
My heart,—with sighs between;
These old enchantments fill the mind
With scenes and seasons far behind;
Childhood, its smiles and tears,
Youth, with its flush of years,
Its morning clouds and dewy prime,
More exquisitely touch'd by Time.

Fancies again are springing,
Like May-flowers in the vales;
While hopes, long lost, are singing,
From thorns, like nightingales;
And kindly spirits stir my blood,
Like vernal airs that curl the flood:

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There falls to manhood's lot
A joy, which youth has not,
A dream more beautiful than truth,
—Returning Spring renewing Youth.

Thus sweetly to surrender
The present for the past;
In sprightly mood, yet tender,
Life's burden down to cast,
—This is to taste, from stage to stage,
Youth on the lees refined by age:
Like wine well kept and long,
Heady, nor harsh, nor strong,
With every annual cup, is quaff'd
A richer, purer, mellower draught.

Harrowgate, 1825.

THE BRIDAL AND THE BURIAL.

“Blessed is the bride whom the sun shines on;
Blessed is the corpse which the rain rains on.”

I saw thee young and beautiful,
I saw thee rich and gay,
In the first blush of womanhood,
Upon thy wedding-day:
The church-bells rang,
And the little children sang,—
“Flowers, flowers, kiss her feet;
Sweets to the sweet;
The winter's past, the rains are gone;
Blessed is the bride whom the sun shines on.”

I saw thee poor and desolate,
I saw thee fade away,
In brokenhearted widowhood,
Before thy locks were grey;
The death-bell rang,
And the little children sang,—
“Lilies, dress her winding-sheet;
Sweets to the sweet;
The summer's past, the sunshine gone;
Blessed is the corpse which the rain rains on.”

“Blessed is the bride whom the sun shines on;
Blessed is the corpse which the rain rains on.”

FRIENDS.

Friend after friend departs:
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts,
That finds not here an end:
Were this frail world our only rest,
Living or dying, none were blest.

Beyond the flight of Time,
Beyond this vale of death,
There surely is some blessed clime,
Where life is not a breath,
Nor life's affections transient fire,
Whose sparks fly upward to expire.

There is a world above,
Where parting is unknown;
A whole eternity of love,
Form'd for the good alone;
And faith beholds the dying here
Translated to that happier sphere.

Thus star by star declines,
Till all are pass'd away,
As morning high and higher shines
To pure and perfect day;
Nor sink those stars in empty night,
—They hide themselves in heaven's own light.

1824.

A MOTHER'S LAMENT

ON THE DEATH OF HER INFANT DAUGHTER.

I loved thee, Daughter of my heart;
My Child, I loved thee dearly;
And though we only met to part,
—How sweetly! how severely!—
Nor life nor death can sever
My soul from thine for ever.

Thy days, my little one, were few,—
An Angel's morning-visit,
That came and vanish'd with the dew:
'Twas here, 'tis gone, where is it?
Yet didst thou leave behind thee
A clue for love to find thee.

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The eye, the lip, the cheek, the brow,
The hands stretch'd forth in gladness,
All life, joy, rapture, beauty now.
Then dash'd with infant sadness,
Till, brightening by transition,
Return'd the fairy vision:—

Where are they now?—those smiles, those tears,
Thy Mother's darling treasure?
She sees them still, and still she hears
Thy tones of pain or pleasure,
To her quick pulse revealing
Unutterable feeling.

Hush'd in a moment on her breast,
Life, at the well-spring drinking,
Then cradled on her lap to rest,
In rosy slumber sinking,
Thy dreams—no thought can guess them;
And mine—no tongue express them.

For then this waking eye could see,
In many a vain vagary,
The things that never were to be,
Imaginations airy;
Fond hopes that mothers cherish,
Like still-born babes to perish.

Mine perish'd on thy early bier;
No—changed to forms more glorious,
They flourish in a higher sphere,
O'er time and death victorious;
Yet would these arms have chain'd thee,
And long from heaven detain'd thee.

Sarah! my last, my youngest love,
The crown of every other!
Though thou art born in heaven above,
I am thine only Mother,
Nor will affection let me
Believe thou canst forget me.

Then,—thou in heaven, and I on earth,—
May this one hope delight us,
That thou wilt hail my second birth
When death shall re-unite us,
Where worlds no more can sever
Parent and child for ever.

THE WIDOW AND THE FATHERLESS.

Well, thou art gone, and I am left;
But, oh! how cold and dark to me
This world, of every charm bereft,
Where all was beautiful with thee!

Though I have seen thy form depart
For ever from my widow'd eye,
I hold thee in mine inmost heart;
There, there at least, thou canst not die.

Farewell on earth; Heaven claim'd its own;
Yet, when from me thy presence went,
I was exchanged for God alone:
Let dust and ashes learn content.

Ha! those small voices silver sweet!
Fresh from the fields my babes appear;
They fill my arms, they clasp my feet;
—“Oh! could your father see us here!”

THE DAISY IN INDIA.

[_]

The simple history of these stanzas is the following. A friend of mine, a scientific botanist, residing near Sheffield, had sent a package of sundry kinds of British seeds to the learned and venerable Doctor William Carey, one of the first Baptist Missionaries to India, where they had established themselves in the small Danish settlement of Serampore, in the province of Bengal. Some of the seeds had been enclosed in a bag, containing a portion of their native earth. In March, 1821, a letter of acknowledgment was received by his correspondent from the Doctor, who was himself well skilled in botany, and had a garden rich in plants both tropical and European. In this enclosure he was wont to spend an hour every morning, before he entered upon those labours and studies which have rendered his name illustrious both at home and abroad, as one of the most accomplished of oriental scholars, and a translator of the Holy Scriptures into many of the Hindoo languages. In the letter afore-mentioned, which was shown to me, the good man says,—“That I might be sure not to lose any part of your valuable present, I shook the bag over a patch of earth in a shady place: on visiting which, a few days afterwards, I found springing up, to my inexpressible delight, a bellis perennis of our English pastures. I know not that I ever enjoyed, since leaving Europe, a simple pleasure so exquisite as the sight of this English Daisy afforded me; not having seen one for upwards of thirty years, and never expecting to see one again.”

On the perusal of this passage, the following stanzas seemed to spring up almost spontaneously in my mind, as the “little

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English Flower” in the good Doctor's garden, whom I imagined to be thus addressing it on its sudden appearance. —With great care and attention he was able to perpetuate “the Daisy in India,” as an annual only, raised by seed from season to season. It may be observed that, amidst the luxuriance of tropical vegetation, there are comparatively few small plants, like the multifarious progeny of our native Flora.

There is a beautiful coincidence between a fact and a fiction in this circumstance. Among the many natural and striking expedients by which the ingenious author of Robinson Crusoe contrives to supply his hero on the desolate island with necessaries and comforts of life, not indigenous, we are informed that Crusoe one day, long after his shipwreck and residence there, perceived some delicate blades of vegetation peeping forth, after the rains, on a patch of ground near his dwelling-place. Not knowing what they were, he watched their growth from day to day, till he ascertained, to his “inexpressible delight,” that they were plants of some kind of English corn. He then recollected having shaken out on that spot the dusty refuse of “a bag” which had been used to hold grain for the fowls on shipboard. “With great care and attention” he was enabled to preserve the precious stalks till the full corn ripened in the ear. He then reaped the first fruits of this spontaneous harvest, sowed them again, and, till his release from captivity there, ate bread in his lonely abode,

“Placed far amid the melancholy main.”

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
My mother-country's white and red,
In rose or lily, till this hour,
Never to me such beauty spread:
Transplanted from thine island-bed,
A treasure in a grain of earth,
Strange as a spirit from the dead,
Thine embryo sprang to birth.

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
Whose tribes, beneath our natal skies,
Shut close their leaves while vapours lower;
But, when the sun's gay beams arise,
With unabash'd but modest eyes,
Follow his motion to the west,
Nor cease to gaze till daylight dies,
Then fold themselves to rest.

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
To this resplendent hemisphere,
Where Flora's giant offspring tower
In gorgeous liveries all the year:
Thou, only thou, art little here,
Like worth unfriended and unknown,
Yet to my British heart more dear
Than all the torrid zone.

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
Of early scenes beloved by me,
While happy in my father's bower,
Thou shalt the blithe memorial be;
The fairy sports of infancy,
Youth's golden age, and manhood's prime,
Home, country, kindred, friends,—with thee
I find in this far clime.

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
I'll rear thee with a trembling hand:
Oh, for the April sun and shower,
The sweet May dews, of that fair land,
Where Daisies, thick as star-light, stand
In every walk!—that here may shoot
Thy scions, and thy buds expand,
A hundred from one root.

Thrice welcome, little English flower!
To me the pledge of hope unseen:
When sorrow would my soul o'erpower,
For joys that were, or might have been,
I'll call to mind, how, fresh and green,
I saw thee waking from the dust;
Then turn to heaven with brow serene,
And place in God my trust.

1822.

THE DROUGHT.

WRITTEN IN THE SUMMER OF 1826.

[_]

Hosea, ii. 21, 22.

What strange, what fearful thing hath come to pass?
The ground is iron, and the heavens are brass;
Man on the withering harvests casts his eye,
“Give me your fruits in season, or I die;”
The timely Fruits implore their parent Earth,
“Where is thy strength to bring us forth to birth?”
The Earth, all prostrate, to the Clouds complains,
“Send to my heart your fertilising rains;”
The Clouds invoke the Heavens,—“Collect, dispense
Through us your quickening, healing influence;”

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The Heavens to Him that made them raise their moan,
“Command thy blessing, and it shall be done:”
The Lord is in his temple:—hush'd and still,
The suppliant Universe awaits his will.

He speaks; and to the Clouds the Heavens dispense,
With lightning-speed, their genial influence;
The gathering, breaking Clouds pour down their rains,
Earth drinks the bliss through all her eager veins;
From teeming furrows start the Fruits to birth,
And shake their treasures on the lap of Earth;
Man sees the harvests grow beneath his eye,
Turns, and looks up with rapture to the sky;
All that have breath and being now rejoice;
All Nature's voices blend in one great voice,
“Glory to God, who thus Himself makes known!”
—When shall all tongues confess Him God alone?

Lord! as the rain comes down from Heaven,—the rain
Which waters Earth, nor thence returns in vain.
But makes the tree to bud, the grass to spring,
And feeds and gladdens every living thing,—
So may thy word, upon a world destroy'd,
Come down in blessing, and return not void;
So may it come in universal showers,
And fill Earth's dreariest wilderness with flowers,
—With flowers of promise fill the world, within
Man's heart, laid waste and desolate by sin;
Where thorns and thistles curse the infested ground,
Let the rich fruits of righteousness abound;
And trees of life, for ever fresh and green,
Flourish where trees of death alone have been;
Let Truth look down from heaven, Hope soar above,
Justice and Mercy kiss, Faith work by Love;
Nations new-born their fathers' idols spurn;
The Ransom'd of the Lord with songs return;
Heralds the year of Jubilee proclaim;
Bow every knee at the Redeemer's name;
O'er lands, with darkness, thraldom, guilt, o'erspread,
In light, joy, freedom, be the Spirit shed;
Speak Thou the word: to Satan's power say “Cease,”
But to a world of pardon'd sinners, “Peace.”
—Thus in thy grace, Lord God, Thyself make known;
Then shall all tongues confess Thee God alone.

A SEA PIECE.

IN THREE SONNETS.

[_]

Scene.—Bridlington Quay, 1824.

I

At nightfall, walking on the cliff-crown'd shore,
Where sea and sky were in each other lost;
Dark ships were scudding through the wild uproar
Whose wrecks ere morn must strew the dreary coast;
I mark'd one well-moor'd vessel tempest-toss'd,
Sails reef'd, helm lash'd, a dreadful siege she bore,
Her deck by billow after billow cross'd,
While every moment she might be no more:
Yet firmly anchor'd on the nether sand,
Like a chain'd Lion ramping at his foes,
Forward and rearward still she plunged and rose,
Till broke her cable;—then she fled to land,
With all the waves in chase; throes following throes;
She 'scaped,—she struck,—she stood upon the strand.

II

The morn was beautiful, the storm gone by;
Three days had pass'd; I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky;
On shore that lonely vessel caught mine eye,
Her bow was seaward, all equipt her train,
Yet to the sun she spread her wings in vain,
Like a caged Eagle, impotent to fly;
There fix'd as if for ever to abide;
Far down the beach had roll'd the low neap-tide,
Whose mingling murmur faintly lull'd the ear:
“Is this,” methought, “is this the doom of pride,
Check'd in the onset of thy brave career,
Ingloriously to rot by piecemeal here?”

III

Spring-tides return'd, and Fortune smiled; the bay
Received the rushing ocean to its breast;
While waves on waves innumerably prest,
Seem'd, with the prancing of their proud array,
Sea-horses, flash'd with foam, and snorting spray;
Their power and thunder broke that vessel's rest;
Slowly, with new expanding life possest,
To her own element she glid away;
Buoyant and bounding like the polar Whale,
That takes his pastime; every joyful sail
Was to the freedom of the wind unfurl'd,
While right and left the parted surges curl'd:
—Go, gallant Bark! with such a tide and gale,
I'll pledge thee to a voyage round the world.

316

ROBERT BURNS.

What bird, in beauty, flight, or song,
Can with the Bard compare,
Who sang as sweet, and soar'd as strong,
As ever child of air?

His plume, his note, his form, could Burns
For whim or pleasure change;
He was not one, but all by turns,
With transmigration strange.

The Blackbird, oracle of spring,
When flow'd his moral lay;
The Swallow wheeling on the wing,
Capriciously at play:

The Humming-bird, from bloom to bloom,
Inhaling heavenly balm;
The Raven, in the tempest's gloom;
The Halcyon, in the calm:

In “auld Kirk Alloway,” the Owl,
At witching time of night;
By “bonnie Doon,” the earliest Fowl
That caroll'd to the light.

He was the Wren amidst the grove,
When in his homely vein;
At Bannockburn the Bird of Jove,
With thunder in his train:

The Woodlark, in his mournful hours;
The Goldfinch, in his mirth;
The Thrush, a spendthrift of his powers,
Enrapturing heaven and earth;

The Swan, in majesty and grace,
Contemplative and still;
But roused,—no Falcon, in the chase,
Could like his satire kill.

The Linnet in simplicity,
In tenderness the Dove;
But more than all beside was he
The Nightingale in love.

Oh! had he never stoop'd to shame,
Nor lent a charm to vice,
How had Devotion loved to name
That Bird of Paradise!

Peace to the dead!—In Scotia's choir
Of Minstrels great and small,
He sprang from his spontaneous fire,
The Phœnix of them all.

1820.

A THEME FOR A POET.

[_]

1814. Written in contemplation of a poem on the evangelisation of one of the most degraded tribes of heathens. This the Author some years afterwards attempted, and partly executed, in “Greenland,” in five cantos of which the following were the opening lines, but withdrawn, as inapplicable to the unfinished work, when it was published:—

Give me a theme to grace an Angel's tongue,
A theme to which a lyre was never strung;
Barbarian hordes, by Satan's craft enthrall'd,
From chains to freedom, guilt to glory call'd;
The deeds of men unfriended and unknown,
Sent forth by Him who loves and saves his own,
With faithful toil a barren land to bless,
And feed his flocks amid the wilderness.

These lines were afterwards adopted as a motto to the second volume of the last edition of Crantz's Greenland, including the history of the Missions of the Moravian Brethren there, which was begun in the year 1733. (See also the notes to “Greenland,” p. 72.)

The arrow that shall lay me low
Was shot from Death's unerring bow,
The moment of my breath;
And every footstep I proceed,
It tracks me with increasing speed;
I turn,—it meets me,—Death
Has given such impulse to that dart,
It points for ever at my heart.

And soon of me it must be said,
That I have lived, that I am dead;
Of all I leave behind,
A few may weep a little while,

317

Then bless my memory with a smile:
What monument of mind
Shall I bequeath to deathless Fame,
That after-times may love my name?

Let Southey sing of war's alarms,
The pride of battle, din of arms,
The glory and the guilt,—
Of nations barb'rously enslaved,
Of realms by patriot valour saved,
Of blood insanely spilt,
And millions sacrificed to fate,
To make one little mortal great.

Let Scott, in wilder strains, delight
To chant the Lady and the Knight,
The tournament, the chase,
The wizard's deed without a name,
Perils by ambush, flood, and flame:
Or picturesquely trace
The hills that form a world on high,
The lake that seems a downward sky.

Let Byron, with untrembling hand,
Impetuous foot, and fiery brand
Lit at the flames of hell,
Go down and search the human heart,
Till fiends from every corner start,
Their crimes and plagues to tell;
Then let him fling the torch away,
And sun his soul in heaven's pure day.

Let Wordsworth weave, in mystic rhyme,
Feelings ineffably sublime,
And sympathies unknown;
Yet so our yielding breasts enthral,
His Genius shall possess us all,
His thoughts become our own,
And, strangely pleased, we start to find
Such hidden treasures in our mind.

Let Campbell's sweeter numbers flow
Through every change of joy and woe;
Hope's morning dreams display,
The Pennsylvanian cottage wild,
The frenzy of O'Connor's child,
Or Linden's dreadful day;
And still in each new form appear
To every Muse and Grace more dear.

Transcendent Masters of the lyre!
Not to your honours I aspire;
Humbler, yet higher, views
Have touch'd my spirit into flame:
The pomp of fiction I disclaim;
Fair Truth! be thou my muse;
Reveal in splendour deeds obscure,
Abase the proud, exalt the poor.

I sing the men who left their home,
Amidst barbarian hordes to roam,
Who land and ocean cross'd,
Led by a load-star, mark'd on high
By Faith's unseen, all-seeing eye,—
To seek and save the lost;
Where'er the curse on Adam spread,
To call his offspring from the dead.

Strong in the great Redeemer's name,
They bore the Cross, despised the shame;
And, like their Master here,
Wrestled with danger, pain, distress,
Hunger, and cold, and nakedness,
And every form of fear;
To feel his love their only joy,
To tell that love their sole employ.

O Thou, who wast in Bethlehem born,
The Man of sorrows and of scorn,
Jesus, the sinners' Friend!
—O Thou, enthroned in filial right,
Above all creature-power and might;
Whose kingdom shall extend,
Till earth, like heaven, thy name shall fill,
And men, like angels, do thy will:—

Thou, whom I love, but cannot see,
My Lord, my God! look down on me;
My low affections raise;
The spirit of liberty impart,
Enlarge my soul, inflame my heart,
And, while I spread thy praise,
Shine on my path, in mercy shine,
Prosper my work, and make it thine!

318

NIGHT.

Night is the time for rest;—
How sweet, when labours close,
To gather round an aching breast
The curtain of repose,
Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head
Down on our own delightful bed!

Night is the time for dreams;—
The gay romance of life,
When truth that is, and truth that seems,
Mix in fantastic strife;
Ah! visions less beguiling far
Than waking dreams by daylight are!

Night is the time for toil;—
To plough the classic field,
Intent to find the buried spoil
Its wealthy furrows yield;
Till all is ours that sages taught,
That poets sang, and heroes wrought.

Night is the time to weep;—
To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory, where sleep
The joys of other years;
Hopes, that were angels at their birth,
But died when young like things of earth.

Night is the time to watch;—
O'er ocean's dark expanse,
To hail the Pleiades, or catch
The full moon's earliest glance,
That brings into the home-sick mind
All we have loved and left behind.

Night is the time for care;—
Brooding on hours misspent,
To see the spectre of Despair
Come to our lonely tent;
Like Brutus, 'midst his slumbering host,
Summon'd to die by Cæsar's ghost.

Night is the time to think;—
When, from the eye, the soul
Takes flight, and, on the utmost brink
Of yonder starry pole,
Discerns beyond the abyss of night
The dawn of uncreated light.

Night is the time to pray;—
Our Saviour oft withdrew
To desert mountains far away;
So will his followers do,
Steal from the throng to haunts untrod,
And commune there alone with God.

Night is the time for Death;—
When all around is peace,
Calmly to yield the weary breath,
From sin and suffering cease,
Think of heaven's bliss, and give the sign
To parting friends;—such death be mine!

Harrowgate, Sept. 1821.

MEET AGAIN!

Joyful words,—we meet again!
Love's own language, comfort darting
Through the souls of friends at parting:
Life in death,—we meet again!

While we walk this vale of tears,
Compass'd round with care and sorrow,
Gloom to-day, and storm to-morrow,
“Meet again!” our bosom cheers.

Far in exile when we roam,
O'er our lost endearments weeping,
Lonely, silent vigils keeping,
“Meet again!”transports us home.

When this weary world is past,
Happy they whose spirits soaring,
Vast eternity exploring,
“Meet again” in heaven at last.

319

VIA CRUCIS, VIA LUCIS.

Night turns to day:—
When sullen darkness lowers,
And heaven and earth are hid from sight,
Cheer up, cheer up;
Ere long the opening flowers,
With dewy eyes, shall shine in light.

Storms die in calms:—
When over land and ocean
Roll the loud chariots of the wind,
Cheer up, cheer up;
The voice of wild commotion
Proclaims tranquillity behind.

Winter wakes spring:—
When icy blasts are blowing
O'er frozen lakes, through naked trees,
Cheer up, cheer up;
All beautiful and glowing,
May floats in fragrance on the breeze.

War ends in peace:—
Though dread artillery rattle,
And ghastly corses load the ground,
Cheer up, cheer up;
Where groan'd the field of battle,
The song, the dance, the feast go round.

Toil brings repose:—
With noon-tide fervours beating,
When droop thy temples o'er thy breast,
Cheer up, cheer up;
Grey twilight, cool and fleeting,
Wafts on its wing the hour of rest.

Death springs to life:—
Though brief and sad thy story,
Thy years all spent in care and gloom,
Look up, look up;
Eternity and glory
Dawn through the portals of the tomb.

THE PILGRIM.

How blest the Pilgrim, who in trouble
Can lean upon a bosom friend;
Strength, courage, hope with him redouble,
When foes assail, or griefs impend!
Care flees before his footsteps, straying,
At daybreak, o'er the purple heath;
He plucks the wild flowers round him playing,
And binds their beauty in a wreath.

More dear to him the fields and mountains,
When with his friend abroad he roves,
Rests in the shade near sunny fountains,
Or talks by moonlight through the groves:
For him the vine expands its clusters,
Spring wakes for him her woodland quire;
Yea, when the storm of winter blusters,
'Tis summer round his evening fire.

In good old age serenely dying,
When all he loved forsakes his view,
Sweet is affection's voice replying,
“I follow soon,” to his “Adieu!”
Even then, though earthly ties are riven,
The spirit's union will not end;
—Happy the man whom Heaven hath given,
In life and death, a faithful friend.

GERMAN WAR-SONG.

Heaven speed the righteous sword,
And freedom be the word!
Come, brethren, hand in hand,
Fight for your father-land!

Germania from afar
Invokes her sons to war;
Awake! put forth your powers,
And victory must be ours.

On to the combat, on!
Go where your sires have gone;
Their might unspent remains,
Their pulse is in our veins.

320

On to the battle, on!
Rest will be sweet anon;
The slave may yield, may fly,—
We conquer, or we die!

O Liberty! thy form
Shines through the battle-storm;
Away with fear, away!
Let justice win the day.

REMINISCENCES.

Where are ye with whom in life I started,
Dear companions of my golden days?
Ye are dead, estranged from me, or parted,
—Flown, like morning clouds, a thousand ways.

Where art thou, in youth my friend and brother,
Yea, in soul my friend and brother still?
Heaven received thee, and on earth none other
Can the void in my lorn bosom fill.

Where is she, whose looks were love and gladness?
—Love and gladness I no longer see!
She is gone; and, since that hour of sadness,
Nature seems her sepulchre to me.

Where am I?—life's current faintly flowing
Brings the welcome warning of release;
Struck with death, ah! whither am I going?
All is well,—my spirit parts in peace.

THE AGES OF MAN.

Youth, fond youth! to thee, in life's gay morning,
New and wonderful are heaven and earth!
Health the hills, content the fields adorning,
Nature rings with melody and mirth;
Love invisible, beneath, above,
Conquers all things; all things yield to love.

Time, swift time, from years their motion stealing,
Unperceived hath sober manhood brought;
Truth, her pure and humble forms revealing,
Peoples fancy's fairy-land with thought;
Then the heart, no longer prone to roam,
Loves, loves best, the quiet bliss of home.

Age, old age, in sickness, pain, and sorrow,
Creeps with lengthening shadow o'er the scene;
Life was yesterday, 'tis death to-morrow,
And to-day the agony between:
Then how longs the weary soul for thee,
Bright and beautiful eternity!

ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTH.

Higher, higher will we climb
Up the mount of Glory,
That our names may live through time
In our country's story;
Happy, when her welfare calls,
He who conquers, he who falls.

Deeper, deeper let us toil
In the mines of knowledge;
Nature's wealth and learning's spoil
Win from school and college;
Delve we there for richer gems
Than the stars of diadems.

Onward, onward will we press
Through the path of duty;
Virtue is true happiness,
Excellence true beauty;
Minds are of supernal birth,
Let us make a heaven of earth.

Close and closer then we knit
Hearts and hands together,
Where our fire-side comforts sit
In the wildest weather:
Oh! they wander wide, who roam,
For the joys of life, from home.

Nearer, dearer bands of love
Draw our souls in union,
To our Father's house above,
To the saints' communion;
Thither every hope ascend,
There may all our labours end.

321

A HERMITAGE.

Whose is this humble dwelling-place,
The flat turf-roof with flowers o'ergrown?
Ah! here the tenant's name I trace,
Moss-cover'd, on the threshold stone.

Well, he has peace within and rest,
Though nought of all the world beside;
Yet, stranger, deem not him unblest,
Who knows not avarice, lust, or pride.

Nothing he asks, nothing he cares
For all that tempts or troubles round;
He craves no feast, no finery wears,
Nor once o'ersteps his narrow bound.

No need of light, though all be gloom,
To cheer his eye,—that eye is blind;
No need of fire in this small room,
He recks not tempest, rain, or wind.

No gay companion here; no wife
To gladden home with true-love smiles;
No children,—from the woes of life
To win him with their artless wiles.

Nor joy, nor sorrow, enter here,
Nor throbbing heart, nor aching limb:
No sun, no moon, no stars appear,
And man and brute are nought to him.

This dwelling is a hermit's cave,
With space alone for one poor bed;
This dwelling is a mortal's grave,
Its sole inhabitant is dead.

1822.

THE FALLING LEAF.

Were I a trembling leaf,
On yonder stately tree,
After a season gay and brief,
Condemn'd to fade and flee:

I should be loth to fall
Beside the common way,
Weltering in mire, and spurn'd by all,
Till trodden down to clay.

Nor would I choose to die
All on a bed of grass,
Where thousands of my kindred lie,
And idly rot in mass.

Nor would I like to spread
My thin and wither'd face
In hortus siccus, pale and dead,
A mummy of my race.

No,—on the wings of air
Might I be left to fly,
I know not and I heed not where,
A waif of earth and sky!

Or flung upon the stream,
Curl'd like a fairy boat,
As through the changes of a dream,
To the world's end to float!

Who that hath ever been,
Could bear to be no more?
Yet who would tread again the scene
He trod through life before?

On, with intense desire,
Man's spirit will move on;
It seems to die, yet, like heaven's fire,
It is not quench'd, but gone.

Matlock, 1822.

ON PLANTING A TULIP-ROOT.

Here lies a bulb, the child of earth,
Buried alive beneath the clod,
Ere long to spring, by second birth,
A new and nobler work of God.

'Tis said that microscopic power
Might through its swaddling folds descry
The infant-image of the flower,
Too exquisite to meet the eye.

This, vernal suns and rains will swell,
Till from its dark abode it peep,—
Like Venus rising from her shell,
Amidst the spring-tide of the deep.

322

Two shapely leaves will first unfold,
Then, on a smooth elastic stem,
The verdant bud shall turn to gold,
And open in a diadem.

Not one of Flora's brilliant race
A form more perfect can display;
Art could not feign more simple grace,
Nor Nature take a line away.

Yet, rich as morn of many a hue,
When flushing clouds through darkness strike,
The tulip's petals shine in dew,
All beautiful—but none alike.

Kings, on their bridal, might unrobe
To lay their glories at its foot;
And queens their sceptre, crown, and globe,
Exchange for blossom, stalk, and root.

Here could I stand and moralise;
Lady, I leave that part to thee:
Be thy next birth in Paradise,
Thy life to come eternity!

1824.

INSCRIPTION UNDER THE PICTURE OF AN AGED NEGRO-WOMAN.

Art thou a woman?—so am I; and all
That woman can be, I have been, or am;
A daughter, sister, consort, mother, widow.
Whiche'er of these thou art, O be the friend
Of one who is what thou canst never be!
Look on thyself, thy kindred, home, and country,
Then fall upon thy knees, and cry “Thank God,
An English woman cannot be a SLAVE!”

Art thou a man?—Oh! I have known, have loved,
And lost, all that to woman man can be;
A father, brother, husband, son, who shared
My bliss in freedom, and my woe in bondage.
—A childless widow now, a friendless slave,
What shall I ask of thee, since I have nought
To lose but life's sad burthen; nought to gain
But heaven's repose?—these are beyond thy power;
Me thou canst neither wrong nor help;—what then?
Go to the bosom of thy family,
Gather thy little children round thy knees,
Gaze on their innocence; their clear, full eyes,
All fix'd on thine; and in their mother, mark
The loveliest look that woman's face can wear,
Her look of love, beholding them and thee:
Then, at the altar of your household joys,
Vow one by one, vow altogether, vow
With heart and voice, eternal enmity
Against oppression by your brethren's hands:
Till man nor woman under Britain's laws,
Nor son nor daughter born within her empire,
Shall buy, or sell, or hold, or be, a slave.

Scarborough, Dec. 1826.

THOUGHTS AND IMAGES.

“Come like shadows, so depart.”
—Macbeth.

The Diamond, in its native bed,
Hid like a buried star may lie,
Where foot of man must never tread,
Seen only by its Maker's eye:
And though imbued with beams to grace
His fairest work in woman's face,
Darkling, its fire may fill the void,
Where fix'd at first in solid night,
Nor, till the world shall be destroy'd,
Sparkle one moment into light.

The Plant, upspringing from the seed,
Expands into a perfect flower;
The virgin-daughter of the mead,
Woo'd by the sun, the wind, the shower:
In loveliness beyond compare,
It toils not, spins not, knows no care;
Train'd by the secret hand, that brings
All beauty out of waste and rude,
It blooms its season, dies, and flings
Its germs abroad in solitude.

Almighty skill, in ocean's caves,
Lends the light Nautilus a form
To tilt along the Atlantic waves,
Fearless of rock, or shoal, or storm;
But, should a breath of danger sound,
With sails quick furl'd it dives profound,

323

And far beneath the tempest's path,
In coral grots, defies the foe,
That never brake, in heaviest wrath,
The sabbath of the deep below.

Up from his dream, on twinkling wings,
The Sky-lark soars amid the dawn;
Yet, while in Paradise he sings,
Looks down upon the quiet lawn,
Where flutters, in his little nest,
More love than music e'er express'd;
Then, though the Nightingale may thrill
The soul with keener ecstasy,
The merry bird of morn can fill
All Nature's bosom with his glee.

The Elephant, embower'd in woods,
Coeval with their trees might seem,
As though he drank from Indian floods
Life in a renovating stream:
Ages o'er him have come and fled;
Midst generations of the dead,
His bulk survives to feed and range,
Where ranged and fed of old his sires;
Nor knows advancement, lapse, or change,
Beyond their walks, till he expires.

Gem, flower, and fish, the bird, the brute,
Of every kind occult or known
(Each exquisitely form'd to suit
Its humble lot, and that alone),
Through ocean, earth, and air fulfil,
Unconsciously, their Maker's will,
Who gave, without their toil or thought,
Strength, beauty, instinct, courage, speed;
While through the whole his pleasure wrought
Whate'er his wisdom had decreed.

But Man, the master-piece of God,
Man, in his Maker's image framed,—
Though kindred to the valley's clod,
Lord of this low creation named,—
In naked helplessness appears,
Child of a thousand griefs and fears:
To labour, pain, and trouble born,
Weapon, nor wing, nor sleight hath he;
Yet, like the sun, he brings his morn,
And is a king from infancy.

For, him no destiny hath bound
To do what others did before,
Pace the same dull perennial round,
And be a man, and be no more:
A man?—a self-will'd piece of earth,
Just as the lion is, by birth;
To hunt his prey, to wake, to sleep,
His father's joys and sorrows share,
His niche in Nature's temple keep,
And leave his likeness in his heir!—

No: infinite the shades between
The motley millions of our race;
No two, the changing moon hath seen
Alike in purpose, or in face:
Yet all aspire beyond their fate;
The least, the meanest, would be great;
The mighty future fills the mind
That pants for more than earth can give:
Man, to this narrow sphere confined,
Dies when he but begins to live.

Oh! if there be no world on high
To yield his powers unfetter'd scope;
If man be only born to die,
Whence this inheritance of hope?
Wherefore to him alone were lent
Riches that never can be spent?
Enough, not more, to all the rest,
For life and happiness, was given;
To Man, mysteriously unblest,
Too much for any state but heaven.

It is not thus;—it cannot be,
That one so gloriously endow'd
With views that reach eternity,
Should shine and vanish like a cloud:
Is there a God?—all Nature shows
There is,—and yet no mortal knows:
The mind that could this truth conceive,
Which brute sensation never taught,
No longer to the dust would cleave,
But grow immortal with the thought.

1819.

A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.

Emblem of eternity,
Unbeginning, endless sea!
Let me launch my soul on thee.

324

Sail, nor keel, nor helm, nor oar,
Need I, ask I, to explore
Thine expanse from shore to shore.

By a single glance of thought,
Thy whole realm's before me brought,
Like the universe, from nought.

All thine aspects now I view,
Ever old, yet ever new,
—Time nor tide thy power subdue.

All thy voices now I hear;
Sounds of gladness, grandeur, fear,
Meet and mingle in mine ear.

All thy wonders are reveal'd,
Treasures hidden in thy field,
From the birth of nature seal'd.

But thy depths I search not now,
Nor thy liquid surface plow
With a billow-breaking prow.

Eager fancy, unconfined,
In a voyage of the mind,
Sweeps along thee like the wind.

Here a breeze, I skim thy plain;
There a tempest, pour amain
Thunder, lightning, hail, and rain.

Where the surges never roll
Round the undiscover'd pole,
Thence set out, my venturous soul!

See o'er Greenland, cold and wild,
Rocks of ice eternal piled,
—Yet the mother loves her child,—

And the wildernesses drear
To the native's heart are dear;
All love's charities dwell here.

Next on lonely Labrador,
Let me hear the snow-storms roar,
Blinding, burying all before.

Yet even here, in glens and coves,
Man the heir of all things roves,
Feasts and fights, and laughs and loves.

But a brighter vision breaks
O'er Canadian woods and lakes;
—These my spirit soon forsakes.

Land of exiled liberty,
Where our fathers once were free,
Brave New England! hail to thee!

Pennsylvania, while thy flood
Waters fields unbought with blood,
Stand for peace, as thou hast stood.

The West Indies I behold,
Like the' Hesperides of old,
—Trees of life with fruits of gold.

No,—a curse is on their soil;
Bonds and scourges, tears and toil,
Man degrade, and earth despoil.

Horror-struck, I turn away,
Coasting down the Mexique bay,
—Slavery there hath had her day.

Hark! eight hundred thousand tongues
Startle midnight with strange songs;
—England ends her negroes' wrongs.

Loud the voice of freedom spoke,
Every accent split a yoke,
Every word a fetter broke.

South America expands
Forest-mountains, river-lands,
And a nobler race demands.

And a nobler race arise,
Stretch their limbs, unclose their eyes,
Claim the earth, and seek the skies.

Gliding through Magellan's Straits,
Where two oceans ope their gates,
What a glorious scene awaits!

The immense Pacific smiles,
Round ten thousand little isles,
—Haunts of violence and wiles.

But the powers of darkness yield,
For the Cross is in the field,
And the light of life reveal'd.

325

Rays from rock to rock it darts,
Conquers adamantine hearts,
And immortal bliss imparts.

North and west, receding far
From the evening's downward star,
Now I mount Aurora's car:—

Pale Siberia's deserts shun,
From Kamschatka's storm-cliffs run,
South and east, to meet the sun.

Jealous China, dire Japan,
With bewilder'd eyes I scan,
—They are but dead seas of man,—

Ages in succession find
Forms that change not, stagnant mind,
And they leave the same behind.

Lo! the eastern Cyclades,
Phœnix-nests and sky-blue seas,
—But I tarry not with these.

Pass we drear New Holland's shoals,
Where no ample river rolls,
—World of unawaken'd souls!

Bring them forth;—'tis Heaven's decree.
Man, assert thy liberty;
Let not brutes look down on thee.

Either India next is seen,
With the Ganges stretch'd between;
—Ah! what horrors here have been.

War, disguised as commerce, came;
Britain, carrying sword and flame,
Won an empire,—lost her name.

But that name shall be restored,
Law and justice wield the sword,
And her God be here adored.

By the Gulf of Persia sail,
Where the true-love nightingale
Woos the rose in every vale.

Though Arabia charge the breeze
With the incense of her trees,
On I press through southern seas.

Cape of storms, thy spectre fled,
See, the angel Hope, instead,
Lights from heaven upon thine head;—

And where Table-mountain stands,
Barbarous hordes from desert sands,
Bless the sight with lifted hands.

St. Helena's dungeon-keep
Scowls defiance o'er the deep;
There a warrior's relics sleep.

Who he was, and how he fell,
Europe, Asia, Afric tell:
—On that theme all time shall dwell.

But henceforth, till nature dies,
These three simple words comprise
All the future: “Here he lies.”

Mammon's plague-ships throng the waves:
—O 'twere mercy to the slaves,
Were the maws of sharks their graves!

Not for all the gems and gold,
Which thy streams and mountains hold,
Or for which thy sons are sold,—

Land of negroes!—would I dare
In this felon-trade to share,
Or to brand its guilt forbear.

Hercules! thy pillars stand,
Sentinels of sea and land!
Cloud-capt Atlas towers at hand.

Where, when Cato's word was fate,
Fell the Carthaginian state,
And where exiled Marius sate,—

Mark the dens of caitiff Moors;
Ha! the pirates seize their oars,
—Haste we from the' accursed shores.

Egypt's hieroglyphic realm
Other floods than Nile's o'erwhelm,
—Slaves turn'd despots hold the helm.

Judah's cities are forlorn,
Lebanon and Carmel shorn,
Zion trampled down with scorn.

326

Greece, thine ancient lamp is spent;
Thou art thine own monument;
But the sepulchre is rent,—

And a wind is on the wing,
At whose breath new heroes spring,
Sages teach, and poets sing.

Italy, thy beauties shroud
In a gorgeous evening cloud;
Thy refulgent head is bow'd.

Rome, in ruins lovely still,
On her Capitolian hill,
Bids thee, mourner, weep thy fill.

Yet where Roman genius reigns,
Roman blood must warm the veins;
—Look well, tyrants, to your chains!

Splendid realm of old romance,
Spain, thy tower-crown'd crest advance,
Grasp the shield, and couch the lance.

At the fire-flash of thine eye,
Giant bigotry would fly,
At thy voice oppression die.

Lusitania, from the dust,
Shake thy locks,—thy cause is just;
Strike for freedom, strike and trust.

France, I hurry from thy shore,
Thou art not the France of yore,
Thou art new-born France no more.

Great thou wast; and who like thee?
Then mad-drunk with liberty;
What now?—neither great nor free.

Sweep by Holland like the blast,
One quick glance on Denmark cast,
Sweden, Russia,—all are past.

Elbe nor Weser tempt my stay;
Germany, beware the day
When thy schools again bear sway!

Now to thee, to thee, I fly,
Fairest isle beneath the sky,
To my heart, as in mine eye.

I have seen them, one by one,
Every shore beneath the sun,
And my voyage now is done.

While I bid them all be blest,
Britain is my home, my rest;
—Mine own land! I love thee best.

Scarborough, Dec. 1826.

BIRDS.

THE SWALLOW.
Swallow, why homeward turn'd thy joyful wing?
—In a far land I heard the voice of Spring;
I found myself that moment on the way;
My wings, my wings, they had not power to stay.

SKYLARKS.
What hand lets fly the skylark from his rest?
—That which detains his mate upon the nest;
Love sends him soaring to the fields above;
She broods below, all bound with cords of love.

THE CUCKOO.
Why art thou always welcome, lonely bird?
—The heart grows young again when I am heard;
Nor in my double note the magic lies,
But in the fields, the woods, the streams, and skies.

THE RED-BREAST.
Familiar warbler, wherefore art thou come?
—To sing to thee, when all beside are dumb;
Pray let thy little children drop a crumb.

THE SPARROW.
Sparrow, the gun is levell'd, quit that wall.
—Without the will of Heaven I cannot fall.

THE RING-DOVE.
Art thou the bird that saw the waters cease?
—Yes, and brought home the olive-leaf of peace;
Henceforth I haunt the woods of thickest green,
Pleased to be often heard, but seldom seen.

THE NIGHTINGALE.
Minstrel, what makes thy song so sad, so sweet?
—Love, love; there, agony and rapture meet:
O 'tis the dream of happiness, to feign
Sorrow in joy, and wring delight from pain!

327

THE WATER-WAGTAIL.
What art thou made of,—air, or light, or dew?
—I have no time to tell you, if I knew;
My tail,—ask that,—perhaps may solve the matter;
I've miss'd three flies already by this chatter.

THE WREN.
Wren, canst thou squeeze into a hole so small?
—Ay, with nine nestlings too, and room for all;
Go, compass sea and land in search of bliss,
Then tell me if you find a happier home than this.

THE THRUSH.
Thrush, thrush, have mercy on thy little bill.
—“I play to please myself, albeit ill;”
And yet, but how it comes I cannot tell,
My singing pleases all the world as well.

THE BLACKBIRD.
Well done!—they're noble notes, distinct and strong;
Yet more variety might mend the song.
—Is there another bird that chants like me?
My pipe gives all the grove variety.

THE BULLFINCH.
Bully, what fairy warbles in thy throat?
—Oh! for the freedom of my own wild note!
Art has enthrall'd my voice; I strive in vain
To break the “linked sweetness” of my chain;
Love, joy, rage, grief, ring one melodious strain.

THE GOLDFINCH.
Live with me, love me, pretty goldfinch, do!
—Ay, pretty maid, and be a slave to you;
Wear chains, fire squibs, draw water,—nay, not I,
While I've a bill to peck, or wing to fly.

THE STONE-CHAT.
Why art thou ever flitting to and fro?
—Plunge through these whins, their thorns will let thee know.
There are five secrets brooding here in night,
Which my good mate will duly bring to light;
Meanwhile she sees the ants around her throng,
And hears the grasshopper chirp all day long.

THE GREY LINNET.
Linnet, canst thou not change that humble coat?
Linnet, canst thou not mellow that sharp note?
—If rude my song, and mean my garb appear,
Have you, sir, eyes to see, or ears to hear?

THE RED LINNET.
Sweet is thy warble, beautiful thy plume!
—Catch me, and cage me, then behold my doom;
My throat will fail, my colour wane away,
And the red linnet soon become a grey.

THE CHAFFINCH.

Stand still a moment!

—Spare your idle words,
I'm the perpetual mobile of birds;
My days are running, rippling, twittering streams,
When fast asleep I'm all afloat in dreams.

THE CANARY.
Dost thou not languish for thy father-land,
Madeira's fragrant woods and billowy strand?
—My cage is father-land enough for me;
Your parlour all the world,—heaven, earth, and sea.

THE TOMTIT.
Least, nimblest, merriest bird of Albion's isle,
I cannot look on thee without a smile.
—I envy thee the sight, for all my glee
Could never yet extort a smile from me;
Think what a tiresome thing my life must be.

THE SWIFT.
Why ever on the wing, or perch'd elate?
—Because I fell not from my first estate;
This is my charter for the boundless skies,
“Stoop not to earth, on pain no more to rise.”

THE KING-FISHER.
Why dost thou hide thy beauty from the sun?
—The eye of man, but not of Heaven, I shun;
Beneath the mossy bank, with alders crown'd,
I build and brood where running waters sound;
There, there the halcyon peace may still be found.

THE WOODLARK.
Thy notes are silenced, and thy plumage mew'd;
Say, drooping minstrel, both shall be renew'd.
—Voice will return,—I cannot choose but sing;
Yet liberty alone can plume my wing;
Oh! give me that!—I will not, cannot fly
Within a cage less ample than the sky;
Then shalt thou hear, as if an angel sung,
Unseen in air, heaven's music from my tongue:

328

Oh! give me that!—I cannot rest at ease
On meaner perches than the forest trees;
There, in thy walk, while evening shadows roll,
My song shall melt into thine inmost soul;
But, till thou let thy captive bird depart,
The sweetness of my strain shall wring thy heart.

THE COCK.
Who taught thee, chanticleer, to count the clock?
—Nay, who taught man that lesson but the cock?
Long before wheels and bells had learn'd to chime,
I told the steps unseen, unheard, of time.

THE JACK-DAW.
Canst thou remember that unlucky day,
When all thy peacock-plumes were pluck'd away?
—Remember it?—believe me, that I can,
With right good cause, for I was then a man!
And for my folly, by a wise old law,
Stript, whipt, tarr'd, feather'd, turn'd into a daw:
—Pray, how d'ye like my answer? Caw, caw, caw!

THE BAT.
What shall I call thee,—bird, or beast, or neither?
—Just what you will; I'm rather both than either;
Much like the season when I whirl my flight,
The dusk of evening,—neither day nor night.

THE OWL.

Blue-eyed, strange-voiced, sharp-beak'd, ill-omen'd fowl,
What art thou?

—What I ought to be, an owl;
But if I'm such a scarecrow in your eye,
You're a much greater fright in mine;—good bye!

ROOKS.
What means that riot in your citadel?
Be honest, peaceable, like brethren dwell.
—How, while we live so near to man, can life
Be any thing but knavery, noise, and strife?

THE JAY.
Thou hast a crested poll, a scutcheon'd wing,
Fit for a herald of the eagle king,
But such a voice! I would that thou couldst sing!
—My bill has tougher work,—to scream for fright,
And then, when screaming will not do, to bite.

THE PEACOCK.
Peacock! of idle beauty why so vain?
—And art thou humble, who hast no proud train?
It is not vanity, but Nature's part,
To show, by me, the cunning of her art.

THE SWAN.
Sing me, fair swan, that song which poets dream.
—Stand thou an hundred years beside this stream,
Then may'st thou hear, perchance, my latest breath
“Create a soul beneath the ribs of death.”

THE PHEASANT.
Pheasant, forsake the country, come to town;
I'll warrant thee a place beneath the crown.
—No; not to roost upon the throne, would I
Renounce the woods, the mountains, and the sky.

THE RAVEN.
Thin is thy plumage, death is in thy croak;
Raven, come down from that majestic oak.
—When I was hatch'd, my father set this tree,
An acorn; and its fall I hope to see,
A century after thou hast ceased to be.

THE PARROT.
Camest thou from India, popinjay,—and why?
—To make thy children open ear and eye,
Gaze on my feathers, wonder at my talk,
And think 'tis almost time for Poll to walk.

THE MAGPIE.
Magpie, thou too hast learn'd by rote to speak
Words without meaning, through thy uncouth beak.
—Words have I learn'd? and without meaning too?
No wonder, sir, for I was taught by you.

THE CORN-CRAKE.
Art thou a sound, and nothing but a sound?
—Go round the field, and round the field, and round,
You'll find my voice for ever changing ground;
And while your ear pursues my creaking cry,
You look as if you heard it with your eye.

THE STORK.
Stork, why were human virtues given to thee?
—That human beings might resemble me;

329

Kind to my offspring, to my partner true,
And duteous to my parents,—what are you?

THE WOODPECKER.
Rap, rap, rap, rap, I hear thy knocking bill,
Then thy strange outcry, when the woods are still.
—Thus am I ever labouring for my bread,
And thus give thanks to find my table spread.

THE HAWK.

A life at every meal, rapacious hawk!
Spare helpless innocence!

—Troth, pleasant talk!
Yon swallow snaps more lives up in a day
Than in a twelvemonth I could take away.
But hark, most gentle censor, in your ear
A word, a whisper,—you—are you quite clear?
Creation's groans, through ocean, earth, and sky,
Ascend from all that walk, or swim, or fly.

VULTURES.
Abominable harpies! spare the dead.
—We only clear the field which man has spread;
On which should Heaven its hottest vengeance rain?
You slay the living, we but strip the slain.

THE HUMMING-BIRD.
Art thou a bird, or bee, or butterfly?
—Each and all three.—A bird in shape am I,
A bee collecting sweets from bloom to bloom,
A butterfly in brilliancy of plume.

THE EAGLE.
Art thou the king of birds, proud eagle, say?
—I am; my talons and my beak bear sway;
A greater king than I if thou wouldst be,
Govern thy tongue, but let thy thoughts be free.

THE PELICAN.
Bird of the wilderness, what is thy name?
—The pelican!—go, take the trump of fame,
And if thou give the honour due to me,
The world may talk a little more of thee.

THE HERON.
Stock-still upon that stone, from day to day,
I see thee watch the river for thy prey.
—Yes, I'm the tyrant here; but when I rise,
The well-train'd falcon braves me in the skies:
Then comes the tug of war, of strength and skill;
He dies, impaled on my updarted bill,
Or, powerless in his grasp, my doom I meet,
Dropt as a trophy at his master's feet.

THE BIRD OF PARADISE.

The bird of paradise!

—That name I bear,
Though I am nothing but a bird of air:
Thou art a child of earth, and yet to thee,
Lost and recover'd, paradise is free;
Oh! that such glory were reserved for me!

THE OSTRICH.
Hast thou expell'd the mother from thy breast,
And to the desert's mercies left thy nest?
—Ah! no; the mother in me knows her part:
Yon glorious sun is warmer than my heart;
And when to light he brings my hungry brood,
He spreads for them the wilderness with food.

TIME:

A RHAPSODY.

Sed fugit, interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.
Virg. Goerg. iii. 284.

'Tis a mistake: Time flies not,
He only hovers on the wing:
Once born, the moment dies not,
'Tis an immortal thing;
While all is change beneath the sky,
Fix'd like the sun as learned sages prove,
Though from our moving world he seems to move,
'Tis Time stands still, and we that fly.

There is no past; from nature's birth,
Days, months, years, ages, till the end
Of these revolving heavens and earth,
All to one centre tend;
And, having reach'd it late or soon,
Converge,—as in a lens, the rays,
Caught from the fountain-light of noon,
Blend in a point that blinds the gaze:
—What has been is, what is shall last;
The present is the focus of the past;
The future, perishing as it arrives,
Becomes the present, and itself survives.

330

Time is not progress, but amount;
One vast accumulating store,
Laid up, not lost;—we do not count
Years gone, but added to the score
Of wealth untold, to clime nor class confined,
Riches to generations lent,
For ever spending, never spent,
The' august inheritance of all mankind.
Of this, from Adam to his latest heir,
All in due turn their portion share,
Which, as they husband or abuse,
Their souls they win or lose.

Though History, on her faded scrolls,
Fragments of facts and wrecks of names enrols,
Time's indefatigable fingers write
Men's meanest actions on their souls,
In lines which not himself can blot:
These the last day shall bring to light,
Though through long centuries forgot,
When hearts and sepulchres are bared to sight.

Then, having fill'd his measure up,
Amidst his own assembled progeny,
(All that have been, that are, or yet may be,)
Before the great white throne,
To Him who sits thereon,
Time shall present the' amalgamating cup,
In which, as in a crucible,
He hid the moments as they fell,
More precious than Golconda's gems,
Or stars in angels' diadems,
Though to our eyes they seem'd to pass
Like sands through his symbolic glass:
But now, the process done,
Of millions multiplied by millions, none
Shall there be wanting,—while, by change
Ineffable and strange,
All shall appear at once, all shall appear as one.

Ah! then shall each of Adam's race,
In that concentred instant, trace,
Upon the tablet of his mind,
His whole existence in a thought combined,
Thenceforth to part no more, but be
Impictured on his memory;
—As in the image-chamber of the eye,
Seen at a glance, in clear perspective, lie
Myriads of forms of ocean, earth, and sky.
Then shall be shown, that but in name
Time and eternity were both the same;
A point which life nor death could sever,
A moment standing still for ever.

1833.

TO A FRIEND, WITH A COPY OF THE FOREGOING LUCUBRATION.

May she for whom these lines are penn'd,
By using well, make Time her friend;
Then, whether he stands still or flies,
Whether the moment lives or dies,
She need not care,—for Time will be
Her friend to all eternity.

A LUCID INTERVAL.

Oh! light is pleasant to the eye,
And health comes rustling on the gale;
Clouds are careering through the sky,
Whose shadows mock them down the dale;
Nature as fresh and fragrant seems
As I have met her in my dreams.

For I have been a prisoner long
In gloom and loneliness of mind;
Deaf to the melody of song,
To every form of beauty blind;
Nor morning dew, nor evening balm,
Might cool my cheek, my bosom calm.

But now the blood, the blood returns
With rapturous pulses through my veins;
My heart from out its ashes burns;
My limbs break loose, they cast their chains;
New kindled at the sun, my sight
Tracks to a point the eagle's flight.

I long to climb those old grey rocks,
Glide with yon river to the deep,
Range the green hills with herds and flocks,
Free as the roebuck run and leap;
Or mount the lark's victorious wing,
And from the depth of ether sing.

331

O earth! in maiden innocence,
Too early fled thy golden time;
O earth! earth! earth! for man's offence,
Doom'd to dishonour in thy prime;
Of how much glory then bereft!
Yet what a world of bliss is left!

The thorn, harsh emblem of the curse,
Puts forth a paradise of flowers;
Labour, man's punishment, is nurse
To home-born joys at sunset hours;
Plague, earthquake, famine, want, disease,
Give birth to holiest charities.

And death himself, with all the woes
That hasten yet prolong his stroke,
Death brings with every pang repose,
With every sigh he solves a yoke;
Yea, his cold sweats and moaning strife
Wring out the bitterness of life.

Life, life with all its burdens dear!
Friendship is sweet, love sweeter still;
Who would forego a smile, a tear,
One generous hope, one chastening ill?
Home, kindred, country,—these are ties
Might keep an angel from the skies.

But these have angels never known;
Unvex'd felicity their lot;
The sea of glass before the throne,
Storm, lightning, shipwreck, visit not;
Our tides, beneath the changing moon,
Are soon appeased, are troubled soon.

Well, I would bear what all have borne,
Live my few years, and fill my place;
O'er old and young affections mourn,
Rent one by one from my embrace,
Till suffering ends, and I have done
With every thing beneath the sun.

Whence came I?—Memory cannot say;
What am I?—Knowledge will not show;
Bound whither?—Ah! away, away,
Far as eternity can go:—
Thy love to win, thy wrath to flee,
O God! thyself my teacher be.

1823.

WORMS AND FLOWERS.

You're spinning for my lady, worm!
Silk garments for the fair;
You're spinning rainbows for a form
More beautiful than air,
When air is bright with sun-beams,
And morning mists arise
From woody vales and mountain streams
To blue autumnal skies.

You're springing for my lady, flower!
You're training for my love,
The glory of her summer-bower,
While skylarks soar above:
Go, twine her locks with rose-buds,
Or breathe upon her breast,
While zephyrs curl the water-floods
And rock the halcyon's nest.

But, oh! there is another worm
Ere long will visit her,
And revel on her lovely form,
In the dark sepulchre:
Yet from that sepulchre shall spring
A flower as sweet as this;
Hard by the nightingale shall sing,
Soft winds its petals kiss.

Frail emblems of frail beauty, ye!
In beauty who would trust?
Since all that charms the eye must be
Consign'd to worms and dust:
Yet, like the flower that decks her tomb,
Her spirit shall quit the sod,
To shine in amaranthine bloom,
Fast by the throne of God.

1834.

THE RECLUSE.

A fountain, issuing into light
Before a marble palace, threw
To heaven its column, pure and bright,
Returning thence in showers of dew;
But soon a humbler course it took,
And glid away a nameless brook.

332

Flowers on its grassy margin sprang,
Flies o'er its eddying surface play'd,
Birds 'midst the alder-branches sang,
Flocks through the verdant meadows stray'd;
The weary there lay down to rest,
And there the halcyon built her nest.

'Twas beautiful, to stand and watch
The fountain's crystal turn to gems,
And from the sky such colours catch,
As if 'twere raining diadems;
Yet all was cold and curious art,
That charm'd the eye, but miss'd the heart.

Dearer to me the little stream,
Whose unimprison'd waters run,
Wild as the changes of a dream,
By rock and glen, through shade and sun;
Its lovely links had power to bind
In welcome chains my wandering mind.

So thought I when I saw the face,
By happy portraiture reveal'd,
Of one, adorn'd with every grace,
—Her name and date from me conceal'd,
But not her story;—she had been
The pride of many a splendid scene.

She cast her glory round a court,
And frolick'd in the gayest ring,
Where fashion's high-born minions sport,
Like sparkling fire-flies on the wing;
But thence, when love had touch'd her soul,
To nature and to truth she stole.

From din, and pageantry, and strife,
Midst woods and mountains, vales and plains,
She treads the paths of lowly life,
Yet in a bosom-circle reigns;
No fountain scattering diamond showers,
But the sweet streamlet watering flowers.

1829.

THE RETREAT.

[_]

Written on finding a copy of verses in a small edifice so named, at Raithby, in Lincolnshire, the seat of R. C. Brackenbury, to whom the Author made a visit in the autumn of 1815, after a severe illness.

A stranger sat down in the lonely retreat:—
Though kindness had welcomed him there,
Yet, weary with travel, and fainting with heat,
His bosom was sadden'd with care:
That sinking of spirit they only can know
Whose joys are all chasten'd with fears;
Whose waters of comfort, though deeply they flow,
Still wind through the valley of tears.

What ails thee, O stranger! but open thine eye
A paradise bursts on thy view;
The sun in full glory is marching on high
Through cloudless and infinite blue:
The woods, in their wildest luxuriance display'd,
Are stretching their coverts of green,
While bright from the depth of their innermost shade
Yon mirror of waters is seen.

There, richly reflected, the mansion, the lawn,
The banks and the foliage, appear,
By nature's own pencil enchantingly drawn,
—A landscape enshrined in a sphere;
While the fish in their element sport to and fro,
Quick glancing or gliding at ease,
The birds seem to fly in a concave below,
Through a vista of down-growing trees.

The current, unrippled by volatile airs,
Now glitters, now darkens along,
And yonder o'erflowing, incessantly bears
Symphonious accordance to song:—
The song of the ring-dove enamour'd, that floats
Like soft-melting murmurs of grief;—
The song of the red-breast, in ominous notes,
Foretelling the fall of the leaf:—

The song of the bee, in its serpentine flight,
From blossom to blossom that roves;—
The song of the wind in the silence of night,
When it wakens or hushes the groves:—
Thus sweet in the chorus of rapture and love,
Which God in his temple attends,

333

With the song of all nature beneath and above,
The voice of these waters ascends.

The beauty, the music, the bliss of that scene
With ravishing sympathy stole
Through the stranger's lorn bosom, illumined his mien,
And soothed and exalted his soul:
Cold gloomy forebodings then vanish'd away,
His terrors to ecstasies turn,
As the vapours of night, at the dawning of day,
With splendour and loveliness burn.

The stranger reposed in the lonely retreat,
Now smiling at phantoms gone by,
When, lo! a new welcome, in numbers most sweet,
Saluted his ear through his eye:
It came to his eye, but it went to his soul;
—Some muse, as she wander'd that way,
Had dropt from her bosom a mystical scroll,
Whose secrets I dare not betray.

Strange tones, we are told, the pale mariner hears
When the mermaids ascend from their caves,
And sing, where the moon's lengthen'd image appears
A column of gold on the waves;
—And wild notes of wonder the shepherd entrance,
Who dreaming beholds in the vale,
By torchlight of glow-worms, the fairies that dance
To minstrelsy piped in the gale.

Not less to that stranger mysteriously brought,
With harmony deep and refined,
In language of feeling and music of thought,
Those numbers were heard in his mind:
Then quick beat the pulse which had languidly crept,
And sent through his veins a spring-tide;
It seem'd as the harp of a seraph were swept
By a spirit that sung at his side.

All ceased in a moment, and nothing was heard,
And nothing was seen, through the wood,
But the twittering cry of a fugitive bird,
And the sunset that blazed on the flood:
He rose, for the shadows of evening grew long,
And narrow the glimpses between;
The owl in his ambush was whooping his song,
And the gossamer glanced on the green.

Oft pausing, and hearkening, and turning his eye,
He left the sequester'd retreat;
As the stars in succession awoke through the sky,
And the moon of the harvest shone sweet;
So pure was her lustre, so lovely and bright,
So soft on the landscape it lay,
The shadows appear'd but the slumber of light,
And the night-scene a dream of the day.

He walk'd to the mansion,—though silent his tongue,
And his heart with its fulness opprest,
His spirit within him melodiously sung
The feelings that throbb'd in his breast:
—“Oh! ye, who inherit this privileged spot!
All blooming like Eden of yore,
What earth can afford is already your lot,
With the promise of ‘life evermore.’

“Here, oft as to strangers your table is spread,
May angels sit down at your board;
Here, oft as the poor by your bounty are fed,
Be charity shown to your Lord;
Thus walking with God in your paradise here,
In humble communion of love,
At length may your spirits, when He shall appear,
Be caught up to glory above.”

SPEED THE PROW.

Not the ship that swiftest saileth,
But which longest holds her way
Onward, onward, never faileth,
Storm and calm, to win the day;
Earliest she the haven gains,
Which the hardest stress sustains.

O'er life's ocean, wide and pathless,
Thus would I with patience steer;
No vain hope of journeying scathless,
No proud boast to face down fear;
Dark or bright his Providence,
Trust in God be my defence.

Time there was,—'tis so no longer,—
When I crowded every sail,
Battled with the waves, and stronger
Grew, as stronger grew the gale;

334

But my strength sunk with the wind,
And the sea lay dead behind.

There my bark had founder'd surely,
But a Power invisible
Breathed upon me;—then securely,
Borne along the gradual swell,
Helm, and shrouds, and heart renew'd,
I my humbler course pursued.

Now, though evening shadows blacken,
And no star comes through the gloom,
On I move, nor will I slacken
Sail, though verging tow'rds the tomb:
Bright beyond,—on heaven's high strand,
Lo, the lighthouse!—land, land, land!

Cloud and sunshine, wind and weather,
Sense and sight, are fleeing fast;
Time and tide must fail together,
Life and death will soon be past;
But where day's last spark declines,
Glory everlasting shines.

1834.

THE SKY-LARK.

(ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND.)

[_]

On hearing one singing at daybreak, during a sharp frost on the 17th of February, 1832, while the Author was on travel, between Bath and Stroud.

O warn away the gloomy night,
With music make the welkin ring,
Bird of the dawn!—On joyful wing,
Soar through thine element of light,
Till nought in heaven mine eye can see,
Except the morning star and thee.

O welcome in the cheerful day!
Through rosy clouds the shades retire,
The sun hath touch'd thy plumes with fire,
And girt thee with a golden ray:
Now shape and voice are vanish'd quite,
Nor eye nor ear can track thy flight.

Could I translate thy strains, and give
Words to thy notes in human tongue,
The sweetest lay that e'er I sung,
The lay that would the longest live,
I might record upon this page,
And sing thy song from age to age.

But speech of mine can ne'er reveal
Secrets so freely told above,
Yet is their burden joy and love,
And all the bliss a bird can feel,
Whose wing in heaven to earth is bound,
Whose home and heart are on the ground.

Unlike the lark be thou, my friend!
No downward cares thy thoughts engage,
But in thine house of pilgrimage,
Though from the ground thy songs ascend,
Still be their burden joy and love:
—Heaven is thy home, thy heart above.

The gloom that brings, through evening skies,
Your beauty from the deep;
The clouds that hide you from our eyes;
The storms that seem to sweep
Your scatter'd train, like vessels tost
On ocean's waves, now seen, now lost;
—Belong to our inferior ball,
Ye shine above them all:
Your splendour noon eclipses not,
Nor night reveals, nor vapours blot;
O'er us, not you, these changes come and pass;
Ye navigate a sea of glass.

335

Thus, on their hyaline above,
In constellations stand
The tribes redeem'd by sovereign love:
—Crown'd, and with harp in hand,
They sing, before the great I AM,
The song of Moses and the Lamb;
Returning in perpetual streams
His own all-lightening beams.
—Theirs be thy portion, O my soul!
That, while heaven's years self-circling roll,
I may, among the ransom'd—they in me,
And I in them,—God's image see.

1834.

THE LILY.

TO A YOUNG LADY, E. P.

Flower of light, forget thy birth,
Daughter of the sordid earth,
Lift the beauty of thine eye
To the blue ethereal sky!

While thy graceful buds unfold
Silver petals starr'd with gold,
Let the bee among thy bells
Rifle their ambrosial cells,
And the nimble-pinion'd air
Waft thy breath to heaven like prayer.
Cloud and sun alternate shed
Gloom or glory round thine head;
Morn impearl thy leaves with dews,
Evening lend them rosy hues,
Noon with snow-white splendour bless,
Night with glow-worm jewels dress.
—Thus fulfil thy summer-day,
Spring, and flourish, and decay;
Live a life of fragrance,—then
Disappear,—to rise again,
When thy sisters of the vale
Welcome back the nightingale.

So may she, whose name I write,
Be herself a flower of light,
Live a life of innocence,
Die to be transplanted hence
To that garden in the skies,
Where the lily never dies.

1829.

THE GENTIANELLA.

IN LEAF.

Green thou art, obscurely green,
Meanest plant among the mean!

From the dust I took my birth;
Thou, too, art a child of earth;
I aspire not to be great;
Scorn not thou my low estate;
Time will come when thou shalt see
Honour crown humility,
Beauty set her seal on me.

IN FLOWER.

Blue thou art, intensely blue,
Flower, whence came thy dazzling hue?

When I open'd first mine eye,
Upward glancing to the sky,
Straightway from the firmament
Was the sapphire brilliance sent.
Brighter glory wouldst thou share,
Do what I did,—look up there;
What I could not,—look with prayer!

THE SUN-FLOWER.

Eagle of flowers! I see thee stand,
And on the sun's noon-glory gaze;
With eye like his, thy lids expand,
And fringe their disk with golden rays:
Though fix'd on earth, in darkness rooted there,
Light is thine element, thy dwelling air,
Thy prospect heaven.

So would mine eagle soul descry,
Beyond the path where planets run,
The light of immortality,
The splendour of creation's sun;
Though sprung from earth, and hastening to the tomb,
In hope a flower of paradise to bloom,
I look to heaven.

1834.

336

WINTER-LIGHTNING.

The flash at midnight!—'twas a light
That gave the blind a moment's sight,
Then sunk in tenfold gloom;
Loud, deep, and long the thunder broke,
The deaf ear instantly awoke,
Then closed as in the tomb:
An angel might have pass'd my bed,
Sounded the trump of God, and fled.

So life appears;—a sudden birth,
A glance revealing heaven and earth,
It is and it is not!
So fame the poet's hope deceives,
Who sings for after-times, and leaves
A name—to be forgot:
Life is a lightning-flash of breath,
Fame but a thunder-clap at death.

1834.

HUMILITY.

The bird that soars on highest wing,
Builds on the ground her lowly nest;
And she that doth most sweetly sing,
Sings in the shade when all things rest:
—In lark and nightingale we see
What honour hath humility.

When Mary chose the “better part,”
She meekly sat at Jesus' feet;
And Lydia's gently-open'd heart
Was made for God's own temple meet;
—Fairest and best adorn'd is she
Whose clothing is humility.

The saint that wears heaven's brightest crown,
In deepest adoration bends;
The weight of glory bows him down,
Then most when most his soul ascends;
—Nearest the throne itself must be
The footstool of humility.

1833.

EVENING TIME.

[_]

Zech. xiv. 7.

At evening time let there be light:—
Life's little day draws near its close;
Around me fall the shades of night,
The night of death, the grave's repose;
To crown my joys, to end my woes,
At evening time let there be light.

At evening time let there be light:—
Stormy and dark hath been my day;
Yet rose the morn benignly bright,
Dews, birds, and flowers cheer'd all the way;
O for one sweet, one parting ray!
At evening time let there be light.

At evening time there shall be light:—
For God hath said,—“So let it be!”
Fear, doubt, and anguish, take their flight,
His glory now is risen on me;
Mine eyes shall his salvation see:—
'Tis evening time, and there is light.

Conway, North Wales, 1828.

REMINISCENCE.

Remembrance of the dead revives
The slain of time, at will;
Those who were lovely in their lives,
In death are lovelier still.

Unburden'd with infirmity,
Unplagued like mortal men,
O with what pure delight we see
The heart's old friends again!

Not as they sunk into the tomb,
With sickness-wasted powers,
But in the beauty and the bloom
Of their best days and ours.

The troubles of departed years
Bring joys unknown before;
And soul-refreshing are the tears
O'er wounds that bleed no more.

337

Lightnings may blast, but thunder-showers
Earth's ravaged face renew,
With nectar fill the cups of flowers,
And hang the thorns with dew.

Remembrance of the dead is sweet;
Yet how imperfect this,
Unless past, present, future, meet,—
A threefold cord of bliss!

Companions of our youth, our age,
With whom through life we walk'd,
And, in our house of pilgrimage,
Of home beyond it talk'd:—

Grief on their urn may fix her eyes,—
They spring not from the ground;
Love may invoke them from the skies,—
There is no voice nor sound.

Fond memory marks them as they were,
Stars in our horoscope;
But soon to see them as they are—
That is our dearest hope.

Not through the darkness of the night,
To waking thought unseal'd,
But in the uncreated light
Of Deity reveal'd.

They cannot come to us, but we
Ere long to them may go;—
That glimpse of immortality
Is heaven begun below.

A RECOLLECTION OF MARY F.,

A YOUNG LADY UNEXPECTEDLY REMOVED FROM A LARGE FAMILY CIRCLE.

[_]

Her life had twice been saved, once from the flames, and again from the water, by an affectionate father.

Thrice born for earth, and twice for heaven,
A lovely maiden once I knew,
To whom 'tis now in glory given
To grow, as here in shade she grew;
Brief was her course, but starry bright;
The linnet's song, the lily's white,
The fountain's freshness,—these shall be
Meet emblems of that maid to me.

A weeping babe to light she came,
And changed for smiles a mother's throes;
In childhood from devouring flame
Rescued, to second life she rose;
A father's arm had pluck'd her thence;
That arm again was her defence,
When, buried in the strangling wave,
He snatch'd her from an ocean grave.

Twice born for heaven as thrice for earth,
When God's eternal Spirit moved
On her young heart, a nobler birth
Than nature can confer, she proved:
—The dew-drop in the breeze of morn,
Trembling and sparkling on the thorn,
Falls to the ground, escapes the eye,
Yet mounts on sunbeams to the sky.

Thus in the dew of youth she shone,
Thus in the morn of beauty fell;
Even while we gazed, the form was gone,
Her life became invisible;
Her last best birth, with her last breath,
Came in the dark disguise of death;
Grief fill'd her parents' home of love,
But joy her Father's house above.

1833.

THE CHOLERA MOUNT.

LINES ON THE BURYING-PLACE FOR PATIENTS WHO DIED OF CHOLERA MORBUS: A PLEASANT EMINENCE IN SHEFFIELD PARK.

[_]

Written during the prevalence of the disease in 1832, and while great terror of infection from it was experienced throughout the kingdom, sanctioned by legislative authority requiring the separate interment of its unfortunate victims.

In death divided from their dearest kin,
This is “a field to bury strangers in:”
Fragments, from families untimely reft,
Like spoils in flight or limbs in battle left,
Lie here;—a sad community, whose bones
Might feel, methinks, a pang to quicken stones;

338

While from beneath my feet they seem to cry,
“Oh! is it nought to you, ye passers by!
When from its earthly house the spirit fled,
Our dust might not be ‘free among the dead?’
Ah! why were we to this Siberia sent,
Doom'd in the grave itself to banishment?”

Shuddering humanity asks, “Who are these?
And what their crime?”—They fell by one disease!
By the blue pest, whose gripe no art can shun,
No force unwrench, out-singled one by one;
When, like a monstrous birth, the womb of fate
Bore a new death of unrecorded date,
And doubtful name.—Far east the fiend begun
Its course; thence round the world pursued the sun,
The ghosts of millions following at its back,
Whose desecrated graves betray'd their track.
On Albion's shores unseen the invader stept;
Secret and swift through field and city swept ;
At noon, at midnight, seized the weak, the strong,
Asleep, awake, alone, amid the throng;
Kill'd like a murderer; fix'd its icy hold,
And wrung out life with agony of cold;
Nor stay'd its vengeance where it crush'd the prey,
But set a mark, like Cain's, upon their clay,
And this tremendous seal impress'd on all,—
“Bury me out of sight and out of call.”

Wherefore no filial foot this turf may tread,
No kneeling mother kiss her baby's bed;
No maiden unespoused, with widow'd sighs,
Seek her soul's treasure where her true love lies:
—All stand aloof, and eye this mount from far,
As panic-stricken crowds some baleful star,
Strange to the heavens, that, with bewilder'd light,
Like a lost spirit, wanders through the night.

Yet many a mourner weeps her fallen state,
In many a home by these left desolate,
Once warm with love, and radiant with the smiles
Of woman, watching infants at their wiles,
Whose eye of thought, when now they throng her knees,
Pictures far other scene than that she sees,
For one is wanting,—one, for whose dear sake
Her heart for very tenderness would ache,
As now with anguish,—doubled when she spies
In this his lineaments, in that his eyes,
In each his image with her own commix'd,
And there, at least, through life their union fix'd.

Humanity again asks, “Who are these?
And what their crime?”—They fell by one disease;
Not by the Proteus-maladies that strike
Man into nothingness, not twice alike;
But when they knock'd for entrance at the tomb,
Their fathers' bones refused to make them room;
Recoiling Nature from their presence fled,
As though a thunderbolt had smote them dead;
Their cries pursued her with the thrilling plea,
“Give us a little earth for charity!”
She linger'd, listen'd, all her bosom yearn'd,
Through every vein the mother's pulse return'd;
Then, as she halted on this hill, she threw
Her mantle wide, and loose her tresses flew:
“Live!” to the slain, she cried, “My children, live!
This for an heritage to you I give:
Had death consumed you by the common lot,
You with the multitude had been forgot,
Now through an age of ages shall ye not.”

Thus Nature spake; and, as her echo, I
Take up her parable, and prophesy:
—Here, as from Spring to Spring the swallows pass,
Perennial daisies shall adorn the grass;
Here the shrill sky-lark build her annual nest,
And sing in heaven while you serenely rest:
On trembling dew-drops morn's first glance shall shine,
Eve's latest beams on this fair bank decline,
And oft the rainbow steal through light and gloom,
To throw its sudden arch across your tomb;
On you the moon her sweetest influence shower,
And every planet bless you in its hour.

With statelier honours still, in time's slow round,
Shall this sepulchral eminence be crown'd,
Where generations long to come shall hail
The growth of centuries waving in the gale,
A forest landmark on the mountain's head,
Standing betwixt the living and the dead,
Nor, while your language lasts, shall traveller cease
To say, at sight of your memorial, “Peace!”
Your voice of silence answering from the sod,
“Whoe'er thou art, prepare to meet thy God!”

1832.

339

THE TOMBS OF THE FATHERS.

[_]

The Jews occasionally hold a “Solemn Assembly” in the valley of Jehoshaphat, the ancient burial-place of Jerusalem. They are obliged to pay a heavy tax for the privilege of thus mourning, in stillness, at the sepulchres of their ancestors.

Part I.

In Babylon they sat and wept,
Down by the river's willowy side;
And when the breeze their harp-strings swept,
The strings of breaking hearts replied:
—A deeper sorrow now they hide;
No Cyrus comes to set them free
From ages of captivity.

All lands are Babylons to them,
Exiles and fugitives they roam;
What is their own Jerusalem?
—The place where they are least at home!
Yet hither from all climes they come;
And pay their gold, for leave to shed
Tears o'er the generations fled.

Around, the eternal mountains stand,
With Hinnom's darkling vale between;
Old Jordan wanders through the land,
Blue Carmel's sea-ward crest is seen,
And Lebanon yet sternly green
Throws, when the evening sun declines,
Its cedar shades, in lengthening lines.

But, ah! for ever vanish'd hence,
The temple of the living God,
Once Zion's glory and defence!
—Now mourn beneath the oppressor's rod,
The fields which faithful Abraham trod,
Where Isaac walk'd by twilight gleam,
And heaven came down on Jacob's dream.

For ever mingled with the soil,
Those armies of the Lord of Hosts,
That conquer'd Canaan, shared the spoil,
Quell'd Moab's pride, storm'd Midian's posts,
Spread paleness through Philistia's coasts,
And taught the foes, whose idols fell,
“There is a God in Israel.”

Now, David's tabernacle gone,
What mighty builder shall restore?
The golden throne of Solomon,
And ivory palace, are no more;
The Psalmist's song, the Preacher's lore,
Of all they wrought, alone remain
Unperish'd trophies of their reign.

Holy and beautiful of old,
Was Zion 'midst her princely bowers;
Besiegers trembled to behold
Bulwarks that set at nought their powers;
—Swept from the earth are all her towers;
Nor is there—so was she bereft—
One stone upon another left.

340

The very site whereon she stood,
In vain the eye, the foot, would trace;
Vengeance, for saints' and martyrs' blood,
Her walls did utterly deface;
Dungeons and dens usurp their place;
The cross and crescent shine afar,
But where is Jacob's natal star?

Part II.

Still inexterminable, still
Devoted to their mother-land,
Her offspring haunt the temple-hill,
Amidst her desecration stand,
And bite the lip, and clench the hand:
—To-day in that lone vale they weep,
Where patriarchs, kings, and prophets sleep.

Ha! what a spectacle of woe!
In groups they settle on the ground;
Men, women, children, gathering slow,
Sink down in reverie profound;
There is no voice, no speech, no sound,
But through the shuddering frame is thrown
The heart's unutterable groan.

Entranced they sit, nor seem to breathe,
Themselves like spectres from the dead;
Where, shrined in rocks above, beneath,
With clods along the valley spread,
Their ancestors, each on his bed,
Repose, till, at the judgment-day,
Death and the grave give up their prey.

Before their eyes, as in a glass,
—Their eyes that gaze on vacancy,—
Pageants of ancient grandeur pass,
But, “Ichabod” on all they see
Brands Israel's foul apostasy;
—Then last and worst, and crowning all
Their crimes and sufferings—Salem's fall.

Nor breeze, nor bird, nor palm-tree stirs,
Kedron's unwater'd brook is dumb;
But through the glen of sepulchres
Is heard the city's fervid hum,
Voices of dogs and children come:
Till loud and long the medzin's cry,
From Omar's mosque, peals round the sky.

Blight through their veins those accents send;
In agony of mute despair,
Their garments, as by stealth, they rend;
Unconsciously they pluck their hair;
—This is the Moslem's hour of prayer!
'Twas Judah's once,—but fane and priest,
Altar and sacrifice, have ceased.

And by the Gentiles, in their pride,
Jerusalem is trodden down:
—“How long?—for ever wilt Thou hide
Thy face, O Lord;—for ever frown?
Israel was once thy glorious crown,
In sight of all the nations worn;
Now from thy brow in anger torn.

“Zion, forsaken and forgot,
Hath felt thy stroke, and owns it just:
O God, our God! reject us not,
Her sons take pleasure in her dust:
How is the fine gold dimm'd with rust!
The city throned in gorgeous state,
How doth she now sit desolate!

“Where is thine oath to David sworn?
We by the winds like chaff are driven:
Yet unto us a Child is born,
Yet unto us a Son is given;
His throne is as the days of Heaven:
When shall He come to our release,
The mighty God, the Prince of Peace?”

Part III.

Thus blind with unbelief they cry,
But hope revisits not their glooms;
Seal'd are the words of prophecy,
Seal'd as the secrets of yon tombs,
Where all is dark,—though nature blooms,
Birds sing, streams murmur, heaven above
And earth around are life, light, love.

341

The sun goes down;—the mourning crowds,
Re-quicken'd, as from slumber start;
They met in silence here like clouds,
Like clouds in silence they depart:
Still clings the thought to every heart,
Still from their lips escapes in sighs,
—“By whom shall Jacob yet arise?”

By whom shall Jacob yet arise?
—Even by the Power that wakes the dead:
He whom your fathers did despise,
He who for you on Calvary bled,
On Zion shall his ensign spread;
—Captives! by all the world enslaved,
Know your Redeemer, and be saved!

1828.

A CRY FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

[_]

On building a chapel at Cape Town, for the Negro slaves of the colony, in 1828.

Afric, from her remotest strand,
Lifts to high heaven one fetter'd hand,
And to the utmost of her chain
Stretches the other o'er the main:
Then, kneeling 'midst ten thousand slaves,
Utters a cry across the waves,
Of power to reach to either pole,
And pierce, like conscience, through the soul,
Though dreary, faint, and low the sound,
Like life-blood gurgling from a wound,
As if her heart, before it broke,
Had found a human tongue, and spoke.

“Britain! not now I ask of thee
Freedom, the right of bond and free;
Let Mammon hold, while Mammon can,
The bones and blood of living man;
Let tyrants scorn, while tyrants dare,
The shrieks and writhings of despair;
An end will come—it will not wait,
Bonds, yokes, and scourges have their date,
Slavery itself must pass away,
And be a tale of yesterday.

“But now I urge a dearer claim,
And urge it by a mightier name:
Hope of the world! on thee I call,
By the great Father of us all,
By the Redeemer of our race,
And by the Spirit of all grace;
Turn not, Britannia, from my plea;
—So help Thee God as Thou help'st me!
Mine outcast children come to light
From darkness, and go down in night;
—A night of more mysterious gloom
Than that which wrapt them in the womb:
Oh! that the womb had been the grave
Of every being born a slave!
Oh! that the grave itself might close
The slave's unutterable woes!
But what beyond that gulf may be,
What portion in eternity,
For those who live to curse their breath,
And die without a hope in death,
I know not, and I dare not think;
Yet, while I shudder o'er the brink
Of that unfathomable deep,
Where wrath lies chain'd and judgments sleep,
To thee, thou paradise of isles!
Where mercy in full glory smiles;
Eden of lands! o'er all the rest
By blessing others doubly blest,
—To thee I lift my weeping eye;
Send me the Gospel, or I die;
The word of Christ's salvation give,
That I may hear his voice and live.”

TO MY FRIEND, GEORGE BENNET, ESQ., OF SHEFFIELD

[_]

On his intended visit to Tahiti, and other islands of the South Sea, where Christianity had been recently established.

Go, take the wings of morn,
And fly beyond the utmost sea;
Thou shalt not feel thyself forlorn,
Thy God is still with thee;
And where his Spirit bids thee dwell,
There, and there only, thou art well.

342

Forsake thy father-land,
Kindred, and friends, and pleasant home;
O'er many a rude barbarian strand
In exile though thou roam,
Walk there with God, and thou shalt find
Double for all thy faith resign'd.

Launch boldly on the surge,
And, in a light and fragile bark,
Thy path through flood and tempest urge,
Like Noah in the ark,
Then tread like him a new world's shore,
Thine altar build, and God adore.

Leave our Jerusalem,
Jehovah's temple and his rest;
Go where no Sabbath rose on them
Whom pagan gloom oppress'd,
Till bright, though late, around their isles,
The Gospel-dawn awoke in smiles.

Amidst that dawn, from far,
Be thine expected presence shown:
Rise on them like the morning-star
In glory not thine own,
And tell them, while they hail the sight,
Who turn'd thy darkness into light.

Point where His hovering rays
Already gild their ocean's brim,
Erelong o'er heaven and earth to blaze;
Direct all eyes to Him,
—The Sun of Righteousness, who brings
Mercy and healing on his wings.

Nor thou disdain to teach
To savage hordes celestial truth,
To infant-tongues thy mother's speech,
Ennobling arts to youth,
Till warriors fling their arms aside,
O'er bloodless fields the plough to guide.

Train them, by patient toil,
To rule the waves, subdue the ground,
Enrich themselves with nature's spoil,
With harvest-trophies crown'd,
Till coral-reefs, 'midst desert seas,
Become the new Hesperides.

Thus then in peace depart,
And angels guide thy footsteps:—No!
There is a feeling in the heart,
That will not let thee go:
Yet go,—thy spirit stays with me;
Yet go,—my spirit goes with thee.

Though the broad world, between
Our feet, conglobe its solid mass;
Though lands and oceans intervene,
Which I must never pass;
Though day and night to thee be changed,
Seasons reversed, and climes estranged;—

Yet one in soul,—and one
In faith, and hope, and purpose yet,
God's witness in the heavens, yon sun,
Forbid thee to forget
Those from whose eyes his orb retires,
When thine his morning beauty fires!

When tropic gloom returns,
Mark what new stars their vigils keep,
How glares the wolf,—the phœnix burns,
And on a stormless deep,
The ship of heaven,—the patriarch's dove,
The emblem of redeeming love.

While these enchant thine eye,
O think how often we have walk'd,
Gazed on the glories of our sky,
Of higher glories talk'd,
Till our hearts caught a kindling ray,
And burn'd within us by the way.

Those hours, those walks, are past;
We part;—and ne'er again may meet:
Why are the joys that will not last
So perishingly sweet?
Farewell,—we surely meet again
In life or death;—farewell till then.

Sheffield, March 10. 1821.

343

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE REV. JAMES HARVEY,

Of Weston Favell, Northamptonshire;

Who died on Christmas Day, 1758, aged 43 Years.

[_]

Composed on an occasional celebration of his virtues and talents, at that village, in 1833.

Where is the house for all the living found?
—Go ask the deaf, the dumb, the dead;
All answer, without voice or sound,
Each resting in his bed;
Look down and see,
Beneath thy feet,
A place for thee;
—There all the living meet.

Whence come the beauteous progeny of Spring?
—They hear a still, small voice, “Awake!”
And, while the lark is on the wing,
From dust and darkness break;
Flowers of all hues
Laugh in the gale,
Sparkle with dews,
And dance o'er hill and dale.

Who leads through trackless space the stars of night?
—The Power that made them guides them still;
They know Him not, yet, day and night,
They do his perfect will:
Unchanged by age,
They hold on high
Their pilgrimage
Of glory round the sky.

Stars, flowers, and tombs were themes for solemn thought
With him whose memory we recall;
Yet more than eye can see he sought:
His spirit look'd through all,
Keenly discern'd
The truths they teach,
Their lessons learn'd,
And gave their silence speech.

Go, meditate with him among the tombs,
And there the end of all things view;
Visit with him Spring's earliest blooms,
See all things there made new;
Thence rapt aloof
In ecstasy,
Hear, from heaven's roof,
Stars preach eternity.

We call him blessed whom the Lord hath blest
And made a blessing;—long to shed
Light on the living, from his rest,
And hope around the dead:
Oh! for his lot,
Who dwells in light,
Where flowers fade not,
And stars can find no night.

ONE WARNING MORE.

WRITTEN FOR DISTRIBUTION ON A RACE-COURSE, 1824.

[_]

To him who heeded none before.

The fly around the candle wheels,
Enjoys the sport, and gaily sings,
Till, nearer, nearer borne, he feels
The flame like lightning singe his wings;
Then weltering in the gulf below he lies,
And limb by limb, scorch'd miserably, dies.

From bough to bough, the wild bird hops,
Where late he caroll'd blithe and free,
But downward, downward, now he drops,
Faint, fluttering, helpless from the tree,
Where, stretch'd below, with eye of deadly ray,
The eager rattle-snake expects his prey.

Thou, child of pleasure, art the fly,
Drawn by the taper's dazzling glare;
Thou art the bird that meets an eye,
Alluring to the serpent's snare;
Oh! stay:—is reason lost?—is conscience dumb?
Be wise, be warn'd, escape the wrath to come.

Not swifter o'er the level course
The racer glances to the goal,
Than thou with blind and headlong force
Art running on—to lose thy soul;
Then, though the world were won, how dear the cost!
Can the whole world avail a spirit lost?

344

Death on his pale horse, following fast,
Gains on thy speed,—with hell behind;
Fool! all thy yesterdays are past,
To-morrow thou wilt never find;
To-day is hastening to eternity;
“This night thy soul shall be required of thee.”

THE VEIL.

There is a veil no mortal hand can draw,
Which hides what eye of mortal never saw;
Through that (each moment by the dying riven)
Could but a glance be to the living given,
How into nothing, less than nothing, all
Life's vanities, life's verities, would fall,
And that alone of priceless worth be deem'd
Which is most lightly by the world esteem'd!

Enough is known; there is a heaven, a hell;
Who 'scapes the last, and wins the first, doth well:
Whither away, my soul!—in which wouldst thou
Emerge from life, were death to smite me now?

1834.

A RIDDLE.

ADDRESSED TO E. R., 1820.

I know not who these lines may see;
I know not what these lines will be;
But, since a word in season sent,
As from a bow at hazard bent,
May reach a roving eye, or dart
Conviction to a careless heart,
Oh! that an arrow I could find
In the small quiver of my mind,
Which, with unerring aim, should strike
Each, who encounters it, alike!

Reader! attention!—I will spring
A wondrous thought; 'tis on the wing:
Guard well your heart, you guard in vain,
The wound is made, yet gives no pain;
Surprise may make your cheek to glow,
But, courage! none but you can know;
The thought, awaken'd by my spell,
Is more than I myself can tell.
How?—search the chamber of your breast,
And think of that which you love best!
I've raised the spirit, but cannot lay it,
Your secret found, but can't betray it.
So, ask yourself,—“What will this be,
A thousand ages hence, to me?”
And if it will not stand the fire
In which all nature shall expire,
Think,—ere these rhymes aside are cast,—
As though the thought might be your last,
“Where shall I find below, above,
An object worthy of my love?”

Now hearken, and forget it never,—
Love that which you may love for ever.

ON A WATCH-POCKET

WORKED BY A. L.

Within this curious case,
Time's sentinel I place,
Who, while calm unconscious slumber
Shuts creation from mine eyes,
Through the silent gloom shall number
Every moment as it flies,
And record, at dawn of day,
Thrice ten thousand pass'd away.

On each of these, my breath
May pause 'twixt life and death,
By a subtler line depending
Than the ray of twinkling light
Which the smallest star is sending,
Every instant, through the night;
Yea, on films more finely spun,
All things hang, beneath the sun.

Rapt through a wildering dream,
Awake in sleep I seem;
Sorrow wrings my soul with anguish,
Joy expands my throbbing breast;
Now, o'erwhelm'd with care, I languish,
Now serene and tranquil rest;
—Morning comes, and all between
Is as though it ne'er had been.

345

But Time has daylight hours,
And man immortal powers;
Waking joy and sleepless sorrow,
Worldly care and heavenly peace;
Life, renew'd with every morrow,
Not in death itself shall cease;
Man, through all eternity,
What he here hath been shall be.

May she, whose skilful hand
This fairy net-work plann'd,
Still, in innocent employment,
Far from vanity and vice,
Seek the Pearl of pure enjoyment,
On her path to Paradise;
Time, for earth or heaven employ'd,
(Both have claims,) is time enjoy'd.

Each day to her, in flight,
Bequeath a gem at night;
Some sweet hope, some hallow'd pleasure,
From remembrance ne'er to part:
Hourly blessings swell the treasure
Hidden in her grateful heart,
And may every moment past
Leave a ray to gild her last!

1821.

TO CYNTHIA

[_]

A young Lady, unknown to the Author, who, by letter, requested “a stanza,” or “a few lines in his handwriting.”

Spirits in heaven can interchange
Thoughts without voice or sound;
Spirits on earth at will can range,
Wherever man is found;
Their thoughts (as silent and as fleet
As summer lightnings in the west,
When evening sinks to glorious rest,)
In written symbols meet.

The motion of a feather darts
The secrets of sequester'd hearts
To kindred hearts afar;
As, in the stillness of the night,
Quick rays of intermingling light
Sparkle from star to star.

A spirit to a spirit speaks,
Where these few letters stand;
Strangers alike,—the younger seeks
A token from the hand
That traced an unpretending song,
Whose numbers won her gentle soul,
While, like a mountain-rill, they stole
In trembling harmony along:—
What shall the poet's spirit send
To his unseen, unseeing friend?
—A wish as pure as e'er had birth
In thought or language of this earth.

Cynthia is young,—may she be old;
And fair, no doubt,—may she grow wrinkled;
Her locks, in verse at least, are gold,
May they turn silver, thinly sprinkled;
The rose her cheek, the fire her eye,
Youth, health, and strength, successive fly,
And in the end,—may Cynthia die!

“Unkind! inhuman!”—Stay your tears;
I only wish you length of years;
And wish them still, with all their woes,
And all their blessings, till the close;
For hope and fear, with anxious strife,
Are wrestlers in the ring of life,
And yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,
Are but alternate joy and sorrow.

Now mark the sequel:—may your mind
In wisdom's paths true pleasure find
Grow strong in virtue, rich in truth,
And year by year renew its youth;
Till, in the last triumphant hour,
The spirit shall the flesh o'erpower,—
This from its sufferings gain release,
And that take wing, and part in peace.

FOR J. S.:

A PREAMBLE TO HER ALBUM.

“Ut pictura poesis.”
—Hor. De Arte Poetica, v. 361.

Two lovely sisters here unite
To blend improvement with delight,—
Painting and Poetry engage
To deck by turns the varied page.

346

Here every glowing picture be
The quintessence of poesy,
With skill so exquisitely wrought
As if the colours were pure thought,
—Thought, from the bosom's inmost cell,
By magic tints made visible,
That, while the eye admires, the mind,
As in a glass, itself may find.

And may the Poet's verse, alike,
With all the power of painting strike,
So freely, so divinely, trace
In every line “the line of grace,”
And beautify with such sweet art
The image-chamber of the heart,
That Fancy here may gaze her fill,
Forming fresh scenes and shapes at will,
Where silent words alone appear,
Or, borrowing voice, but touch the ear.

Yet humble Prose with these shall stand,
Friends, kindred, comrades, hand in hand,
All in this fair enclosure meet,
The lady of the book to greet,
And, with the pen or pencil, make
The leaves love-tokens for her sake.

TO MARGARET

[_]

A little Girl, who begged to have some Verses from the Author, at Scarborough, in 1814.

Margaret! we never met before,
And, Margaret! we may meet no more;
What shall I say at parting?
Scarce half a moon has run her race
Since first I saw your fairy-face,
Around this gay and giddy place,
Sweet smiles and blushes darting;
Yet from my soul, I frankly tell,
I cannot help but wish you well.

I dare not wish you stores of wealth,
A troop of friends, unfailing health,
And freedom from affliction;
I dare not wish you beauty's prize,
Carnation lips, and bright blue eves;
These look through tears, those breathe in sighs;—
Hear, then, my benediction:
Of these good gifts be you possest
Just in the measure God sees best.

But, little Margaret, may you be
All that His eye delights to see,
All that He loves and blesses;
The Lord in darkness be your light,
Your help in need, your shield in fight,
Your comfort in distresses;
Your hope through every future breath,
And your eternal joy in death!

ON THE FIRST LEAF OF MISS J.'s ALBUM.

What thoughts, beyond the reach of thought
To guess what they may be,
Shall in succession here be brought
From depths no eye can see!

Those thoughts are now upon their way,
Like light from stars unseen,
Though, ere they reach us, many a day
And year may intervene:—

Thoughts, which shall spring in friendship's breast,
Or genius touch with fire;
Thoughts, which good angels may suggest,
Or God himself inspire.

Such, o'er these pages pure and white,
By many a willing hand,
Be writ in characters of light,
And here unfading stand!

That she who owns the whole may find,
Reveal'd in every part,
The trace of some ingenuous mind,
The love of some warm heart.

TO MARY.

Mary!—it is a lovely name,
Thrice hallow'd in the rolls of fame,
Not for the blazonry of birth,
Nor honours springing from the earth,

347

But what evangelists have told
Of three, who bare that name of old:
—Mary, the mother of our Lord;
Mary, who sate to hear his word;
And Mary Magdalen, to whom
Christ came, while weeping o'er his tomb:
These to that humble name supply
A glory which can never die.

Mary! my prayer for you shall be,—
May you resemble all the three
In faith, and hope, and charity.

SHORT-HAND.

STANZAS ADDRESSED TO E. P.

These lines and dots are locks and keys,
In narrow space to treasure thought,
Whose precious hoards, whene'er you please,
Are thus to light from darkness brought.

On the small tablet of your heart,
By Heaven's own finger, be engraved,
Within, without, through every part,
The “words whereby you must be saved.”

There the bright pages of God's book
In secret characters may lie,
Where you alone have power to look,
While hid from man and angel's eye.

Could nature's mysteries all be found,
Unbosom'd, where the billows roll,
In flowers embroider'd o'er the ground,
By stars emblazon'd round the pole;—

Less were the sum of truth reveal'd,
Through heaven, and earth, and sea express'd,
Than would be written, sign'd, and seal'd,
Once and for ever, in your breast.

1828.

THE BLANK LEAF.

Fair page! the eye that looks on thee
Ere long shall slumber in the dust,
And wake no more, until it see
The resurrection of the just:
—May he, to whom that eye belongs,
Join their assembly and their songs!

Whose is that eye?—Just now 'tis mine,
But, reader! when thou look'st 'tis thine.

1825.

THE GNAT.

[_]

Written with pencil round an insect of that kind, which had been accidentally crushed, and remained fixed on a blank page of a lady's album.

Lie here embalm'd, from age to age;
This is the album's noblest page,
Though every glowing leaf be fraught
With painting, poetry, and thought;
Where tracks of mortal hands are seen,
A hand invisible hath been,
And left this autograph behind,
This image from the' eternal Mind;
A work of skill, surpassing sense,
A labour of Omnipotence;
Though frail as dust it meet thine eye,
He form'd this gnat who built the sky.

Stop—lest it vanish at thy breath,
This speck had life, and suffer'd death.

1832.

AN INFANT'S ALBUM.

[_]

A. H. R. to her friends and contributors: written to accompany her portrait at the beginning of the book.

Now look upon my face, and say
If you can turn your eyes away,
Nor grant the little boon I ask,
As if it were some mighty task.

What is it?—Only take your pen,
Look wise, and think a moment,—then

348

Write anything, to which, for shame,
You need not fear to put your name;
Or, with a pencil's curious skill,
Draw flowers, birds, figures,—what you will;
I, like my elders and my betters,
Love pictures quite as well as letters.
Thus, page by page, my album store,
Till it an album be no more,
But, richly fill'd, from end to end,
On every leaf present a Friend.

Now look upon my face, and see
Yourself, your very self, in me;
Were you not once as mild and meek,
With lip demure, and plump round cheek?
Did you not sometimes, too, look sly
Out of the corner of your eye,
As if you held an infant's jest,
Like a bird fluttering, to your breast,
Which wanted but an inch of wing,
Up through the air to soar and sing?
So I can feign to hide a joke,
And be as arch as graver folk.

Well, time runs on, and I, you know,
As tall and stout as you may grow,
Nay, more unlike my portrait here,
Than you just now like me appear.
Ah! then, if I must change so fast,
What will become of me at last?
—A poor old woman of fourscore!
That's a long way to look before,
So I would learn of you, meanwhile,
How best the journey to beguile.
Look in my face again, you'll find
The album of an infant's mind,
Unsoil'd by care, unworn by grief,
Like new-fall'n snow each maiden-leaf,
On which, if not in black and white,
In lines eternal you may write
All that is lovely, pure, and good,
To be possess'd or understood.

Then, in this volume, as it lies,
Trace words and pictures to my eyes,
Which, thence, their mystic way may find
Into that album of my mind,
And there impress each opening page
With thoughts for childhood, youth, and age;
Breathe a sweet spirit through the whole,
That, like a soul within my soul,
Shall, by the early impulse given,
Guide me on earth, and bring to heaven.
Let every leaf unfold a text,
Either for this world or the next;
To learn of each, I'm nothing loth,
They tell me I was born for both.
Let mirth with innocence combine,
And human knowledge aid divine.

Thus form'd by it, and it by you,
This Book shall render each their due;
For whoso peeps therein may start,
As though he look'd into my heart;
And if he did, you must beware,
That he would see your image there;
Then grant the boon with such a grace,
That you may have a good warm place:
—Walk in, walk in; my heart, though small,
Is large enough to hold you all.

1828.

A WEDDING WISH.

TO MR. AND MRS. H.

A leading light of midnight skies
Appears but one to seamen's eyes,
Yet twain there are,
And each a star,
Perhaps a sun:—
May you, my Friends, reverse the view,
And while on earth you look like Two,
From heaven be seen as One;
Yea, like that graceful symbol, be
A double star of constancy.

MOTTO TO “A POET'S PORTFOLIO.”

(FRAGMENT OF A PAGE OF OBLIVION.)

Fall'n feathers of a moulting wing,
Which ne'er again may soar;
Notes sung in Autumn woods, where Spring
Shall hear their sounds no more:
Her voice and plume—the bird renews;
Man fails but once;—'tis in the tomb
His strength he mews.

1835.

349

THE VALENTINE WREATH.

Rosy-red the hills appear
With the light of morning,
Beauteous clouds in ether clear,
All the east adorning;
White through mist the meadows shine,—
Wake, my love, my Valentine!

For thy locks of raven-hue,
Flowers with hoar-frost pearly,
Crocus-cups of gold and blue,
Snow-drops drooping early,
With mezereon-sprigs combine;
Rise, my love, my Valentine!

O'er the margin of the flood
Pluck the daisy, peeping;
Through the dry leaves in the wood
Hunt the sorrel, creeping;
With the little celandine
Crown my love, my Valentine!

Pansies, on their lowly stems,
Scatter'd o'er the fallows;
Hazel-buds, with crimson gems,
Green and glossy sallows;
Tufted moss and ivy-twine,
Deck my love, my Valentine!

Few and simple flowerets these;
Yet to me less glorious
Garden-beds and orchard-trees,
Since this wreath victorious
Binds thee now for ever mine,
O my love, my Valentine!

1811.

THE WIDOW.

[_]

Written at the request of a lady, who furnished several of the lines and the plan of the whole.

Ah! who is she that sits and weeps,
And gazes on the narrow mound?
—In that fresh grave her true love sleeps,
Her heart lies with him in the ground:
She heeds not, while her babe, at play,
Plucks the frail flowers, that gaily bloom,
And casts them, ere they fade away,
In garlands, on its father's tomb;
—Unconscious where its father lies,
“Sweets to the sweet!” the prattler cries;
Ah! then she starts, looks up, her eyes o'erflow
With all a mother's love, and all a widow's woe.

Again she turns away her head,
Nor marks her infant's sportive air,
Its cherub-cheeks all rosy-red,
Its sweet blue eyes and ringlet-hair;
Silent she turns away her head,
Nor dare behold that smile-bright face,
Where live the features of the dead
In lineaments of fairy-grace:
For there at once, with transport wild,
She sees her husband and her child;
Ah! then her bosom burns, her eyes o'erflow
With all a mother's love, and all a widow's woe.

And still I find her sitting here,
Though dark October frowns on all;
And from the lime-trees rustling near,
The scatter'd leaves around her fall:
O then it charms her inmost soul,
It suits the sadness of her mind,
To watch the clouds of autumn roll,
And listen to the moaning wind;
In every shadow, every blast,
The spirits of enjoyments past,
She sees, she hears;—ah! then her eyes o'erflow,
Not with the mother's love, but with the widow's woe.

Yon peasant dreads a gathering storm,
Yet pauses as he hastens by,
Marks the pale ruin of her form,
The desolation of her eye;
Beholds her babe for shelter creep
Behind the grave-stone's dreary shade,
Where all its father's sorrows sleep,
And all its mother's hopes are laid:
Remembering then his own heart's joy,
A rosy wife, a blooming boy;
“Ah me!” he sighs, “when I am thus laid low,
Must my poor partner feel a widow'd mother's woe?”

He gently stretches out his arm,
And calls the babe in accents mild;

350

The mother shrieks with strange alarm,
And snatches up her wondering child;
She thought that voice of tender tone,
Those accents soft, endearing, kind,
Came from beneath the hollow stone!
—He marks the wandering of her mind,
And, thankful for his happier lot,
Seeks the warm comforts of his cot;
He meets his wife;—ah! then his eyes o'erflow;
She feels a mother's love, nor dreads a widow's woe.

The storm retires;—and hark! the bird,
The lonely bird of autumn's reign,
From the church pinnacle is heard;
O what a clear and simple strain!
See the delighted mourner start,
While Robin red-breast's evening song
Pours all its sweetness through her heart.
And soothes it as it trills along:
Then gleams her eye, her fancy hears
The warbled music of the spheres;
She clasps her babe; she feels her bosom glow,
And in a mother's love forgets a widow's woe.

Go to thine home, forsaken fair!
Go to thy solitary home;
Thou lovely pilgrim, in despair,
To thy saint's shrine no longer roam;
He rests not here;—thy soul's delight
Attends where'er thy footsteps tread;
He watches in the depth of night,
A guardian-angel round thy bed;
And still a father, fondly kind,
Eyes the dear pledge he left behind:
So love may deem, and death may prove it so:
—In heaven at least there is no widow's woe;
Thither, in following him, with thy sweet infant go.

1809.

IN MEMORY OF E. B.,

FORMERLY E. R.

Hers was a soul of fire that burn'd,
Too soon for us, its earthly tent,
But not too soon for her return'd
To Him from whom it first was sent:
Grave! keep the ashes, till, redeem'd from thee,
This mortal puts on immortality.

Hers was a frame so frail, so fine,
The soul was seen through every part,
A light that could not choose but shine
In eye and utterance, hand and heart;
That soul rests now, till God, in His great day,
Remoulds his image from this perish'd clay.

Body and soul, eternally,
No more conflicting nor estranged,
One saint made perfect then shall be,
From glory into glory changed:
This was her hope in life, in death;—may I
Live like the righteous, like the righteous die.

1833.

IN MEMORY OF E. G.

Soft be the turf on thy dear breast,
And heavenly calm thy lone retreat;
How long'd the weary frame for rest;
That rest is come, and O how sweet!

There's nothing terrible in death;
'Tis but to cast our robes away,
And sleep at night, without a breath
To break repose till dawn of day.

'Tis not a night without a morn,
Though glooms impregnable surround;
Nor lies the buried corse forlorn,
A hopeless prisoner in the ground.

The darkest clouds give lightnings birth,
The pearl is form'd in ocean's bed;
The germ, unperishing in earth,
Springs from its grave as from the dead.

So shall the relics of the just;
In weakness sown, but raised in power,
The precious seed shall leave the dust,
A glorious and immortal flower.

But art thou dead?—must we deplore
Joys gone for ever from our lot?
And shall we see thy face no more,
Where all reminds us—thou art not?

351

No,—live while those who love thee live,
The sainted sister of our heart;
And thought to thee a form shall give
Of all thou wast and all thou art:—

Of all thou wast, when from thine eyes
The latest beams of kindness shone;
Of all thou art, when faith descries
Thy spirit bow'd before the Throne.

1821.

GARDEN THOUGHTS.

[_]

On occasion of a Christian assembly in the grounds of a gentleman at York, for the purpose of promoting missions among the heathen.

In a garden—man was placed,
Meet abode for innocence,
With his Maker's image graced;
—Sin crept in and drove him thence,
Through the world, a wretch undone,
Seeking rest, and finding none.

In a garden—on that night
When our Saviour was betray'd,
With what world-redeeming might
In his agony he pray'd!
Till he drank the vengeance up,
And with mercy fill'd the cup.

In a garden—on the cross,
When the spear his heart had riven,
And for earth's primeval loss
Heaven's best ransom had been given,
—Jesus rested from his woes,
Jesus from the dead arose.

Here, not Eden's bowers are found,
Nor forlorn Gethsemane,
Nor that calm sepulchral ground
At the foot of Calvary;
—Yet this scene may well recall
Sweet remembrances of all.

Emblem of the church below!
Where the Spirit and the Word
Fall like dews, like breezes blow,
And the Lord God's voice is heard,
Walking in the cool of day,
While the world is far away:—

Emblem of the church above!
Where, as in their native clime,
Midst the garden of his love,
Rescued from the rage of time,
Saints, as trees of life, shall stand,
Planted by his own right hand!

Round the fair enclosure here
Flames no cherub's threatening sword,
Ye who enter feel no fear:
—Roof'd by Heaven, with verdure floor'd,
Breathing balm from blossoms gay,
This be paradise to-day.

Yet one moment meditate
On our parents' banishment,
When from Eden's closing gate,
Hand in hand, they weeping went,
Spikenard groves no more to dress,
But a thorn-set wilderness.

Then remember Him who laid
Uncreated splendour by,
Lower than the angels made,
Fallen man to glorify,
And from death beyond the grave
Unto life immortal save.

Think of Him—your souls He sought,
Wandering, never to return;
Hath He found you?—At the thought
Your glad hearts within you burn;
Then your love like His extend,
Be like Him the sinner's friend.

O'er Jerusalem He wept,
Doom'd to perish;—can't you weep
O'er a world, by Satan kept
Dreaming in delirious sleep,
Till the twinkle of an eye
Wakes them in eternity?

Ye, who smile in rosy youth,
Glow with manhood, fade through years,
Send the life, the light, the truth,
To dead hearts, blind eyes, deaf ears,
And your very pleasures make
Charities for Jesus' sake.

352

So shall Gospel-glory run
Round the globe, to every clime,
Brighter than the circling sun,
Hastening that millennial time
When the earth shall be restored
As the garden of the Lord.

1829.

TO MR. AND MRS. T., OF YORK:

WITH THE FOREGOING STANZAS.

Ye who own this quiet place,
Here, like Enoch, walk with God;
And, till summon'd hence, through grace
Tread the path your Saviour trod;
Then to paradise on high,
With the wings of angels fly.

FAREWELL TO A MISSIONARY.

Home, kindred, friends, and country,—these
Are things with which we never part;
From clime to clime, o'er land and seas,
We bear them with us in our heart;
And yet 'tis hard to feel resign'd,
When they must all be left behind.

But when the pilgrim's staff we take,
And follow Christ from shore to shore,
Gladly for Him we all forsake,
Press on, and only look before;
Though humbled nature mourns her loss,
The spirit glories in the cross.

It is no sin, like man, to weep,—
Even Jesus wept o'er Lazarus dead;
Or yearn for home beyond the deep,—
He had not where to lay his head;
The patriot's tears will He condemn
Who grieved o'er lost Jerusalem?

Take up your cross, and say—“Farewell:”
Go forth without the camp to Him
Who left heaven's throne with men to dwell,
Who died his murderers to redeem:
Oh! tell his name in every ear
Doubt not,—the dead themselves will hear,—

Hear, and come forth to life anew;
—Then while the Gentile courts they fill,
Shall not your Saviour's words stand true?
Home, kindred, friends, and country still,
In earth's last desert you shall find,
Yet lose not those you left behind.

THE LOT OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” —Rom. viii. 28.

Yea,—“all things work together for their good!”
How can this glorious truth be understood?
'Tis like Jehovah's throne, where marvellous light
Hides in thick darkness from created sight:
The first-born seraph, trembling while he sings,
Views its veil'd lustre through his shadowing wings;
Or, if he meets, by unexpected grace,
The beatific vision, face to face,
Shrinks from perfection which no eye can see,
Entranced in the abyss of Deity.

Yea,—“all things work together for their good!”
How shall the mystery be understood?

From man's primeval curse are these set free,
Sin slain, death swallow'd up in victory?
The body from corruption so refined,
'Tis but the immortal vesture of the mind?
The mind from folly so to wisdom won,
'Tis a pure sunbeam of the eternal sun?

Ah! no, no;—all that troubles life is theirs,
Hard toil, sharp suffering, slow-consuming cares;
To mourn and weep; want raiment, food, and rest,
Brood o'er the unutter'd anguish of the breast;
To love, to hope, desire, possess, in vain;
Wrestle with weakness, weariness, and pain,
Struggle with fell disease from breath to breath,
And every moment die a moment's death.

This is their portion, this the common lot;
But they have sorrows which the world knows not:

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—Their conflicts with that world, its fair false joys,
Ensnaring riches, and delusive toys;
Its love, its hatred; its neglect and scorn;
With self-abhorrence harder to be borne;
The pangs of conscience, when God's holy law,
Through Sinai's thunders, strikes them dumb with awe;
Passions disorder'd, when insane desires
Blow the rank embers of unhallow'd fires;
Evils that lurk in ambush at the heart,
And shoot their arrows thence through every part;
Harsh roots of bitterness; light seeds of sin,
Oft springing up, and stirring strife within;
Pride, like the serpent, vaunting to deceive,
As with his subtilty beguiling Eve;
Ambition, like the great red dragon, hurl'd
Sheer from heaven's battlements to this low world,
Boundless in rage, as limited in power,
Ramping abroad, and roaring to devour:
—These, which blithe worldlings laugh at and contemn,
Are worse than famine, sword, and fire to them.

Nor these alone, for neither few nor small
The trials rising from their holy call:
—The Spirit's searching, proving, cleansing flames;
Duty's demands, the Gospel's sovereign claims;
Stern self-denial counting all things loss
For Christ, and daily taking up the cross;
The broken heart, or heart that will not break,—
That aches not, or that cannot cease to ache;
Doubts and misgivings, lest when storms are past
They make sad shipwreck of the faith at last:
—These, and a thousand forms of fear and shame,
Bosom-temptations, that have not a name,
But have a nature, felt through flesh and bone,
Through soul and spirit,—felt by them alone;
—These, these the Christian pilgrims sore distress,
Like thorns and briars of the wilderness;
These keep them humble, keep them in the path,
As those that flee from everlasting wrath.

Yet, while their hearts and hopes are fix'd above,
As those who lean on everlasting love,
On faithfulness, which, though heaven's pillars bend
And earth's base fail, uphold them to the end;—
By them, by them alone, 'tis understood
How all things work together for their good.
Would'st thou too understand?—behold I show
The perfect way,—Love God , and thou shalt know.

A BENEDICTION FOR A BABY.

What blessing shall I ask for thee,
In the sweet dawn of infancy?
—That, which our Saviour, at his birth,
Brought down with Him from heaven to earth.

What next, in childhood's April years
Of sunbeam smiles and rainbow tears?
—That, which in Him all eyes might trace,
To grow in wisdom and in grace.

What in the wayward path of youth,
Where falsehood walks abroad as truth?
—By that good Spirit to be led
Which John saw resting on His head.

What, in temptation's wilderness,
When wants assail, and fears oppress?
—To wield like Him the Scripture-sword,
And vanquish Satan by “the word.”

What, in the labour, pain, and strife,
Combats and cares, of daily life?
—In His cross-bearing steps to tread
Who had not where to lay his head.

What, in the agony of heart,
When foes rush in, and friends depart?
—To pray like Him, the Holy One,
“Father! thy will, not mine, be done.”

What, in the bitterness of death,
When the last sigh cuts the last breath?
—Like Him your spirit to commend,
And up to paradise ascend.

What in the grave, and in that hour
When even the grave shall lose its power?
—Like Him, your rest awhile to take;
Then at the trumpet's sound awake,
Him as He is in heaven to see,
And as He is, yourself to be.

1831.

354

“OCCUPY TILL I COME.”
[_]

Luke, xix. 13.

ON THE DEATH OF THE LATE JOSEPH BUTTERWORTH, ESQ.

AN EXEMPLARY CHRISTIAN, PATRIOT, AND PHILANTHROPIST.

“He was a burning and a shining light:”
—And is he now eclipsed in hopeless night?
No; faith beholds him near the sapphire throne,
Shining more bright than e'er on earth he shone;
While, where created splendour all looks dim,
Heaven's host are glorifying God in him.

If faith's enraptured vision now be true,
And things invisible stand forth to view,
Though eye to eye the' embodied soul can see,
Self-lost amidst unclouded Deity,
He chooses, rather than a seraph's seat,
The lowest place at his Redeemer's feet;
And, with the' eternal weight of glory prest,
Turns, even in paradise, to Christ for rest.

Come we who once beheld his noontide blaze,
And hid before him our diminish'd rays;
Since his translation to a higher sphere,
We may, we must, by our own light appear:
When sun and moon their greater beams resign,
The stars come out; they cannot choose but shine:
With force like his all eyes we cannot strike,
We may not equal him, but may be like:
Nor let the meanest think his lamp too dim,
In a dark world the Lord hath need of him;
By feeble instruments in providence,
God is well pleased his bounties to dispense:
In his economy of grace the same,—
The weakest are almighty in his name.

What though the great, the good, the glorious fall,
He reigns whose kingdom ruleth over all.
—Talk not of talents;—what hast thou to do?
Thy duty, be thy portion five or two;
Talk not of talents;—is thy duty done?
Thou hadst sufficient, were they ten or one.
Lord, what my talents are I cannot tell,
Till thou shalt give me grace to use them well:
That grace impart, the bliss will then be mine,
But all the power and all the glory Thine.

A MESSAGE FROM THE MOON.

[_]

A thought at Exeter, during the great Eclipse of the Sun, May 15. 1836.

The evening star peep'd forth at noon,
To learn what ail'd the sun, her sire,
When, lo! the intervening moon
Plunged her black shadow through his fire,
Of ray by ray his orb bereft,
Till but one slender curve was left,
And that seem'd trembling to expire.

The sickening atmosphere grew dim,
A faint chill breeze crept over all;
As in a swoon, when objects swim
Away from sight,—a thickening pall
Of horror, boding worse to come,
That struck both field and city dumb,
O'er man and brute was felt to fall.

“Avaunt, insatiate fiend!” I cry,—
“Like vampire stealing from its grave
To drain some sleeper's life-springs dry,
Back to thine interlunar cave;
Ere the last glimpse of fountain-light,
Absorpt by thee, bring on a night
From which nor moon nor morn can save.”

While yet I spake, that single beam
(Bent like Apollo's bow half-strung)
Broaden'd and brighten'd;—gleam o'er gleam,
Splendours that out of darkness sprung,
The sun's unveiling disk o'erflow'd,
Till forth in all his strength he rode,
For ever beautiful and young.

Reviving Nature own'd his power;
And joy and mirth, with light and heat,
Music and fragrance, hail'd the hour
When his deliverance was complete:
Aloft again the swallow flew,
The cock at second day-break crew;
When suddenly a voice most sweet,—

A voice as from the ethereal sphere,
Of one unseen yet passing by,
Came with such rapture on mine ear,
My soul sprang up into my eye,

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But nought around could I behold,
No “mortal mixture of earth's mould”
Breathed that enchanting harmony.

“How have I wrong'd thee, angry bard
What evil to your world have done?
That I, the moon, should be debarr'd
From free communion with the sun?
If, while I turn'd on him my face,
Yours was o'ercast a little space,
Already are amends begun.

“The lustre I have gather'd now,
Not to myself I will confine;
Night after night, my crescent brow,
My full and waning globe, shall shine
On yours,—till every spark is spent,
Which for us both to me was lent;
—Thus I fulfil the law divine.

“A nobler sun on thee hath shone,
On thee bestow'd benigner light;
Walk in that light, but not alone,
Like me to darkling eyes give sight:
This is the way God's gifts to use,
First to enjoy them, then diffuse;
—Learn from the moon that lesson right.”

THE PURPLE BEECH.

[_]

On planting a tree at the Mount, near Sheffield; in presence of the resident families. Nov. 3, 1849.

Live long, live well, fair Beechen Tree!
And oh! that I could live like thee,—
Never to lose one moment more,
As I have millions lost before;
Never misspend another lent,
As millions past have been misspent:
Each, in our place, would then fulfil
Our Maker's and our Master's will.

Moments to ages train a tree;
To man they bring Eternity:
Here, as the tree falls, so it lies,
But men from death to judgment rise;
—To meet thy God, thy Saviour, there,
My soul, my soul! prepare, prepare!

FRANKLIN,

THE PRINTER, PHILOSOPHER, AND PATRIOT.

[_]

Written by desire of the Committee appointed to prepare for a National Celebration of the hundred and forty-first anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birthday, at Rochester, New York, on January 18. 1847.

He call'd down lightning from the sky,
And, ere the thunder could reply,
The flash, like inspiration, came,
Heaven's own pure fire through all his frame:
Not the dread bolt, whose sudden stroke
Prostrates the tower, or rends the oak;—
A touch, a pulse, a spark, reveal'd
A secret from all ages seal'd;
One trembling moment, in its flight,
Drew such a train of wondrous light,
That his rapt spirit seem'd to pierce
The mystery of the universe,
And scan the power which, like a soul,—
Informs, expands, and rules the whole,
God's hidden minister, whose will
All Nature's elements fulfil.

Thus standing when the deed was done,
That victory of Science won,
He planted, where his foot had trod,
His conquering spear, the Electric Rod!
A trophy simple and sublime,
A monument defying Time.

That was to him a glorious day,
Whose fame can never pass away;
Philosophy had triumph'd there:
A nobler wreath he lived to share,
He lived a brighter day to see,—
His country by the PRESS made free.

THE PRESS.

“The Press!—What is the Press?” I cried:
When thus a wondrous voice replied;
Most like the multitude of seas,
Speaking at once all languages.

“In me all human knowledge dwells;
The Oracle of Oracles,

356

Past, present, future, I reveal,
Or in oblivion's silence seal;
What I preserve can perish never,
What I forego is lost for ever.

“I speak all dialects; by me
The deaf may hear, the blind may see,
The dumb converse, the dead of old
Communion with the living hold;
All lands are one beneath my rule,
All nations learners in my school;
Men of all ages, everywhere,
Become contemporaries there.

“What is the Press?—'Tis what the tongue
Was to the world when Time was young;
When, by tradition, sire to son
Convey'd whate'er was known or done,—
But fact and fiction so were mix'd,
Their boundaries never could be fix'd.

“What is the Press?—'Tis that which taught,
By hieroglyphic forms of thought,
Lore, from the vulgar proudly hid
Like treasure in a pyramid;
For knowledge then was mystery,
A captive under lock and key,
By priests and princes held in thrall,
Of little use, or none at all,
Till the redoubted ALPHABET
Free their own Great Deliverer set,
At whose command, by simple spells,
They work their mental miracles.

“What is the Press?—'Tis what the pen
Through thrice ten centuries was to men,
When sibyl-leaves lent wings to words,
Or, caged in books, they sang like birds.
But slow the quill, and frail the page;
To write twelve folios asked an age,
And a pet-babe in sport might spoil
The fruits of twenty authors' toil:
A power was wanting to insure
Life to works worthy to endure;
A power the race to multiply
Of intellectual polypi;
—It came, all hardships to redress,
And Truth and Virtue hail'd the PRESS.

“What am I, then?—I am a power
Years cannot waste, nor flames devour,
Nor waters drown, nor tyrants bind;
I am the mirror of man's mind,
In whose serene impassive face
What cannot die on earth you trace;
Not phantom shapes, that come and fly,
But, like the concave of the sky,
In which the stars, by night and day,
Seen or unseen, hold on their way.

“Then think me not that lifeless Frame
Which bears my honourable name;
Nor dwell I in the arm, whose swing
Intelligence from blocks can wring;
Nor in the hand, whose fingers fine
The cunning characters combine;
Nor even the cogitating brain,
Whose cells the germs of thought contain,
Which that quick hand with letters sows,
Like dibbled wheat, in lineal rows,
And that strong arm, like autumn sheaves,
Reaps and binds up in gather'd leaves,
The harvest-home of learned toil
From that dead Frame's well-cultured soil.

“I am not one, nor all, of these;
They are my Types and Images,
The implements with which I work;
In them no secret virtues lurk:
—I am an omnipresent Soul;
I live and move throughout the whole,
And thence, with freedom unconfined
And universal as the wind,
Whose source and issues are unknown,
Felt in its airy flight alone,
All life supplying with its breath,
And where it fails involving death,
I quicken minds from Nature's sloth,
Fashion their forms, sustain their growth;
And when my influence flags or flies,
Matter may live, but spirit dies.

“Myself withdrawn from mortal sight,
I am invisible as light,—
Light, which, revealing all beside,
Itself within itself can hide:
The things of darkness I make bare,
And, nowhere seen, am everywhere.
All that philosophers have sought,
Science discover'd, genius wrought;

357

All that reflective memory stores,
Or rich imagination pours;
All that the wit of man conceives,
All that he wishes, hopes, believes,
All that he loves, or fears, or hates,
All that to heaven and earth relates;
—These are the lessons that I teach
In speaking silence, silent speech.

“Ah! who like me can bless or curse?
What can be better, what be worse,
Than language framed for Paradise,
Or sold to infamy and vice?
—Blest be the man by whom I bless,
But curst be he who wrongs the Press!
The reprobate, in prose or song,
Who wields the glorious power for wrong,
—Wrong to outlast his laurell'd tomb,
And taint the earth till ‘crack-of-doom.’”

May, 1842.

THE GRASSHOPPER.

[_]

Scene—The Derbyshire moors.

Mine is but a summer song,
Merry as the day is long;
Yet, proud man! whoe'er thou be,
Scorn not thou my minstrelsy.
Though monotonous my note,
Can the nightingale's clear throat,
With its swells, and falls, and beats,
Through a wilderness of sweets,
Pour, in strains that never cloy,
More exuberance of joy
Than my tinkling tones reveal
What a grasshopper can feel,
What a grasshopper express
Of an insect's happiness,
Running in, and running o'er,—
Could a giant's heart hold more?
Or all human language tell
More than my one syllable?
How my pleasant moments pass
In this paradise of grass,
Where the heather and the broom
Flower, and breathe their faint perfume;
And the gorse, in green and gold,
All delightful to behold,
In its covert, dense and dark,
Hides my play-mate, name-sake, lark,
Which, when her low note is heard,
Seems a spirit, not a bird;
So bewildering, far and near,
Right and left, it haunts the ear,
While the listener's eye in vain
Hunts the sound through copse and plain.
Here the stone-chat, on her nest,
Lulls her little ones to rest;
There the linnet, for her brood,
Plies her wings in quest of food;
While the goldfinch plucks the down
From the regal thistle's crown;
And the cuckoo's double cry
Fills the hollow of the sky,
Answer'd by the raven's croak
From the lightning-smitten oak.

Where the fairy-tribes of moss
Ankle-deep the marsh emboss,
With their innocent decoys
Lapwings lure marauding boys;
And the rogues, through bog and mire,
Neither dam nor nest acquire,
Either prize which they pursue
Vanishing when most in view:
As, along the self-same place,
Jack-o-lantern's light they chase,
Till the meretricious spark
Leaves them floundering in the dark,

358

Equally by night and day
With false signals led astray.

Here, on berry-bearing shoots,
Autumn trains delicious fruits,
In whose shade the moor-fowl breed,
And upon the vintage feed;
From low crags and broken walls,
To his mate the black-cock calls,
While their new-fledged coveys run,
Unaware of dog and gun.

Feathery ferns, like palm-trees spread
In a forest o'er my head;
Daisies, thyme, white-clover, meet
On the greensward at my feet;
On the rocks the wild briar rose
In its single beauty blows,
With its deepest crimson glows;
Speedwell tinged with heavenly blue,
Eyebright pearl'd with morning dew,
Maiden pansy freak'd with jet,
And her sister violet,
Grace the turf, round whose small blades
Glow-worms light the evening shades.

Where yon glen of shatter'd stones
Seems a valley of dry bones,
Relics of an army slain,
Bleaching on their battle-plain,
Fox-gloves in superb array,
Rank and file, their hosts display;
While their banner'd spears betray
Hidden wealth beneath the soil,
Worthy of the ploughman's toil,
Which already, far and wide,
Presses on the desert's side,
Till the pathless sheep-track yields
Cottage-plots and harvest-fields.

Every element is rife
With intensity of life;
Earth is throng'd with creeping things,
All the air alive with wings,
Gnats, like motes, in dazzling streams,
Gaily people the sunbeams,
Which the swallows, in their play,
Sweep by hecatombs away;
Moths and butterflies, that show
All the colours of heaven's bow,
Flaunt and flutter to and fro;
O'er the pool's pellucid brim
Glossy beetles wheel and skim,
While the water-spider's trace
Scarcely dimples its smooth face.
There, with glittering armour drest,
Plated scales, and helmet-crest,
Dragon-flies, in locust forms,
Sport as harmlessly as worms:
Bees, to store their waxen cells,
Rifle honey-buds and bells,
Provident of winter's need,
Winter, which I never heed:
Ants their commonwealths arrange,
Molehills into mountains change,
And build cities in their wombs,
Palaces at once and tombs,
Where, as in the face of day,
Generations pass away.

But, could vulgar optics scan,
Hid from uninquiring man,
Nature's world invisible,
Wonders, which no tongue can tell,
(Microscopic beings, more
Than the sands on ocean's shore,
Suddenly from darkness brought,
Like the universe from nought,)
Seeing would extinguish sight,
Blinded by excess of light!

Now, of things that creep or fly,
Which is happier than I?
Deem not, then, my time misspent,
Idle and yet innocent,
Though I dance and sing and play
Through my summer-holyday;
All my blessings I enjoy,
All my faculties employ;
Few and feeble these may be,
Yet the eye of Deity
Condescends to look on me,
While by instinct I fulfill
All his manifested will.
—If an insect's life be such,
Reader, canst thou say as much?

June, 1846.

359

EMBLEMS.

An evening cloud, in brief suspense,
Was hither driven and thither;
It came I saw not whence,
It went, I knew not whither:
I watch'd it changing, in the wind,
Size, semblance, form, and hue,
Lessening and fading, till behind
It left no speck on heaven's pure blue.

Amidst the marshall'd host of night
Shone a new star supremely bright;
With marvelling eye, well pleased to err,
I hail'd that prodigy;—anon,
It fell,—it fell like Lucifer,
A flash,—a blaze,—a train,—'twas gone;
And then I sought in vain its place,
Throughout the infinite of space.

Dew-drops, at day-spring, deck'd a line
Of gossamer so frail, so fine,
A gnat's wing shook it:—round and clear
As if by fairy-fingers strung,
Like orient pearls at beauty's ear,
In trembling brilliancy they hung
Upon a rosy briar, whose bloom
Shed nectar round them, and perfume.

Ere long exhaled in limpid air,
Some mingled with the breath of morn,
While some slid singly, here and there,
Like tears by their own weight down borne;
At length the film itself collapsed, and where
The pageant glitter'd, lo! a naked thorn.

What are the living?—hark! a sound
From grave and cradle crying,
By earth and ocean echoed round,—
“The living are the dying!”

From infancy to utmost age,
What is man's scene of pilgrimage?
The passage to death's portal!
The moment we begin to be,
We enter on the agony,—
The dead are the immortal;
They live not on expiring breath,
They only are exempt from death.

Cloud-atoms, sparkles of a falling star,
Dew-drops on gossamer, all are:
What can the state beyond us be?
Life?—Death?—Ah! no, a greater mystery;
What thought hath not conceived, ear heard, eye seen;
Perfect existence from a point begun;
Part of what God's eternity hath been,—
Whole immortality belongs to none,
But Him, the First, the Last, the Only One.

CORONATION ODE FOR QUEEN VICTORIA.

The sceptre in a maiden-hand,
The reign of beauty and of youth,
Should wake to gladness all the land,
Where love is loyalty and truth:
Rule, Victoria, rule the free,
Hearts and hands we offer thee.

Not by the tyrant law of might,
But by the grace of God we own,
And by the people's voice, thy right
To sit upon thy fathers' throne:
Rule, Victoria, rule the free,
Heaven defend and prosper thee.

Thee, isles and continents obey;
Kindreds and nations nigh and far
Behold the bound-marks of thy sway,
—The morning and the evening star:
Rule, Victoria, rule the free,
Millions rest their hopes on thee.

No slave within thine empire breathe!
Before thy steps oppression fly!
The lamb and lion play beneath
The meek dominion of thine eye!
Rule, Victoria, rule the free,
Bonds and shackles yield to thee.

Still spreading influence more benign,
Light to thy realms of darkness send,
Till none shall name a God but thine,
None at an idol-altar bend:
Rule, Victoria, rule the free,
Till all tongues shall pray for thee.

360

At home, abroad, by sea, on shore,
Blessings to thee and thine increase;
The sword and cannon rage no more,
The whole world hail thee Queen of Peace:
Rule, Victoria, rule the free,
And the' Almighty rule o'er thee!

1838.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY,

On the Twenty-eighth of June, 1838.

TO THE QUEEN.

The orb and sceptre in thy hands they placed,
On thine anointed head a crown of gold;
A purple robe thy virgin form embraced;
Enthroned thou wert, all glorious to behold;
Before thee lay the Book of God unroll'd;
Thy tongue pronounced, thy pen the covenant traced,
Which men and angels witness'd;—young and old,
Peers, princes, statesmen, birth and beauty, graced
That scene of tombs and trophies.—

All is fled;
Like life itself, the living pass'd away,
And none that met remain'd there but the dead!
—Thence to thy closet didst thou not retreat,
In secret to thy Heavenly Father pray,
And cast thyself and kingdom at his feet?

A BRIDAL BENISON.

ADDRESSED TO MY FRIENDS, MR. AND MRS. B.

Ocean and land the globe divide,
Summer and winter share the year,
Darkness and light walk side by side,
And earth and heaven are always near.

Though each be good and fair alone,
And glorious, in its time and place,
In all when fitly pair'd, is shown
More of their Maker's power and grace.

Then may the union of young hearts,
So early and so well begun,
Like sea and shore, in all their parts,
Appear as twain, but be as one.

Be it like summer; may they find
Bliss, beauty, hope, where'er they roam:
Be it like winter, when confined,
Peace, comfort, happiness at home.

Like day and night,—sweet interchange
Of care, enjoyment, action, rest;
Absence nor coldness e'er estrange
Hearts by unfailing love possest.

Like earth's horizon, be their scene
Of life a rich and various ground,
And, whether lowering or serene,
Heaven all above it and around.

When land and ocean, day and night,
When time and nature cease to be;
Let their inheritance be light,
Their union an eternity.

1820.

THE BLACKBIRD.

[_]

Those who are apt to awake early on spring mornings, in rural neighbourhoods, must often have been charmed with the solitary song of the Blackbird, when all beside is still, and the Lark himself is yet on the ground. At evening, too, his broad and homely strain, different from that of every other, and chiming in at intervals with the universal chorus of wild throats, is known from infancy by all who have been accustomed to walk abroad in the hour of twilight. The yellow bill and glossy plumage of the same conspicuous bird, when he flits from hedge to tree, or across a meadow, are equally familiar to the eye of such; nor less to their ear is the chuckling note with which he bolts out of a bush before the startled passenger, who has unconsciously disturbed him from his perch.

MORNING.
Golden bill! Golden bill!
Lo! the peep of day;
All the air is cool and still,
From the elm-tree on the hill,
Chant away:
While the moon drops down the west,
Like thy mate upon her nest,

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And the stars before the sun
Melt like snow-flakes, one by one;
Let thy loud and welcome lay
Pour along
Few notes but strong.

EVENING.
Jet-bright wing! jet-bright wing!
Flit across the sunset glade;
Lying there in wait to sing—
Listen with thy head awry,
Keeping time with twinkling eye,
While, from all the woodland shade,
Birds of every plume and note
Strain the throat,
Till both hill and valley ring,
And the warbled minstrelsy,
Ebbing, flowing, like the sea,
Claims brief interludes from thee:
Then, with simple swell and fall,
Breaking beautiful through all,
Let thy Pan-like pipe repeat
Few notes but sweet.

Askern, near Doncaster, 1835.

THE MYRTLE.

Dark-green and gemm'd with flowers of snow,
With close uncrowded branches spread,
Not proudly high, nor meanly low,
A graceful myrtle rear'd its head.

Its mantle of unwithering leaf
Seem'd, in my contemplative mood,
Like silent joy, or patient grief,
The symbol of pure gratitude.

Still life, methought, is thine, fair tree!
—Then pluck'd a sprig, and, while I mused,
With idle hands, unconsciously,
The delicate small foliage bruised.

Odours, at my rude touch set free,
Escaped from all their secret cells;
Quick life, I cried, is thine, fair tree!
In thee a soul of fragrance dwells:—

Which outrage, wrongs, nor wounds destroy,
But wake its sweetness from repose;
Ah! could I thus Heaven's gifts employ,
Worth seen, worth hidden, thus disclose:

In health, with unpretending grace,
In wealth, with meekness and with fear,
Through every season wear one face,
And be in truth what I appear.

Then, should affliction's chastening rod
Bruise my frail frame, or break my heart,
Life, a sweet sacrifice to God,
Out-breathed like incense would depart.

The Captain of Salvation thus,
When like a lamb to slaughter led,
Was by the Father's will, for us,
Himself through suffering purified.

1837.

DALE ABBEY.

[_]

A solitary arch in the middle of an open meadow, and a small oratory more ancient than the monastery itself, now the chapel of ease for the hamlet, are alone conspicuous of all the magnificent structures which once occupied this ground. The site is about five miles south-east from Derby.

I.

The glory hath departed from thee, Dale!
Thy gorgeous pageant of monastic pride,
—A power that once the power of kings defied,
Which truth and reason might in vain assail,
In mock humility usurp'd this vale,
And lorded o'er the region far and wide;
Darkness to light, evil to good allied,
Had wrought a charm, which made all hearts to quail.

What gave that power dominion on this ground,
Age after age?—the Word of God was bound!—
At length the mighty captive burst from thrall,
O'erturn'd the spiritual bastile in its march,
And left of ancient grandeur this sole arch,
Whose stones cry out,—“Thus Babylon herself shall fall.”

362

II.

More beautiful in ruin than in prime,
Methinks this frail yet firm memorial stands,
The work of heads laid low, and buried hands:
—Now slowly mouldering to the touch of time,
It looks abroad, unconsciously sublime,
Where sky above and earth beneath expands:
—And yet a nobler relic still demands
The grateful homage of a passing rhyme.

Beneath the cliff yon humble roof behold!
Poor as our Saviour's birthplace; yet a fold,
Where the good shepherd, in this quiet vale,
Gathers his flock, and feeds them, as of old,
With bread from heaven:—I change my note;—all hail!
The glory of the Lord is risen upon thee, Dale!

1830.

THE WILD PINK

ON THE WALL OF MALMESBURY ABBEY.

(Dianthus Cheirophyllus.)

[_]

On seeing a solitary specimen near the Great Archway, and being told that the plant was not to be found elsewhere in the neighbourhood.

The hand that gives the angels wings,
And plants the forest by its power,
O'er mountain, vale, and champaign flings
The seed of every herb and flower;
Nor forests stand, nor angels fly,
More at God's will, more in his eye,
Than the green blade strikes down its root,
Expands its bloom, and yields its fruit.

Beautiful daughter of a line
Of unrecorded ancestry!
What herald's scroll could vie with thine,
Where monarchs trace their pedigree?
Thy first progenitor had birth
While man was yet unquicken'd earth,
And thy last progeny may wave
Its flag o'er man's last-open'd grave.

Down from the day of Eden lost,
A generation in a year,
Unscathed by heat, unnipt by frost,
True to the sovereign sun, appear
The units of thy transient race,
Each in its turn, each in its place,
To make the world a little while
Lovelier and sweeter with its smile.

How camest thou hither? from what soil,
Where those that went before thee grew,
Exempt from suffering, care, and toil,
Clad by the sun-beams, fed with dew?
Tell me on what strange spot of ground
Thy rock-born kindred yet are found,
And I the carrier-dove will be
To bring them wondrous news of thee.

How, here, by wren or red-breast dropt,
Thy parent germ was left behind,
Or, in its trackless voyage stopt,
While sailing on the' autumnal wind,
Not rudely wreck'd, but safely thrown
On yonder ledge of quarried stone,
Where the blithe swallow builds and sings,
And the pert sparrow pecks his wings.

Then, by some glimpse of moonshine sped,
Queen Mab, methinks, alighting there,
A span-long hand-breadth terrace spread,
A fairy-garden hung in air,
Of lichens, moss, and earthy mould,
To rival Babylon's of old,
In which that single seed she nurst,
Till forth its embryo-wilding burst.

Now, like that solitary star,
Last in the morn's resplendent crown,
Or first emerging, faint and far,
When evening-glooms the sky embrown,

363

Thy beauty shines without defence,
Yet safe from gentle violence,
While infant-hands and maiden-eyes
Covet in vain the tempting prize.

Yon arch, beneath whose giant-span
Thousands of passing feet have trod
Upon the dust that once was man,
Gather'd around the house of God,
—That arch which seems to mock decay,
Fix'd as the firmament to-day,
Is fading like the rainbow's form,
Through the slow stress of Time's long storm.

But thou may'st boast perennial prime;
—The blade, the stem, the bud, the flower,
Not ruin'd, but renew'd, by Time,
Beyond the great destroyer's power,
Like day and night, like spring and fall,
Alternate, on the abbey-wall,
May come and go, from year to year,
And vanish but to re-appear.

Nay, when in utter wreck are strown
Arch, buttress, all this mighty mass,
Crumbled, and crush'd, and overgrown,
With thorns and thistles, reeds and grass,
While Nature thus the waste repairs,
Thine offspring, Nature's endless heirs,
Earth's ravaged fields may re-possess,
And plant once more the wilderness.

So be it:—but the sun is set,
My song must end, and I depart;
Yet thee I never will forget,
But bear thee in my inmost heart,
Where this shall thy memorial be,
—If God so cares for thine and thee,
How can I doubt that love divine
Which watches over me and mine?

1838.

TRANSMIGRATIONS.

A hail-stone, from the cloud set free,
Shot, slanting coastward, o'er the sea,
And thus, as eastern tales relate,
Lamented its untimely fate:
“Last moment born, condemn'd in this,
The next absorpt in yon abyss;
'Twere better ne'er to know the light,
Than see and perish at first sight.”
—An oyster heard, and, as it fell,
Welcomed the outcast to her shell,
Where, meekly suffering that “sea-change,”
It grew to “something rich and strange,”
And thence became the brightest gem
That decks the Sultan's diadem,
Turn'd from a particle of ice
Into a pearl of priceless price.
—Thus can the power that rules o'er all
Exalt the humble by their fall.

A dew-drop, in the flush of morn,
Sparkled upon a blossom'd thorn,
Reflecting from its mirror pure
The sun himself in miniature.
Dancing for gladness on the spray,
It miss'd its hold, and slid away;
A lark just mounting up to sing,
Caught the frail trembler on his wing,
But, borne aloft through gathering clouds,
Left it entangled with their shrouds:
Lost and for ever lost it seem'd,
When suddenly the sun forth gleam'd,
And round the showery vapours threw
A rainbow,—where our drop of dew
'Midst the prismatic hues of heaven
Outshone the beams of all the seven.
When virtue falls, 'tis not to die,
But be translated to the sky.

A babe into existence came,
A feeble, helpless, suffering frame;
It breathed on earth a little while,
Then vanish'd, like a tear, a smile,
That springs and falls,—that peers and parts,
The grief, the joy of loving hearts:
The grave received the body dead
Where all that live must find their bed.
Sank then the soul to dust and gloom,
Worms and corruption in the tomb?
No,—'midst the rainbow round the throne,
Caught up to paradise, it shone,
And yet shall shine, until the day
When heaven and earth must pass away.
And those that sleep in Jesus here
With Him in glory shall appear.

364

Then shall that soul and body meet;
And when His jewels are complete,
'Midst countless millions, form a gem
In the Redeemer's diadem,
Wherewith, as thorns his brows once bound,
He for his sufferings shall be crown'd;
Raised from the ignominious tree
To the right-hand of Majesty,
Head over all created things,
The Lord of lords, the King of kings.

1839.

SONNET.

IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF GABRIELLO FIAMMA.

ON THE SEPULTURE OF CHRIST.

Where is the aspect more than heaven serene,
Which saints and angels view'd with pure delight?
The meekness and the majesty of mien,
That won the yielding heart with gentle might?

Where is the voice with harmony replete,
That changed to love the most obdurate will?
The eye, whose glance so ravishingly sweet,
The soul with joy unspeakable could fill?

Where is the hand that crush'd our direst foe,
And Satan's powers in chains of darkness bound?
Where is the servant's humble form below,
In which the eternal Son of God was found?

—Lo! where his pilgrimage of mercy ends:
What glory here into the grave descends!

1821.

SONNET.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF GIOVAMBATTISTA ZAPPI.

ON JUDITH RETURNING TO BETHULIA WITH THE HEAD OF HOLOFERNES IN HER HAND.

She held the head all-horrible with gore;
Nor of the woman in that act was seen
Aught save the' alluring locks and beauteous mien:
“Hail, heroine, hail!” all voices cried before.

At the glad news, the damsels came with speed;
Some kiss'd her feet and some her garment's hem,
None her right-hand, for terrible to them
Was the remembrance of that fatal deed.

A hundred prophets sang the matron's fame;
“Fly round the world, thine everlasting name!
The sun through all his march shall tell thy story.”
Great from that dread achievement though she rose,
Greater she stood at this triumphant close,
For she was humble in the height of glory.

1825.

SONNET.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF EUSTACHIO MANFREDI.

FOR A NUN, ON TAKING THE VEIL.

As when a lion, mad with hunger, springs
To seize the unguarded shepherd by surprise,
Fear in a moment lends the victim wings;
To some broad elm or ancient oak he flies,
Climbs for his life, amidst the branches cowers,
And sees the' infuriate brute, with ramping paws,
Leap at the trunk, and, wearying all his powers,
Spurn the loose sand, and grind his foaming jaws.

So she, whom hell's fierce lion mark'd for prey,
Flies to the tree of life's extended arms,
The cross of Calvary,—which, night and day,
Yields shade, and rest, and refuge from alarms;
Whence she beholds the baffled fiend again,
Gnashing his teeth, slink back to his old den.

365

SONNET.

[_]

From Petrarch: in which the poet laments the death of his friend Signore Stefano Colonna, occurring soon after that of Laura. In the original there is a symbolical allusion to the names of both,—the one as a Column, the other a Laurel.

Fall'n is the lofty Column, and uptorn
The verdant Laurel, in whose shade my mind
Found peace I ne'er again may hope to find,
Though round the heavens o'er earth and ocean borne:
—O Death! how hast thou me of comfort shorn!
My double treasure to the grave consign'd,
Which made life sweet!—and wealth with power combined
Can ne'er restore to soothe my thought forlorn.

What can I do, if fate have so decreed,
But let my sorrowing heart in secret bleed,
My brow be sad, mine eyes o'erflow with tears?
—O Life! so beautiful to look upon,
How, in a moment's space, for ever gone
Is all we toil to gain through many years!

“A CERTAIN DISCIPLE.”
[_]

Acts, ix. 10.

ON THE PORTRAIT OF THE REV. W. M.

Long may his living countenance express
The air and lineaments of holiness,
And, as from theme to theme his thoughts shall range
In high discourse, its answering aspects change!
—Like Abraham's, faith's sublimest pledge display,
When bound upon the altar Isaac lay;
—Kindle like Jacob's, when he felt his power
With God, and wrestled till the day-break hour;
—Shine like the face of Moses, when he came,
All radiant, from the mount that burn'd with flame;
—Flash like Elisha's, when, his sire in view,
He caught the mantle and the spirit too;
—Darken like Jonah's, when with “Woe!” he went
Through trembling Nineveh, yet cry “Repent!”
—Brighten like Stephen's, when his foes amazed,
As if an angel stood before them, gazed;
And like that martyr's, at his latest breath,
Reflect his Saviour's image full in death.

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Yea, ever in the true disciple's mien
His meek and lowly Master must be seen,
And in the fervent preacher's boldest word
That voice which was the voice of mercy heard:
—So may the love which drew, as with a chain,
The Son of God from heaven, his heart constrain,
Draw him from earth, and fix his hopes above,
While with the self-same chain, that chain of love,
In new captivity, he strives to bind
Sin's ransom'd slaves, his brethren of mankind;
Labouring and suffering still, whate'er the cost,
By life or death, to seek and save the lost;
That, following Christ in pure simplicity,
As He was in this world, himself may be,
Till, call'd with Him in glory to sit down,
And with the crown then given the Giver crown.

1834.

STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF THE LATE REV. THOMAS RAWSON TAYLOR, OF BRADFORD, IN YORKSHIRE

[_]

A young minister of great promise, and a poet of no mean order, whose verses, entitled “Communion with the Dead,” on the removal in early life of a sister, would endear and perpetuate the remembrance of both, were they as generally known as they deserve to be. The survivor died on the 7th of March 1835, aged 28 years.

Millions of eyes have wept o'er frames
Once living, beautiful and young,
Now dust and ashes, and their names
Extinct on earth, because unsung:
Yet song itself hath but its day,
Like the swan's dirge,—a dying lay.

A dying lay I would rehearse,
In memory of one whose breath
Pour'd forth a stream of such sweet verse
As might have borne away from death
The trophy of a sister's name,
—Winning at once and giving fame.

But all is mortal here,—that song
Pass'd like the breeze, which steals from flowers
Their fragrance, yet repays the wrong
With dew-drops, shaken down in showers;
Ah! like those flowers with dew-drops fed,
They sprang, they blossom'd, they are dead.

The poet (spared a little while)
Follow'd the sister all too soon;
The hectic rose that flush'd his smile
Grew pale and wither'd long ere noon;
In youth's exulting prime he gave
What death demanded to the grave.

But that which death nor grave could seize,—
His soul,—into his Saviour's hands
(Who by the cross's agonies
Redeem'd a people from all lands)
He yielded, till “that day” to keep,
And then like Stephen fell asleep.

“That day” will come; meanwhile weep not,
O ye that loved him! and yet more
Love him for grief that “he is not:”—
Rather with joy let eyes run o'er,
And warm hearts hope his face to see
Where 'tis for ever “good to be.”

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF ROWLAND HODGSON, ESQ., OF SHEFFIELD

[_]

Who departed this life January 27. 1837, aged 63 years.— Through a long period of severe bodily affliction, aggravated in the sequel by loss of sight, he signally exemplified the Christian graces of faith, hope, and charity, with humble resignation to the will of God. He had been from his youth one of the most active, liberal, and unwearied supporters of benevolent and evangelical institutions throughout this neighbourhood and elsewhere, in foreign lands as well as at home. The writer of these lines had the happiness to be his travelling companion on annual visits and temporary sojourns, which they made together in many parts of the kingdom, from the autumn of 1817 to the same season of 1836.

Part I.

Go where thy heart had gone before,
And thy heart's treasure lay;
Go, and with open'd eye explore
Heaven's uncreated day:
Light in the Lord, light's fountain, see,
And light in Him for ever be.

367

But darkness thou hast left behind;
No sign, nor sight, nor sound,
At home, abroad, of thee I find
Where thou wert ever found;
Then gaze I on thy vacant place,
Till my soul's eye meets thy soul's face:—

As, many a time, quite through the veil
Of flesh 'twas wont to shine,
When thy meek aspect, saintly pale,
In kindness turn'd to mine,
And the quench'd eye its film forgot,
Look'd full on me,—yet saw me not!

Then, through the body's dim eclipse,
What humble accents broke,
While, breathing prayer or praise, thy lips
Of light within thee spoke!
'Midst Egypt's darkness to be felt,
Thy mind in its own Goshen dwelt.

Nor less in days of earlier health,
When life to thee was dear,
Borne on the flowing tide of wealth,
To me this truth was clear,
That hope in Christ was thy best health,
Riches that make not wings thy wealth.

When frequent sickness bow'd thy head,
And every labouring breath,
As with a heavier impulse, sped
Thy downward course to death,
Faith falter'd not that hope to show,
Though words, like life's last drops, fell slow.

How often when I turn'd away,
As having seen the last
Of thee on earth, my heart would say,—
“When my few days are past,
Such strength be mine, though nature shrink,
The cup my Father gives, to drink!”

I saw thee slumbering in thy shroud,
As yonder moon I view,
Now glimmering through a snow-white cloud,
'Midst heaven's eternal blue;—
I saw thee lower'd into the tomb,
Like that cloud deepening into gloom.

All darkness thou hast left behind;
—It was not thee they wound
In dreary grave-clothes, and consign'd
To perish in the ground;
'Twas but thy mantle, dropt in sight,
When thou wert vanishing in light.

That mantle, in earth's wardrobe lain,
A frail but precious trust,
Thou wilt reclaim and wear again,
When, freed from worms and dust,
The bodies of the saints shall be
Their robes of immortality.

Part II.

These fragments of departed years,
I gather up and store,
Since thou—in mercy to our tears
And prayers—art heal'd no more.
In that last war was no discharge;
—Yet walks thy ransom'd soul at large.

For what, my friend, was death to thee?
A king? a conqueror?—No;
Death, swallow'd up in victory,
Himself a captive foe,
Was sent in chains to thy release,
By Him who on the cross made peace.

When year by year, on pilgrimage,
We journey'd side by side,
And pitch'd and struck, from stage to stage,
Our tents, had we one guide?
One aim?—are all our meetings past?
Must our last parting be our last?

Nay, God forbid!—if, hand and heart,
On earth we loved to roam,
—Where once to meet is ne'er to part,
In heaven's eternal home,
Our Father's house, not made with hands,
May we renew our friendship's bands!

Thus, as I knew thee well and long,
Thy private worth be told:
What thou wert more, affection's song
Presumes not to unfold:
Thy works of faith, and zeal of love,
Are they not register'd above?

368

Are they not register'd below?
—If few their praise record,
Yet, in the judgment, all shall know
Thou didst them to thy Lord;
For 'twas thy soul's delight to cheer
The least of all His brethren here.

Though less than even the least of these
Thou didst thyself esteem,
Thou wert a flower-awakening breeze,
A meadow-watering stream:
The breeze unseen its odours shed,
The stream unheard its bounty spread.

What art thou now?—Methinks for thee
Heaven brightens round its King;
New beams of the Divinity
New-landing spirits bring,
As God on each his image seals,
And ray by ray Himself reveals.

While ray by ray those thronging lines
To one great centre tend,
Fulness of grace and glory shines
In Christ, their source and end,
To show, where all perfections meet,
The orb of Deity complete.

Part III.

So rest in peace, thou blessed soul!
Where sin and sorrow end;
So may I follow to the goal,
—Not thee, not thee, my friend!
But Him, whom thou, through joy and woe,
Thyself didst follow on to know.

Faint yet pursuing, I am strong,
Whene'er His steps I trace;
Else, slow of heart, and prone to wrong,
I yet may lose the race,
If on thy course I fix mine eye,
And Him in thee not glorify.

The wild, the mountain-top, the sea,
The throng'd highway he trode,
The path to quiet Bethany,
And Calvary's dolorous road:
Where He, then, leads me must be right;
—I walk by faith, and not by sight.

THE END.