The complete poetical works of Thomas Campbell :: :: University of Virginia Library

Adieu the woods and waters' side,
Imperial Danube's rich domain!
Adieu the grotto, wild and wide,
The rocks abrupt and grassy plain!
For pallid Autumn once again
Hath swelled each torrent of the hill;
Her clouds collect, her shadows sail,
And watery winds that sweep the vale
Grow loud and louder still.

But not the storm dethroning fast
Yon monarch oak of massy pile,
Nor river roaring to the blast
Around its dark and desert isle,
Nor church-bell tolling to beguile

In Catholic countries you often hear the church bells rung to propitiate Heaven during thunder-storms.

The cloud-born thunder passing by—
Can sound in discord to my soul:
Roll on, ye mighty waters, roll!
And rage, thou darkened sky!

Thy blossoms now no longer bright,
Thy withered woods no longer green,
Yet, Eldurn shore, with dark delight
I visit thy unlovely scene!
For many a sunset hour serene

228

My steps have trod thy mellow dew,
When his green light the glow-worm gave,
When Cynthia from the distant wave
Her twilight anchor drew,

And ploughed, as with a swelling sail,
The billowy clouds and starry sea:
Then—while thy hermit nightingale
Sang on his fragrant apple-tree—
Romantic, solitary, free,
The visitant of Eldurn's shore
On such a moonlight mountain strayed
As echoed to the music made
By Druid harps of yore.

Around thy savage hills of oak,
Around thy waters bright and blue,
No hunter's horn the silence broke,
No dying shriek thine echo knew;
But safe, sweet Eldurn woods, to you
The wounded wild deer ever ran,
Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave,
Whose very rocks a shelter gave
From blood-pursuing man.

Oh, heart effusions that arose
From nightly wanderings cherished here!
To him who flies from many woes
Even homeless deserts can be dear!
The last and solitary cheer
Of those that own no earthly home,
Say—is it not, ye banished race,
In such a loved and lonely place
Companionless to roam?

229

Yes, I have loved thy wild abode,
Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore!
Where scarce the woodman finds a road,
And scarce the fisher plies an oar
For man's neglect I love thee more,—
That art nor avarice intrude
To tame thy torrent's thunder-shock,
Or prune thy vintage of the rock,
Magnificently rude.

Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud
Its milky bosom to the bee;
Unheeded falls along the flood
Thy desolate and agèd tree.
Forsaken scene, how like to thee
The fate of unbefriended Worth!
Like thine her fruit dishonoured falls;
Like thee in solitude she calls
A thousand treasures forth.

O silent spirit of the place,
If, lingering with the ruined year,
Thy hoary form and awful face
I yet might watch and worship here—
Thy storm were music to mine ear,
Thy wildest walk a shelter given
Sublimer thoughts on earth to find,
And share with no unhallowed mind
The majesty of heaven.

What though the bosom friends of Fate,
Prosperity's unweanèd brood,
Thy consolations cannot rate,
O self-dependent solitude!
Yet with a spirit unsubdued,

230

Though darkened by the clouds of care,
To worship thy congenial gloom
A pilgrim to the Prophet's tomb
The Friendless shall repair.

On him the world hath never smiled,
Or looked but with accusing eye;
All-silent goddess of the wild,
To thee that misanthrope shall fly!
I hear his deep soliloquy,
I mark his proud but ravaged form,
As stern he wraps his mantle round,
And bids on winter's bleakest ground
Defiance to the storm.

Peace to his banished heart, at last,
In thy dominions shall descend,
And, strong as beechwood in the blast,
His spirit shall refuse to bend;
Enduring life without a friend,
The world and falsehood left behind,
Thy votary shall bear elate
(Triumphant o'er opposing Fate)
His dark inspirèd mind.

But dost thou, Folly, mock the muse
A wanderer's mountain walk to sing,
Who shuns a warring world, nor woos
The vulture cover of its wing?
Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing,
Back to the fostering world beguiled
To waste in self-consuming strife
The loveless brotherhood of life,
Reviling and reviled!

231

Away, thou lover of the race
That hither chased yon weeping deer!
If Nature's all-majestic face
More pitiless than man's appear,
Or if the wild winds seem more drear
Than man's cold charities below,
Behold around his peopled plains,
Where'er the social savage reigns,
Exuberance of woe!

His art and honours wouldst thou seek,
Embossed on grandeur's giant walls?
Or hear his moral thunders speak
Where senates light their airy halls,
Where man his brother man enthralls,
Or sends his whirlwind warrant forth
To rouse the slumbering fiends of war,
To dye the blood-warm waves afar,
And desolate the earth?

From clime to clime pursue the scene,
And mark in all thy spacious way
Where'er the tyrant man has been,
There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay.
In wilds and woodlands far away
She builds her solitary bower,
Where only anchorites have trod,
Or friendless men to worship God
Have wandered for an hour.

In such a far forsaken vale—
And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine—
Afflicted nature shall inhale
Heaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine:
No longer wish, no more repine

232

For man's neglect or woman's scorn;
Then wed thee to an exile's lot,
For, if the world hath loved thee not,
Its absence may be borne.

THE LAST MAN

[_]

(First published in the New Monthly Magazine in 1823)

All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The Sun himself must die,
Before this mortal shall assume
Its Immortality!
I saw a vision in my sleep
That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of Time!
I saw the last of human mould
That shall Creation's death behold.
As Adam saw her prime!

The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,
The Earth with age was wan,
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man!
Some had expired in fight,—the brands
Still rusted in their bony hands;
In plague and famine some!
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!

233

Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood
As if a storm passed by,
Saying, ‘We are twins in death, proud Sun!
Thy face is cold, thy race is run,
'Tis Mercy bids thee go;
For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,
That shall no longer flow.

‘What though beneath thee man put forth
His pomp, his pride, his skill,
And arts that made fire, flood, and earth
The vassals of his will?
Yet mourn I not thy parted sway,
Thou dim discrownèd king of day:
For all those trophied arts
And triumphs that beneath thee sprang
Healed not a passion or a pang
Entailed on human hearts.

‘Go, let oblivion's curtain fall
Upon the stage of men,
Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life's tragedy again.
Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh upon the rack
Of pain anew to writhe—
Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred,
Or mown in battle by the sword
Like grass beneath the scythe.

‘Even I am weary in yon skies
To watch thy fading fire;
Test of all sumless agonies,
Behold not me expire!

234

My lips that speak thy dirge of death—
Their rounded gasp and gargling breath
To see thou shalt not boast;
The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall,—
The majesty of Darkness shall
Receive my parting ghost!

‘This spirit shall return to Him
That gave its heavenly spark;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself are dark!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recalled to breath
Who captive led captivity,
Who robbed the grave of Victory,
And took the sting from Death!

‘Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste
To drink this last and bitter cup
Of grief that man shall taste—
Go, tell the night that hides thy face
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race
On Earth's sepulchral clod
The darkening universe defy
To quench his immortality
Or shake his trust in God!’

235

TO THE RAINBOW

[_]

(Written in 1819)

Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky
When storms prepare to part,
I ask not proud Philosophy
To teach me what thou art.

Still seem as to my childhood's sight—
A midway station given
For happy spirits to alight
Betwixt the earth and heaven.

Can all that optics teach unfold
Thy form to please me so
As when I dreamt of gems and gold
Hid in thy radiant bow?

When Science from Creation's face
Enchantment's veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws!

And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams,
But words of the Most High,
Have told why first thy robe of beams
Was woven in the sky.

When o'er the green undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's gray fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign!

And, when its yellow lustre smiled
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child
To bless the bow of God.

236

Methinks, thy jubilee to keep
The first-made anthem rang
On earth delivered from the deep,
And the first poet sang.

Nor ever shall the Muse's eye
Unraptured greet thy beam:
Theme of primeval prophecy,
Be still the poet's theme!

The earth to thee her incense yields,
The lark thy welcome sings,
When glittering in the freshened fields
The snowy mushroom springs.

How glorious is thy girdle cast
O'er mountain, tower, and town,
Or mirrored in the ocean vast
A thousand fathoms down!

As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam;

For, faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,
Nor lets the type grow pale with age
That first spoke peace to man.

237

A DREAM

[_]

(First published in 1824)

Well may sleep present us fictions,
Since our waking moments teem
With such fanciful convictions
As make life itself a dream.
Half our daylight faith's a fable;
Sleep disports with shadows too,
Seeming in their turn as stable
As the world we wake to view.
Ne'er by day did reason's mint
Give my thoughts a clearer print
Of assured reality
Than was left by phantasy,
Stamped and coloured on my sprite,
In a dream of yesternight.

In a bark, methought, lone steering,
I was cast on ocean's strife;
This, 'twas whispered in my hearing,
Meant the sea of life.
Sad regrets from past existence
Came, like gales of chilling breath;
Shadowed in the forward distance
Lay the land of death.
Now seeming more, now less remote,
On that dim-seen shore, methought,
I beheld two hands a space
Slow unshroud a spectre's face;
And my flesh's hair upstood,—
'Twas mine own similitude.

238

But my soul revived at seeing
Ocean, like an emerald spark,
Kindle, while an air-dropt being
Smiling steered my bark.
Heaven-like, yet he looked as human
As supernal beauty can,
More compassionate than woman,
Lordly more than man.
And, as some sweet clarion's breath
Stirs the soldier's scorn of death,
So his accents bade me brook
The spectre's eyes of icy look,
Till it shut them, turned its head
Like a beaten foe, and fled.

‘Types not this,’ I said, ‘fair spirit!
That my death-hour is not come?
Say, what days shall I inherit?
Tell my soul their sum.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘yon phantom's aspect,
Trust me, would appal thee worse,
Held in clearly measured prospect:
Ask not for a curse!
Make not, for I overhear
Thine unspoken thoughts as clear
As thy mortal ear could catch
The close-brought tickings of a watch—
Make not the untold request
That's now revolving in thy breast.

‘'Tis to live again, remeasuring
Youth's years like a scene rehearsed,
In thy second life-time treasuring
Knowledge from the first.

239

Hast thou felt, poor self-deceiver!
Life's career so void of pain
As to wish its fitful fever
New begun again?
Could experience, ten times thine,
Pain from being disentwine—
Threads by fate together spun?
Could thy flight heaven's lightning shun?
No, nor could thy foresight's glance
'Scape the myriad shafts of chance.

‘Would'st thou bear again love's trouble?
Friendship's death-dissevered ties?
Toil to grasp or miss the bubble
Of ambition's prize?
Say thy life's new guided action
Flowed from virtue's fairest springs—
Still would envy and detraction
Double not their stings?
Worth itself is but a charter
To be mankind's distinguished martyr.’
I caught the moral, and cried, ‘Hail!
Spirit! let us onward sail,
Envying, fearing, hating none—
Guardian Spirit, steer me on!’

240

EXILE OF ERIN

[_]

(Written in 1800)

There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin—
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:
For his country he sighed when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.
But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of ‘Erin go bragh!’

‘Sad is my fate!’ said the heart-broken stranger;
‘The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger;
A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again in the green sunny bowers
Where my forefathers lived shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of “Erin go bragh!”

‘Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,
In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;
But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,
And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!
Oh cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me
In a mansion of peace—where no perils can chase me?
Never again shall my brothers embrace me?
They die to defend me, or live to deplore!

241

‘Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild-wood?
Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall?
Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?
And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all?
Oh! my sad heart long abandoned by pleasure!
Why did it dote on a fast-fading treasure?
Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.

‘Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,
One dying wish my lone bosom can draw—
Erin! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing!
Land of my forefathers! “Erin go bragh!”
Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,
Green be thy fields, sweetest isle of the ocean!
And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotion—
“Erin mavournin

Ireland my darling.

—Erin go bragh!

Ireland for ever.

”’

242

LINES

WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE

[_]

(Sketched in 1798, finished at Hamburg in 1800, and printed in The Morning Chronicle)

At the silence of twilight's contemplative hour
I have mused in a sorrowful mood
On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruined and wild is their roofless abode;
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree;
And travelled by few is the grass-covered road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode
To his hills that encircle the sea.

Yet, wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone agèd and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk
To mark where a garden had been.
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature it drew
From each wandering sunbeam a lonely embrace,
For the night-weed and thorn overshadowed the place
Where the flower of my forefathers grew.

Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
That remains in this desolate heart!
The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,
But patience shall never depart
Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright
In the days of delusion, by fancy combined
With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
Abandon my soul like a dream of the night
And leave but a desert behind.

243

Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as the rock of the ocean, that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore!
Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain
May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!
Yea! even the name I have worshipped in vain
Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again:
To bear is to conquer our fate.

ODE TO WINTER

[_]

(Written in 1800)

When first the fiery-mantled sun
His heavenly race began to run,
Round the earth and ocean blue
His children four the Seasons flew.
First, in green apparel dancing,
The young Spring smiled with angel grace;
Rosy Summer, next advancing,
Rushed into her sire's embrace—
Her bright-haired sire, who bade her keep
For ever nearest to his smiles,
On Calpe's olive-shaded steep,
On India's citron-covered isles.
More remote and buxom-brown,
The Queen of vintage bowed before his throne;
A rich pomegranate gemmed her crown,
A ripe sheaf bound her zone.

244

But howling Winter fled afar
To hills that prop the polar star;
And loves on deer-borne car to ride,
With barren darkness by his side,
Round the shore where loud Lofoden
Whirls to death the roaring whale,
Round the hall where Runic Odin
Howls his war-song to the gale,—
Save when adown the ravaged globe
He travels on his native storm,
Deflowering Nature's grassy robe,
And trampling on her faded form,
Till light's returning lord assume
The shaft that drives him to his polar field,
Of power to pierce his raven plume
And crystal-covered shield.

Oh, sire of storms! whose savage ear
The Lapland drum delights to hear,
When Frenzy with her blood-shot eye
Implores thy dreadful deity,
Archangel! power of desolation!
Fast descending as thou art,
Say, hath mortal invocation
Spells to touch thy stony heart?
Then, sullen Winter, hear my prayer,
And gently rule the ruined year;
Nor chill the wanderer's bosom bare,
Nor freeze the wretch's falling tear;
To shuddering Want's unmantled bed
Thy horror-breathing agues cease to lend,
And gently on the orphan head
Of innocence descend.

But chiefly spare, O king of clouds!
The sailor on his airy shrouds

245

When wrecks and beacons strew the steep,
And spectres walk along the deep.
Milder yet thy snowy breezes
Pour on yonder tented shores,
Where the Rhine's broad billow freezes,
Or the dark-brown Danube roars.
Oh, winds of Winter! list ye there
To many a deep and dying groan?
Or start ye, demons of the midnight air,
At shrieks and thunders louder than your own?
Alas! even your unhallowed breath
May spare the victim fallen low;
But man will ask no truce to death,
No bounds to human woe.

THE BEECH-TREE'S PETITION

[_]

(Written in Germany, in 1800, and first published in The Morning Chronicle)

O leave this barren spot to me!
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree.
Though bush or floweret never grow
My dark unwarming shade below;
Nor summer bud perfume the dew,
Of rosy blush or yellow hue;
Nor fruits of autumn, blossom-born,
My green and glossy leaves adorn;
Nor murmuring tribes from me derive
The ambrosial amber of the hive—
Yet leave this barren spot to me:
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!

246

Thrice twenty summers I have seen
The sky grow bright, the forest green:
And many a wintry wind have stood
In bloomless, fruitless solitude,
Since childhood in my pleasant bower
First spent its sweet and sportive hour,
Since youthful lovers in my shade
Their vows of truth and rapture made
And on my trunk's surviving frame
Carved many a long-forgotten name.
Oh! by the sighs of gentle sound
First breathed upon this sacred ground,
By all that Love has whispered here,
Or Beauty heard with ravished ear—
As Love's own altar honour me:
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!

247

HYMN ‘WHEN JORDAN HUSHED’

When Jordan hushed his waters still,
And silence slept on Zion hill,
When Salem's shepherds, thro' the night,
Watched o'er their flocks by starry light—

Hark! from the midnight hills around
A voice of more than mortal sound
In distant hallelujahs stole,
Wild murmuring, on the raptured soul.

Then swift to every startled eye
New streams of glory gild the sky;
Heaven bursts her azure gates to pour
Her spirits to the midnight hour.

On wheels of light and wings of flame
The glorious hosts to Zion came.
High Heaven with sounds of triumph rung,
And thus they smote their harps and sung—

‘Oh Zion, lift thy raptured eye,
The long-expected hour is nigh—
The joys of Nature rise again—
The Prince of Salem comes to reign!

‘See, Mercy from her golden urn
Pours a glad stream to them that mourn;
Behold, she binds with tender care
The bleeding bosom of despair.—

‘He comes! He cheers the trembling heart—
Night and her spectres pale depart;
Again the day-star gilds the gloom—
Again the bowers of Eden bloom!

248

‘Oh, Zion, lift thy raptured eye,
The long-expected hour is nigh—
The joys of Nature rise again,
The Prince of Salem comes to reign!’

HALLOWED GROUND

[_]

(Written in 1825)

What's hallowed ground? Has earth a clod
Its Maker meant not should be trod
By man, the image of his God,
Erect and free,
Unscourged by superstition's rod
To bow the knee?

That's hallowed ground—where, mourned and missed,
The lips repose our love has kissed;
But where's their memory's mansion? Is't
Yon churchyard's bowers?
No! in ourselves their souls exist,
A part of ours.

A kiss can consecrate the ground
Where mated hearts are mutual bound:
The spot where love's first links were wound,
That ne'er are riven,
Is hallowed down to earth's profound,
And up to heaven!

249

For time makes all but true love old;
The burning thoughts that then were told
Run molten still in memory's mould,
And will not cool
Until the heart itself be cold
In Lethe's pool.

What hallows ground where heroes sleep?
'Tis not the sculptured piles you heap.
In dews that heavens far distant weep
Their turf may bloom;
Or Genii twine beneath the deep
Their coral tomb.

But strew his ashes to the wind
Whose sword or voice has served mankind—
And is he dead whose glorious mind
Lifts thine on high?
To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.

Is't death to fall for freedom's right?
He's dead alone that lacks her light!
And murder sullies in heaven's sight
The sword he draws:
What can alone ennoble fight?
A noble cause!

Give that! and welcome war to brace
Her drums and rend heaven's reeking space!
The colours planted face to face,
The charging cheer,
Though death's pale horse lead on the chase,
Shall still be dear.

250

And place our trophies where men kneel
To heaven!—but heaven rebukes my zeal!
The cause of truth and human weal,
O God above!
Transfer it from the sword's appeal
To peace and love.

Peace, Love—the cherubim that join
Their spread wings o'er devotion's shrine—
Prayers sound in vain and temples shine
Where they are not:
The heart alone can make divine
Religion's spot.

To incantations dost thou trust
And pompous rites in domes august?
See! mouldering stones and metal's rust
Belie the vaunt
That man can bless one pile of dust
With chime or chant.

The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, man!
Thy temples—creeds themselves grow wan!
But there's a dome of nobler span,
A temple given
Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban—
Its space is heaven!

Its roof—star-pictured nature's ceiling!
Where, trancing the rapt spirit's feeling,
And God Himself to man revealing,
The harmonious spheres
Make music, though unheard their pealing
By mortal ears.

251

Fair stars! are not your beings pure?
Can sin, can death your worlds obscure?
Else why so swell the thoughts at your
Aspect above?
Ye must be heaven's that make us sure
Of heavenly love!

And in your harmony sublime
I read the doom of distant time—
That man's regenerate soul from crime
Shall yet be drawn,
And reason on his mortal clime
Immortal dawn.

What's hallowed ground? 'Tis what gives birth
To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!—
Peace! Independence! Truth! go forth
Earth's compass round,
And your high priesthood shall make earth
All hallowed ground.

FIELD FLOWERS

[_]

(Written in 1826)

Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 'tis true;
Yet, wildings of nature! I dote upon you,
For ye waft me to summers of old,
When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight
Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams
Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,
And of birchen glades breathing their balm,
While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon's note
Made music that sweetened the calm.

252

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune
Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June!
Of old ruinous castles ye tell,
Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,
When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blossoms were part of her spell.

Even now what affections the violet awakes!
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water-lily restore!
What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks
In the vetches that tangled their shore!

Earth's cultureless buds! to my heart ye were dear
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,
Had scathed my existence's bloom;
Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age;
And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

CORA LINN, OR THE FALLS OF CLYDE

WRITTEN ON REVISITING IT IN 1837

The time I saw thee, Cora, last,
'Twas with congenial friends;
And calmer hours of pleasure past
My memory seldom sends.

It was as sweet an Autumn day
As ever shone on Clyde,
And Lanark's orchards all the way
Put forth their golden pride;

253

Even hedges, busked in bravery,
Looked rich that sunny morn;
The scarlet hip and blackberry
So pranked September's thorn.

In Cora's glen the calm how deep!
That trees on loftiest hill
Like statues stood, or things asleep
All motionless and still.

The torrent spoke, as if his noise
Bade earth be quiet round
And give his loud and lonely voice
A more commanding sound.

His foam, beneath the yellow light
Of noon, came down like one
Continuous sheet of jaspers bright,
Broad rolling in the sun.

Dear Linn! let loftier falling floods
Have prouder names than thine;
And king of all, enthroned in woods,
Let Niagara shine.

Barbarian! let him shake his coasts
With reeking thunders far
Extended like the array of hosts
In broad embattled war!

His voice appals the wilderness:
Approaching thine, we feel
A solemn, deep, melodiousness
That needs no louder peal.

More fury would but disenchant
Thy dream-inspiring din;
Be thou the Scottish Muse's haunt
Romantic Cora Linn!

254

THE PARROT

[_]

(Written in 1840)

[_]

The following incident, so strongly illustrating the power of memory and association in the lower animals, is not a fiction. I heard it many years ago in the Island of Mull, from the family to whom the bird belonged.—T. C.

The deep affections of the breast
That Heaven to living things imparts
Are not exclusively possess'd
By human hearts.

A parrot from the Spanish Main,
Full young and early caged, came o'er
With bright wings to the bleak domain
Of Mulla's shore.

To spicy groves where he had won
His plumage of resplendent hue,
His native fruits and skies and sun,
He bade adieu.

For these he changed the smoke of turf,
A heathery land and misty sky,
And turn'd on rocks and raging surf
His golden eye.

But, petted, in our climate cold
He lived and chatter'd many a day;
Until with age from green and gold
His wings grew gray.

At last, when blind and seeming dumb,
He scolded, laughed, and spoke no more,
A Spanish stranger chanced to come
To Mulla's shore;

255

He hailed the bird in Spanish speech;
The bird in Spanish speech replied,
Flapped round his cage with joyous screech,
Dropt down, and died.

THE HARPER

On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;
No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

When at last I was forced from my Sheelah to part,
She said (while the sorrow was big at her heart),
‘Oh! remember your Sheelah when far, far away;
And be kind, my dear Pat, to our poor dog Tray.’

Poor dog! he was faithful and kind, to be sure,
And he constantly loved me, although I was poor;
When the sour-looking folk sent me heartless away,
I had always a friend in my poor dog Tray.

When the road was so dark, and the night was so cold,
And Pat and his dog were grown weary and old,
How snugly we slept in my old coat of gray,
And he licked me for kindness—my poor dog Tray.

Though my wallet was scant I remembered his case,
Nor refused my last crust to his pitiful face;
But he died at my feet on a cold winter day,
And I played a sad lament for my poor dog Tray.

Where now shall I go, forsaken and blind?
Can I find one to guide me so faithful and kind?
To my sweet native village, so far, far away,
I can never more return with my poor dog Tray.

256

LOVE AND MADNESS

AN ELEGY

[_]

(Written in 1795)

Hark! from the battlements of yonder tower
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour!
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick wakes—in solitude to weep!

‘Cease, Memory, cease,’ the friendless mourner cried,
‘To probe the bosom too severely tried!
Oh! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through the bright fields of Fortune's better day,
When youthful Hope, the music of the mind,
Tuned all its charms, and Errington was kind!

‘Yet can I cease, while glows this trembling frame,
In sighs to speak thy melancholy name?
I hear thy spirit wail in every storm!
In midnight shades I view thy passing form!
Pale as in that sad hour when doomed to feel,
Deep in thy perjured heart, the bloody steel!

‘Demons of Vengeance! ye at whose command
I grasped the sword with more than woman's hand—
Say ye, did pity's trembling voice control,
Or horror damp, the purpose of my soul?
No! my wild heart sat smiling o'er the plan,
Till hate fulfilled what baffled love began!

‘Yes; let the clay-cold breast that never knew
One tender pang to generous Nature true,
Half-mingling pity with the gall of scorn,
Condemn this heart that bled in love forlorn!

257

‘And ye, proud fair, whose souls no gladness warms,
Save rapture's homage to your conscious charms!
Delighted idols of a gaudy train,
Ill can your blunter feelings guess the pain,
When the fond faithful heart, inspired to prove
Friendship refined, the calm delight of love,
Feels all its tender strings with anguish torn,
And bleeds at perjured pride's inhuman scorn!

‘Say, then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed,
When vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed?
Long had I watched thy dark foreboding brow,
What time thy bosom scorned its dearest vow!
Sad though I wept the friend, the lover changed,
Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged,
Till, from thy pity, love, and shelter thrown,
I wandered hopeless, friendless, and alone!

‘Oh! righteous Heaven! 'twas then my tortured soul
First gave to wrath unlimited control!
Adieu the silent look! the streaming eye!
The murmured plaint! the deep heart-heaving sigh!
Long-slumbering vengeance wakes to better deeds;
He shrieks, he falls, the perjured lover bleeds!
Now the last laugh of agony is o'er,
And pale in blood he sleeps to wake no more!

‘'Tis done! the flame of hate no longer burns;
Nature relents, but, ah! too late returns!
Why does my soul this gush of fondness feel?
Trembling and faint, I drop the guilty steel!
Cold on my heart the hand of terror lies,
And shades of horror close my languid eyes!

‘Oh! 'twas a deed of murder's deepest grain!
Could Broderick's soul so true to wrath remain?
A friend long true, a once fond lover fell!—
Where love was fostered could not pity dwell?

258

‘Unhappy youth! while yon pale crescent glows
To watch on silent nature's deep repose,
Thy sleepless spirit, breathing from the tomb,
Foretells my fate, and summons me to come!
Once more I see thy sheeted spectre stand,
Roll the dim eye, and wave the paly hand!

‘Soon may this fluttering spark of vital flame
Forsake its languid melancholy frame!
Soon may these eyes their trembling lustre close!
Welcome the dreamless night of long repose!
Soon may this woe-worn spirit seek the bourne
Where, lulled to slumber, grief forgets to mourn!’

259

THE ‘NAME UNKNOWN’

IN IMITATION OF KLOPSTOCK

[_]

(Written in 1800)

Prophetic pencil! wilt thou trace
A faithful image of the face,
Or wilt thou write the ‘Name Unknown’
Ordained to bless my charmèd soul,
And all my future fate control,
Unrivalled and alone?

Delicious idol of my thought!
Though sylph or spirit hath not taught
My boding heart thy precious name,
Yet, musing on my distant fate,
To charms unseen I consecrate
A visionary flame.

Thy rosy blush, thy meaning eye,
Thy virgin voice of melody
Are ever present to my heart;
Thy murmured vows shall yet be mine,
My thrilling hand shall meet with thine
And never, never part!

Then fly, my days, on rapid wing
Till Love the viewless treasure bring;
While I, like conscious Athens, own
A power in mystic silence sealed,
A guardian angel unrevealed
And bless the ‘Name Unknown!’

260

LINES

ON THE GRAVE OF A SUICIDE

[_]

(Written in 1800)

By strangers left upon a lonely shore,
Unknown, unhonoured, was the friendless dead;
For child to weep, or widow to deplore,
There never came to his unburied head:
All from his dreary habitation fled.
Nor will the lanterned fisherman at eve
Launch on that water by the witches' tower
Where hellebore and hemlock seem to weave
Round its dark vaults a melancholy bower
For spirits of the dead at night's enchanted hour.

They dread to meet thee, poor unfortunate!
Whose crime it was, on life's unfinished road
To feel the stepdame buffetings of fate,
And render back thy being's heavy load.
Ah! once, perhaps, the social passions glowed
In thy devoted bosom—and the hand
That smote its kindred heart might yet be prone
To deeds of mercy. Who may understand
Thy many woes, poor suicide, unknown?
He who thy being gave shall judge of thee alone.

261

THE QUEEN OF THE NORTH

A FRAGMENT

[_]

(Written in 1800)

Yet, ere oblivion shade each fairy scene,
Ere capes and cliffs and waters intervene,
Ere distant walks my pilgrim feet explore
By Elbe's slow wanderings and the Danish shore,
Still to my country turns my partial view,
That seems the dearest at the last adieu.

Ye lawns and grottos of the clustered plain,
Ye mountain-walks, Edina's green domain,
Haunts of my youth! where, oft, by fancy drawn
At vermeil eve, still noon, or shady dawn,
My soul, secluded from the deafening throng,
Has wooed the bosom-prompted power of song;
And thou, my loved abode, romantic ground!
With ancient towers and spiry summits crown'd,
Home of the polished art and liberal mind,
By truth and taste enlightened and refined,
Thou scene of Scotland's glory! now decayed,
Where once her senate and her sceptre swayed—
As round thy mouldered monuments of fame
Tradition points an emblem and a name
Lo! what a group imagination brings
Of starrèd barons and of thronèd kings!
Departed days in bright succession start
And all the patriot kindles in my heart.

Even musing here, beside the Druid-stone,
Where British Arthur built his airy throne,
Far as my sight can travel o'er the scene
From Lomond's height to Roslin's lovely green,

262

On every moor, wild wood, and mountain side,
From Forth's fair windings to the ocean tide,
On each the legendary loves to tell
Where chiefs encountered and the mighty fell;
Each war-worn turret on the distant shore
Speaks like a herald of the feats of yore;
And, though the shades of dark oblivion frown
On sacred scenes and deeds of high renown,
Yet still some oral tale, some chanted rhyme,
Shall mark the spot, and teach succeeding time
How oft our fathers, to their country true,
The glorious sword of independence drew;
How well their plaided clans, in battle tried,
Impenetrably stood, or greatly died;
How long the genius of their rights delayed,
How sternly guarded, and how late betrayed.

Fair fields of Roslin—memorable name!
Attest my words, and speak my country's fame!
Soft, as yon mantling haze of distance broods
Around thy waterfalls and agèd woods,
The south sun chequers all thy birchen glade
With glimmering lights and deep-retiring shade—
Fresh coverts of the dale, so dear to tread
When morn's wild blackbird carols overhead,
Or when the sunflower shuts her bosom fair,
And scented berries breathe delicious air.
Dear is thy pastoral haunt to him that woos
Romantic nature, silence, and the Muse;
But dearer still when that returning time
Of fruits and flowers, the year's Elysian prime,
Invites—one simple festival to crown—
Young social wanderers from the sultry town.

Ah me! no sumptuous revelry to share
The cheerful bosom asks or envies there;

263

Nor sighs for gorgeous splendours, such as wait
On feasts of wealth and riots of the great.
Far sweeter seems the livelong summer-day
With loved companions on these walks to stray,
And lost in joys of more enchanting flow
Than tasteless art or luxury bestow.
Here in auspicious moments to impart
The first fond breathings of a proffered heart
Shall favoured love repair; and smiling youth
To gentle beauty vow the vows of truth.

Fair morn ascends, and sunny June has shed
Ambrosial odours o'er the garden-bed,
And wild bees seek the cherry's sweet perfume
Or cluster round the full-blown apple-bloom.

STANZAS TO PAINTING

[_]

(Published in the seventh edition 4to of The Pleasures of Hope, in 1803)

O thou by whose expressive art
Her perfect image nature sees
In union with the graces start,
And sweeter by reflection please,—

264

In whose creative hand the hues
Fresh from yon orient rainbow shine,—
I bless thee, Promethéan muse!
And call thee brightest of the Nine,

Possessing more than vocal power,
Persuasive more than poet's tongue,
Whose lineage in a raptured hour
From love, the sire of nature, sprung.

The allusion in the third stanza is to the well-known tradition respecting the origin of painting—that it arose from a young Corinthian female tracing the shadow of her lover's profile on the wall, as he lay asleep.

Does hope her high possession meet?
Is joy triumphant, sorrow flown?
Sweet is the trance, the tremor sweet,
When all we love is all our own.

But oh! thou pulse of pleasure dear,
Slow throbbing, cold, I feel thee part;
Lone absence plants a pang severe,
Or death inflicts a keener dart.

Then for a beam of joy! to light
In memory's sad and wakeful eye,
Or banish from the noon of night
Her dreams of deeper agony.

Shall song its witching cadence roll?
Yea, even the tenderest air repeat
That breathed when soul was knit to soul,
And heart to heart responsive beat?

What visions rise to charm, to melt!
The lost, the loved, the dead are near!
Oh, hush that strain too deeply felt!
And cease that solace too severe!

But thou, serenely silent art!
By heaven and love wast taught to lend
A milder solace to the heart,
The sacred image of a friend.

265

All is not lost if, yet possessed,
To me that sweet memorial shine;
If close and closer to my breast
I hold that idol all divine;

Or, gazing through luxurious tears,
Melt o'er the loved departed form,
Till death's cold bosom half appears
With life, and speech, and spirit warm.

She looks! she lives! this trancèd hour
Her bright eye seems a purer gem
Than sparkles on the throne of power
Or glory's wealthy diadem.

Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid
A treasure to my soul has given,
Where beauty's canonizèd shade
Smiles in the sainted hues of heaven.

No spectre forms of pleasure fled
Thy softening, sweetening tints restore;
For thou canst give us back the dead
E'en in the loveliest looks they wore.

Then blest be nature's guardian muse!
Whose hand her perished grace redeems,
Whose tablet of a thousand hues
The mirror of creation seems.

From love began thy high descent;
And lovers, charmed by gifts of thine,
Shall bless thee mutely eloquent,
And call thee brightest of the Nine!

266

IMPROMPTU

TO MRS. ALLSOP, ON HER EXQUISITE SINGING

[_]

(Written in 1813)

A month in summer we rejoice
To hear the nightingale's sweet song,
But thou, a more enchanting voice,
Shalt dwell with us the live year long.
Angel of Song! still with us stay!
Nor, when succeeding years have shone,
Let us thy mansion pass and say—
‘The voice of melody is gone!’

ODE

TO THE MEMORY OF BURNS

[_]

(Written in 1815)

Soul of the poet! wheresoe'er,
Reclaimed from earth, thy genius plume
Her wings of immortality,—
Suspend thy harp in happier sphere,
And with thine influence illume
The gladness of our jubilee.

And fly like fiends from secret spell,
Discord and strife, at Burns's name,
Exorcized by his memory;
For he was chief of bards that swell
The heart with songs of social flame
And high delicious revelry.

267

And love's own strain to him was given,
To warble all its ecstasies
With Pythian words unsought, unwilled—
Love! the surviving gift of Heaven,
The choicest sweet of Paradise,
In life's else bitter cup distilled.

Who that has melted o'er his lay
To Mary's soul, in Heaven above,
But pictured sees in fancy strong
The landscape and the livelong day
That smiled upon their mutual love?
Who that has felt forgets the song?

Nor skilled one flame alone to fan:
His country's high-souled peasantry
What patriot-pride he taught! how much
To weigh the inborn worth of man!
And rustic life and poverty
Grew beautiful beneath his touch.

Him in his clay-built cot the muse
Entranced, and showed him all the forms
Of fairy-light and wizard gloom
(That only gifted Poet views),
The Genii of the floods and storms,
And martial shades from glory's tomb.

On Bannock-field what thoughts arouse
The swain whom Burns's song inspires?
Beat not his Caledonian veins,
As o'er the heroic turf he ploughs,
With all the spirit of his sires,
And all their scorn of death and chains?

268

And see the Scottish exile, tanned
By many a far and foreign clime,
Bend o'er his home-born verse, and weep
In memory of his native land,
With love that scorns the lapse of time,
And ties that stretch beyond the deep.

Encamped by Indian rivers wild,
The soldier, resting on his arms,
In Burns's carol sweet recalls
The scenes that blessed him when a child,
And glows and gladdens at the charms
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls.

O deem not,'midst this worldly strife,
An idle art the Poet brings:
Let high philosophy control
And sages calm the stream of life,—
'Tis he refines its fountain-springs,
The nobler passions of the soul.

It is the muse that consecrates
The native banner of the brave,
Unfurling at the trumpet's breath
Rose, thistle, harp; 'tis she elates
To sweep the field or ride the wave,
A sunburst in the storm of death!

And thou, young hero, when thy pall
Is crossed with mournful sword and plume,
When public grief begins to fade
And only tears of kindred fall,—
Who but the bard shall dress thy tomb,
And greet with fame thy gallant shade?

269

Such was the soldier: Burns, forgive
That sorrows of mine own intrude
In strains to thy great memory due.
In verse like thine, oh! could he live,
The friend I mourned—the brave, the good—
Edward that died at Waterloo!

Farewell, high chief of Scottish song!
That couldst alternately impart
Wisdom and rapture in thy page,
And brand each vice with satire strong—
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.

Farewell! and ne'er may envy dare
To wring one baleful poison drop
From the crushed laurels of thy bust!
But, while the lark sings sweet in air,
Still may the grateful pilgrim stop
To bless the spot that holds thy dust.

The young hero of the twelfth stanza was Major Edward Hodge, of the 7th Hussars, who fell at the head of his squadron in the attack of the Polish Lancers.

270

LINES TO A LADY

ON BEING PRESENTED WITH A SPRIG OF ALEXANDRIAN LAUREL

[_]

(Written in 1816)

This classic laurel! at the sight
What teeming thoughts suggested rise!
The patriot's and the poet's right,
The meed of semi-deities!—
Men who to death have tyrants hurled,
Or bards who may have swayed at will
And soothed that little troubled world,
The human heart, with sweeter skill.

Ah, lady! little it beseems
My brow to wear these sacred leaves;
Yet, like a treasure found in dreams,
Thy gift most pleasantly deceives.
And where is poet on this earth
Whose self-love could the meed withstand,
Even though it far outstript his worth,
Given by so beautiful a hand?

271

TO THE MEMORY OF FRANCIS HORNER

A FRAGMENT

[_]

(Written in 1817)

Ye who have wept, and felt, and summed the whole
Of virtue's loss in Horner's parted soul,
I speak to you,—though words can ill portray
The extinguished light, the blessings swept away,
The soul high-graced to plead, high-skilled to plan,
For human welfare gone, and lost to man!

This weight of truth subdues my power of song,
And gives a faltering voice to feelings strong.
But I should ill acquit the debt I feel
To private friendship and to public zeal
Were my heart's tribute not with theirs to blend
Who loved most intimate their country's friend,
Or if the muse to whom his living breath
Gave pride and comfort mourned him not in death.
[OMITTED]

272

VALEDICTORY STANZAS

TO JOHN P. KEMBLE, ESQ., COMPOSED FOR A PUBLIC MEETING, HELD JUNE 27, 1817

Pride of the British stage,
A long and last adieu!
Whose image brought the heroic age
Revived to Fancy's view.
Like fields refreshed with dewy light
When the sun smiles his last,
Thy parting presence makes more bright
Our memory of the past;
And memory conjures feelings up
That wine or music need not swell,
As high we lift the festal cup
To Kemble—fare thee well!

His was the spell o'er hearts
Which only Acting lends,—
The youngest of the sister Arts,
Where all their beauty blends:
For ill can Poetry express
Full many a tone of thought sublime,
And Painting, mute and motionless,
Steals but a glance of time.
But, by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion's perfect triumphs come,—
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And Sculpture to be dumb.

Time may again revive
But ne'er eclipse the charm
When Cato spoke in him alive,
Or Hotspur kindled warm.

273

What soul was not resigned entire
To the deep sorrows of the Moor?
What English heart was not on fire
With him at Agincourt?
And yet a majesty possessed
His transport's most impetuous tone,
And to each passion of his breast
The Graces gave their zone.

High were the task—too high,
Ye conscious bosoms here!
In words to paint your memory
Of Kemble and of Lear;
But who forgets that white discrownèd head,
Those bursts of reason's half-extinguished glare,
Those tears upon Cordelia's bosom shed,
In doubt, more touching than despair,
If 'twas reality he felt?
Had Shakespeare's self amidst you been,
Friends, he had seen you melt,
And triumphed to have seen!

And there was many an hour
Of blended kindred fame,
When Siddons's auxiliar power
And sister magic came.
Together at the Muse's side
The tragic paragons had grown—
They were the children of her pride,
The columns of her throne;
And undivided favour ran
From heart to heart in their applause,
Save for the gallantry of man
In lovelier woman's cause.

274

Fair as some classic dome,
Robust and richly graced,
Your Kemble's spirit was the home
Of genius and of taste—
Taste like the silent dial's power,
That, when supernal light is given,
Can measure inspiration's hour
And tell its height in heaven.
At once ennobled and correct,
His mind surveyed the tragic page,
And what the actor could effect
The scholar could presage.

These were his traits of worth:
And must we lose them now?
And shall the scene no more show forth
His sternly pleasing brow?
Alas, the moral brings a tear!
'Tis all a transient hour below;
And we that would detain thee here
Ourselves as fleetly go!
Yet shall our latest age
This parting scene review:
Pride of the British stage,
A long and last adieu!

275

LINES

SPOKEN BY MRS. BARTLEY, AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE, ON THE FIRST OPENING OF THE HOUSE AFTER THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE, NOVEMBER, 1817

Britons! although our task is but to show
The scenes and passions of fictitious woe,
Think not we come this night without a part
In that deep sorrow of the public heart
Which like a shade hath darkened every place,
And moistened with a tear the manliest face!
The bell is scarcely hushed in Windsor's piles
That tolled a requiem from the solemn aisles
For her, the royal flower, low laid in dust,
That was your fairest hope, your fondest trust.
Unconscious of the doom, we dreamt, alas!
That even these walls, ere many months should pass,
Which but return sad accents for her now,
Perhaps had witnessed her benignant brow
Cheered by the voice you would have raised on high
In bursts of British love and loyalty.
But, Britain! now thy chief, thy people mourn,
And Claremont's home of love is left forlorn:—
There, where the happiest of the happy dwelt,
The 'scutcheon glooms, and royalty hath felt
A wound that every bosom feels its own,—
The blessing of a father's heart o'erthrown—
The most beloved and most devoted bride
Torn from an agonizèd husband's side,
Who ‘long as Memory holds her seat’ shall view
That speechless, more than spoken, last adieu,

276

When the fixed eye long looked connubial faith,
And beamed affection in the trance of death.
Sad was the pomp that yesternight beheld,
As with the mourner's heart the anthem swelled;
While torch succeeding torch illumed each high
And bannered arch of England's chivalry.
The rich plumed canopy, the gorgeous pall,
The sacred march, and sable-vested wall,—
These were not rites of inexpressive show,
But hallowed as the types of real woe!
Daughter of England! for a nation's sighs
A nation's heart went with thine obsequies!—
And oft shall time revert a look of grief
On thine existence, beautiful and brief.
Fair spirit! send thy blessing from above
On realms where thou art canonized by love!
Give to a father's, husband's bleeding mind,
The peace that angels lend to human kind;
To us who in thy loved remembrance feel
A sorrowing, but a soul-ennobling, zeal—
A loyalty that touches all the best
And loftiest principles of England's breast!
Still may thy name speak concord from the tomb,
Still in the Muse's breath thy memory bloom!
They shall describe thy life—thy form portray;
But all the love that mourns thee, swept away,
'Tis not in language or expressive arts
To paint: ye feel it, Britons, in your hearts!

277

LINES

ON RECEIVING A SEAL WITH THE CAMPBELL CREST, FROM K.M—, BEFORE HER MARRIAGE

[_]

(Written in 1817)

This wax returns not back more fair
The impression of the gift you send,
Than, stamped upon my thoughts, I bear
The image of your worth, my friend!

We are not friends of yesterday;
But poet's fancies are a little
Disposed to heat and cool (they say),
By turns impressible and brittle.

Well! should its frailty e'er condemn
My heart to prize or please you less,
Your type is still the sealing gem,
And mine the waxen brittleness.

What transcripts of my weal and woe
This little signet yet may lock,—
What utterances to friend or foe,
In reason's calm or passion's shock!

What scenes of life's yet curtained page
May own its confidential die,
Whose stamp awaits the unwritten page
And feelings of futurity!

Yet, wheresoe'er my pen I lift
To date the epistolary sheet,
The blest occasion of the gift
Shall make its recollection sweet,—

278

Sent when the star that rules your fates
Hath reached its influence most benign,
When every heart congratulates,
And none more cordially than mine.

So speed my song—marked with the crest
That erst the adventurous Norman wore

A Norman leader, Gillespie le Camile, in the service of the King of Scotland, married the heiress of Lochaw in the twelfth century, and from him the Campbells are sprung.

Who won the Lady of the West,
The daughter of Macaillain Mor.

Crest of my sires! whose blood it sealed
With glory in the strife of swords,
Ne'er may the scroll that bears it yield
Degenerate thoughts or faithless words!

Yet little might I prize the stone
If it but typed the feudal tree
From whence, a scattered leaf, I'm blown
In Fortune's mutability.

No!—but it tells me of a heart
Allied by friendship's living tie;
A prize beyond the herald's art—
Our soul-sprung consanguinity!

Katherine! to many an hour of mine
Light wings and sunshine you have lent;
And so adieu, and still be thine
The all-in-all of life—Content!

279

LINES

INSCRIBED ON THE MONUMENT LATELY FINISHED BY MR. CHANTREY, WHICH HAS BEEN ERECTED BY THE WIDOW OF ADMIRAL SIR G. CAMPBELL, K.C.B., TO THE MEMORY OF HER HUSBAND

[_]

(First printed in The New Monthly, 1823)

To him, whose loyal, brave, and gentle heart
Fulfilled the hero's and the patriot's part,
Whose charity, like that which Paul enjoined,
Was warm, beneficent, and unconfined,
This stone is reared. To public duty true,
The seaman's friend, the father of his crew,
Mild in reproof, sagacious in command,
He spread fraternal zeal throughout his band,
And led each arm to act, each heart to feel
What British valour owes to Britain's weal.
These were his public virtues: but to trace
His private life's fair purity and grace,
To paint the traits that drew affection strong
From friends, an ample and an ardent throng,
And, more, to speak his memory's grateful claim
On her who mourns him most, and bears his name—
O'ercomes the trembling hand of widowed grief,
O'ercomes the heart, unconscious of relief
Save in religion's high and holy trust,
Whilst placing their memorial o'er his dust.

280

LINES

ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER

[_]

(Written in 1826)

And call they this improvement?—to have changed,
My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore,
Where nature's face is banished and estranged,
And heaven reflected in thy wave no more;
Whose banks, that sweetened May-day's breath before,
Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam,
With sooty exhalations covered o'er;
And for the daisied greensward, down thy stream
Unsightly brick-lanes smoke and clanking engines gleam.

Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains;
One heart free tasting nature's breath and bloom
Is worth a thousand slaves to mammon's gains.
But whither goes that wealth, and gladdening whom?
See, left but life enough and breathing-room
The hunger and the hope of life to feel,
Yon pale mechanic bending o'er his loom,
And childhood's self as at Ixion's wheel,
From morn till midnight tasked to earn its little meal.

Is this improvement?—where the human breed
Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,
Till toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed,
And man competes with man, like foe with foe,
Till death, that thins them, scarce seems public woe?
Improvement!—smiles it in the poor man's eyes,
Or blooms it on the cheek of labour?—No—
To gorge a few with trade's precarious prize
We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies.

281

Nor call that evil slight; God has not given
This passion to the heart of man in vain
For earth's green face, the untainted air of heaven,
And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign.
For not alone our frame imbibes a stain
From foetid skies—the spirit's healthy pride
Fades in their gloom. And therefore I complain
That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst glide,
My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde!

LINES

ON THE DEPARTURE OF EMIGRANTS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES

[_]

(Written in 1828)

On England's shore I saw a pensive band,
With sails unfurled for earth's remotest strand,
Like children parting from a mother, shed
Tears for the home that could not yield them bread.
Grief marked each face receding from the view,
'Twas grief to nature honourably true.
And long, poor wanderers o'er the ecliptic deep,
The song that names but home shall bid you weep;
Oft shall ye fold your flocks by stars above
In that far world, and miss the stars ye love;
Oft, when its tuneless birds scream round forlorn
Regret the lark that gladdens England's morn,
And, giving England's names to distant scenes,
Lament that earth's extension intervenes.

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But cloud not yet too long, industrious train,
Your solid good with sorrow nursed in vain:
For has the heart no interest yet as bland
As that which binds us to our native land?
The deep-drawn wish, when children crown our hearth,
To hear the cherub-chorus of their mirth,
Undamped by dread that want may e'er unhouse,
Or servile misery knit those smiling brows;
The pride to rear an independent shed,
And give the lips we love unborrowed bread;
To see a world, from shadowy forests won,
In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;
To skirt our home with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all our own,
Our children's heritage, in prospect long—
These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong,
That beckon England's wanderers o'er the brine
To realms where foreign constellations shine,
Where streams from undiscovered fountains roll,
And winds shall fan them from th' Antarctic pole.
And what though doomed to shores so far apart
From England's home, that e'en the home-sick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recrossed,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost?
Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
But jocund in the year's long sunshine roam
That yields their sickle twice its harvest-home.

There, marking o'er his farm's expanding ring
New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring,
The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,
Shall walk at eve his little empire's bound,

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Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
And verdant rampart of acacian thorn,
While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
The orange-grove's and fig-tree's breath prevails;
Survey with pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated soil;
And, summing all the blessings God has given,
Put up his patriarchal prayer to Heaven
That, when his bones shall here repose in peace,
The scions of his love may still increase,
And o'er a land where life has ample room
In health and plenty innocently bloom.
Delightful land! in wildness even benign,
The glorious past is ours, the future thine.
As in a cradled Hercules, we trace
The lines of empire in thine infant face.
What nations in thy wide horizon's span
Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man!
What spacious cities with their spires shall gleam,
Where now the panther laps a lonely stream,
And all but brute or reptile life is dumb!
Land of the free! thy kingdom is to come—
Of states, with laws from Gothic bondage burst,
And creeds by chartered priesthoods unaccurst;
Of navies, hoisting their emblazoned flags
Where shipless seas now wash unbeaconed crags;
Of hosts, reviewed in dazzling files and squares,
Their pennoned trumpets breathing native airs,—
For minstrels thou shalt have of native fire,
And maids to sing the songs themselves inspire:
Our very speech, methinks, in after time,
Shall catch th' Ionian blandness of thy clime;
And, whilst the light and luxury of thy skies
Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman's eyes,
The arts, whose soul is love, shall all spontaneous rise.

284

Untracked in deserts lies the marble mine,
Undug the ore that 'midst thy roofs shall shine;
Unborn the hands—but born they are to be—
Fair Australasia, that shall give to thee
Proud temple-domes, with galleries winding high,
So vast in space, so just in symmetry,
They widen to the contemplating eye,
With colonnaded aisles in long array,
And windows that enrich the flood of day
O'er tesselated pavements, pictures fair,
And nichèd statues breathing golden air.
Nor there, whilst all that's seen bids fancy swell,
Shall music's voice refuse to seal the spell;
But choral hymns shall wake enchantment round,
And organs yield their tempests of sweet sound.

Meanwhile, ere arts triumphant reach their goal,
How blest the years of pastoral life shall roll!
Even should, some wayward hour, the settler's mind
Brood sad on scenes for ever left behind,
Yet not a pang that England's name imparts
Shall touch a fibre of his children's hearts;
Bound to that native land by nature's bond,
Full little shall their wishes rove beyond
Its mountains blue and melon-skirted streams,
Since childhood loved, and dreamt of in their dreams.

How many a name, to us uncouthly wild,
Shall thrill that region's patriotic child,
And bring as sweet thoughts o'er his bosom's chords
As aught that's named in song to us affords!
Dear shall that river's margin be to him
Where sportive first he bathed his boyish limb,
Or petted birds still brighter than their bowers,
Or twined his tame young kangaroo with flowers.

285

But more magnetic yet to memory
Shall be the sacred spot, still blooming nigh,
The bower of love where first his bosom burned
And smiling passion saw its smile returned.

Go forth and prosper, then, emprising band:
May He, who in the hollow of His hand
The ocean holds, and rules the whirlwind's sweep,
Assuage its wrath, and guide you on the deep!

SONG OF THE COLONISTS DEPARTING FOR NEW ZEALAND

Steer, helmsman, till you steer our way
By stars beyond the line;
We go to found a realm, one day
Like England's self to shine.

CHORUS.
Cheer up! cheer up! our course we'll keep
With dauntless heart and hand;
And when we've ploughed the stormy deep,
We'll plough a smiling land,—

A land where beauties importune
The Briton to its bowers
To sow but plenteous seeds and prune
Luxuriant fruits and flowers.

Chorus.—Cheer up, &c.

There tracts uncheered by human words,
Seclusion's wildest holds,
Shall hear the lowing of our herds
And tinkling of our folds.

Chorus.—Cheer up, &c.

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Like rubies set in gold shall blush
Our vineyards girt with corn;
And wine, and oil, and gladness gush
From Amalthéa's horn.

Chorus.—Cheer up, &c.

Britannia's pride is in our hearts,
Her blood is in our veins;
We'll girdle earth with British arts,
Like Ariel's magic chains.

Chorus.—Cheer up, &c.

LINES

ON A PICTURE OF A GIRL IN THE ATTITUDE OF PRAYER, BY THE ARTIST GRUSE, IN THE POSSESSION OF LADY STEPNEY

[_]

(Written in 1830)

Was man e'er doomed that beauty made
By mimic art should haunt him?
Like Orpheus I adore a shade
And dote upon a phantom.

Thou maid that in my inmost thought
Art fancifully sainted,
Why liv'st thou not? why art thou nought
But canvas sweetly painted?

Whose looks seem lifted to the skies,
Too pure for love of mortals—
As if they drew angelic eyes
To greet thee at heaven's portals.

Yet loveliness has here no grace,
Abstracted or ideal;
Art ne'er but from a living face
Drew looks so seeming real.

287

What wert thou, maid? thy life, thy name
Oblivion hides in mystery;
Though from thy face my heart could frame
A long romantic history.

Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers,
And hear the songs in fancy's dream
Of thy devoted lovers.

How witching must have been thy breath!
How sweet the living charmer
Whose very semblance after death
Can make the heart grow warmer!

Adieu the charms that vainly move
My soul in their possession—
That prompt my lips to speak of love
Yet rob them of expression!

Yet thee, dear picture, to have praised
Was but a poet's duty;
And shame to him that ever gazed
Impassive on thy beauty.

TO THE INFANT SON OF MY DEAR FRIENDS

MR. AND MRS. GRAHAME

[_]

(Written in 1831)

Sweet bud of life! thy future doom
Is present to my eyes,
And joyously I see thee bloom
In fortune's fairest skies.

288

One day thy breast, scarce conscious now,
Shall burn with patriot flame;
And, fraught with love, that little brow
Shall wear the wreath of fame.

When I am dead, dear boy, thou'lt take
These lines to thy regard;—
Imprint them on thy heart, and make
A prophet of the bard.

LINES

ON THE VIEW FROM ST. LEONARDS

[_]

(Written in 1831)

Hail to thy face and odours, glorious Sea!
'Twere thanklessness in me to bless thee not,
Great beauteous Being! in whose breath and smile
My heart beats calmer, and my very mind
Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer
Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world!
Though like the world thou fluctuat'st, thy din
To me is peace, thy restlessness repose.
Even gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes
With all the darling field-flowers in their prime,
And gardens haunted by the nightingale's
Long trills and gushing ecstasies of song,
For these wild headlands and the sea-mew's clang.

With thee beneath my window, pleasant Sea,
I long not to o'erlook earth's fairest glades
And green savannahs. Earth has not a plain
So boundless or so beautiful as thine;
The eagle's vision cannot take it in:
The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space,

289

Sinks half-way o'er it like a wearied bird:
It is the mirror of the stars, where all
Their hosts within the concave firmament,
Gay marching to the music of the spheres,
Can see themselves at once.

Nor on the stage
Of rural landscape are there lights and shades
Of more harmonious dance and play than thine.
How vividly this moment brightens forth,
Between gray parallel and leaden breadths,
A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league,
Flushed like the rainbow, or the ringdove's neck,
And giving to the glancing sea-bird's wing
The semblance of a meteor.

Mighty Sea!
Chameleon-like thou changest, but there's love
In all thy change, and constant sympathy
With yonder Sky—thy mistress. From her brow
Thou tak'st thy moods and wear'st her colours on
Thy faithful bosom—morning's milky white,
Noon's sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve;
And all thy balmier hours, fair Element,
Have such divine complexion—crispèd smiles,
Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings,
That little is the wonder Love's own Queen
From thee of old was fabled to have sprung.

Creation's common! which no human power
Can parcel or enclose; the lordliest floods
And cataracts that the tiny hands of man
Can tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dew
To thee that couldst subdue the Earth itself,
And brook'st commandment from the Heavens alone
For marshalling thy waves.

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Yet, potent sea!
How placidly thy moist lips speak even now
Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be
So fanciless as to feel no gratitude
That power and grandeur can be so serene—
Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way,
And rocking even the fisher's little bark
As gently as a mother rocks her child?

The inhabitants of the other worlds behold
Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share
On earth's rotundity; and is he not
A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man
Who sees not or who, seeing, has no joy
In thy magnificence? What though thou art
Unconscious and material?—thou canst reach
The inmost immaterial mind's recess,
And with thy tints and motion stir its chords
To music, like the light on Memnon's lyre!

The Spirit of the Universe in thee
Is visible; thou hast in thee the life—
The eternal, graceful, and majestic life—
Of nature, and the natural human heart
Is therefore bound to thee with holy love.

Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-circling sea
Has spires and mansions more amusive still—
Men's volant homes that measure liquid space
On wheel or wing. The chariot of the land,
With pained and panting steeds, and clouds of dust,
Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair
Careerers with the foam beneath their bows,
Whose streaming ensings charm the waves by day,
Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night,

291

Moored as they cast the shadows of their masts
In long array, or hither flit and yond
Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights,
Like spirits on the darkness of the deep.

There is a magnet-like attraction in
These waters to the imaginative power
That links the viewless with the visible,
And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond
Yon highway of the world my fancy flies
When by her tall and triple mast we know
Some nobler voyager, that has to woo
The trade-winds and to stem the ecliptic surge.
The coral groves, the shores of conch and pearl
Where she will cast her anchor and reflect
Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves
And under planets brighter than our own;
The nights of palmy isles that she will see
Lit boundless by the fire-fly; all the smells
Of tropic fruits that will regale her; all
The pomp of nature and the inspiriting
Varieties of life she has to greet—
Come swarming o'er the meditative mind.

True, to the dream of fancy Ocean has
His darker hints; but where's the element
That chequers not its usefulness to man
With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimes
Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes
Their shrieking cities, and, with one last clang
Of bells for their own ruin, strews them flat
As riddled ashes, silent as the grave?
Walks not contagion on the air itself?
I should old Ocean's Saturnalian days
And roaring nights of revelry and sport
With wreck and human woe be loth to sing;

292

For they are few and all their ills weight light
Against his sacred usefulness, that bids
Our pensile globe revolve in purer air.
Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receive
Their fresh'ning dews, gay fluttering breezes cool
Their wings to fan the brow of fevered climes,
And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn
For showers to glad the earth.

Old Ocean was
Infinity of ages ere we breathed
Existence; and he will be beautiful
When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that swells in his stupendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound
In thundering concert with the quiring winds;
But, long as Man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, beatific Sea!

293

LINES

WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF LA PEROUSE'S ‘VOYAGES’

[_]

(in 1831)

Loved Voyager! whose pages had a zest
More sweet than fiction to my wondering breast,
When, rapt in fancy, many a boyish day
I tracked his wanderings o'er the watery way,
Roamed round the Aleutian isles in waking dreams,
Or plucked the fleur-de-lys by Jesso's streams,
Or gladly leaped on that far Tartar strand
Where Europe's anchor ne'er had bit the sand,
Where scarce a roving wild tribe crossed the plain,
Or human voice broke nature's silent reign,—
But vast and grassy deserts feed the bear,
And sweeping deer-herds dread no hunter's snare.
Such young delight his real records brought,
His truth so touched romantic springs of thought,
That, all my after-life, his fate and fame
Entwined romance with La Perouse's name.

Fair were his ships, expert his gallant crews,
And glorious was the emprise of La Perouse—
Humanely glorious! Men will weep for him
When many a guilty martial fame is dim:
He ploughed the deep to bind no captive's chain—
Pursued no rapine—strewed no wreck with slain
And, save that in the deep themselves lie low,
His heroes plucked no wreath from human woe.
'Twas his the earth's remotest bounds to scan,
Conciliating with gifts barbaric man,

294

Enrich the world's contemporaneous mind,
And amplify the picture of mankind.
Far on the vast Pacific, 'midst those isles
O'er which the earliest morn of Asia smiles,
He sounded, and gave charts to many a shore
And gulf of ocean new to nautic lore;
Yet he that led discovery o'er the wave
Still finds himself an undiscovered grave.
He came not back! Conjecture's cheek grew pale,
Year after year; in no propitious gale
His lilied banner held its homeward way,
And Science saddened at her martyr's stay.

An age elapsed: no wreck told where or when
The chief went down with all his gallant men,
Or whether by the storm and wild sea flood
He perished, or by wilder men of blood.
The shuddering fancy only guess'd his doom,
And doubt to sorrow gave but deeper gloom.

An age elapsed: when men were dead or gray,
Whose hearts had mourned him in their youthful day,
Fame traced on Mannicolo's shore at last
The boiling surge had mounted o'er his mast.
The islesmen told of some surviving men,
But Christian eyes beheld them ne'er again.
Sad bourne of all his toils—with all his band
To sleep, wrecked, shroudless, on a savage strand!
Yet what is all that fires a hero's scorn
Of death?—the hope to live in hearts unborn.
Life to the brave is not its fleeting breath,
But worth—foretasting fame that follows death.
That worth had La Perouse, that meed he won.
He sleeps—his life's long stormy watch is done.
In the great deep, whose boundaries and space
He measured, fate ordained his resting-place;

295

But bade his fame, like th' ocean rolling o'er
His relics, visit every earthly shore.
Fair Science on that ocean's azure robe
Still writes his name in picturing the globe,
And paints (what fairer wreath could glory twine?)
His watery course—a world-encircling line.

TO SIR FRANCIS BURDETT

ON HIS SPEECH DELIVERED IN PARLIAMENT, AUGUST 7, 1832, RESPECTING THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN

Burdett, enjoy thy justly foremost fame!
Through good and ill report—through calm and storm—
For forty years the pilot of reform.
But that which shall afresh entwine thy name
With patriot laurels never to be sere
Is that thou hast come nobly forth to chide
Our slumbering statesmen for their lack of pride—
Their flattery of Oppressors, and their fear—
When Britain's lifted finger and her frown
Might call the nations up, and cast their tyrants down!

296

Invoke the scorn—alas! too few inherit
The scorn for despots cherished by our sires,
That baffled Europe's persecuting fires,
And sheltered helpless states! Recall that spirit,
And conjure back Old England's haughty mind
Convert the men who waver now, and pause
Between their love of self and humankind;
And move, Amphion-like, those hearts of stone—
The hearts that have been deaf to Poland's dying groan!

Tell them we hold the Rights of Man too dear,
To bless ourselves with lonely freedom blest;
But could we hope with sole and selfish breast
To breathe untroubled Freedom's atmosphere—
Suppose we wished it? England could not stand
A lone oasis in the desert ground
Of Europe's slavery; from the waste around
Oppression's fiery blast and whirling sand
Would reach and scathe us! No; it may not be:
Britannia and the world conjointly must be free!

Burdett, demand why Britons send abroad
Soft greetings to the infanticidal Czar,
The Bear on Poland's babes that wages war.
Once, we are told, a mother's shriek o'erawed
A lion, and he dropped her lifted child:
But Nicholas, whom neither God nor law,
Nor Poland's shrieking mothers overawe,
Outholds to us his friendship's gory clutch;
Shrink, Britain! shrink, my king and country, from the touch!

He prays to Heaven for England's king, he says:
And dares he to the God of mercy kneel,
Besmeared with massacres from head to heel?
No; Moloch is his god—to him he prays;

297

And if his weird-like prayers had power to bring
An influence, their power would be to curse.
His hate is baleful, but his love is worse—
A serpent's slaver deadlier than its sting!
Oh, feeble statesmen—ignominious times,
That lick the tyrant's feet, and smile upon his crimes!

THE CHERUBS

SUGGESTED BY AN APOLOGUE IN THE WORKS OF FRANKLIN

[_]

(Written in 1832)

Two spirits reached this world of ours:
The lightning's locomotive powers
Were slow to their agility.
In broad daylight they moved incog.,
Enjoying without mist or fog
Entire invisibility.

The one, a simple cherub lad,
Much interest in our planet had,
Its face was so romantic;
He couldn't persuade himself that man
Was such as heavenly rumours ran,
A being base and frantic.

The older spirit, wise and cool,
Brought down the youth as to a school;
But strictly on condition,
Whatever they should see or hear,
With mortals not to interfere;
'Twas not in their commission.

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They reached a sovereign city proud,
Whose emperor prayed to God aloud,
With all his people kneeling,
And priests performed religious rites:
‘Come,’ said the younger of the sprites,
‘This shows a pious feeling.

‘Ar'n't these a decent godly race?’

OLD SPIRIT
‘The dirtiest thieves on Nature's face.’

YOUNG SPIRIT
‘But hark, what cheers they're giving
Their emperor!—And is he a thief?’

OLD SPIRIT
‘Aye, and a cut-throat too;—in brief,
The greatest scoundrel living.’

YOUNG SPIRIT
‘But say, what were they praying for,
This people and their emperor?’

OLD SPIRIT
‘Why, but for God's assistance
To help their army, late sent out:
And what that army is about
You'll see at no great distance.’

On wings outspeeding mail or post
Our sprites o'ertook the Imperial host,
In massacres it wallowed:
A noble nation met its hordes,
But broken fell their cause and swords,
Unfortunate though hallowed.

299

They saw a late bombarded town,
Its streets still warm with blood ran down,
Still smoked each burning rafter;
And hideously, 'midst rape and sack,
The murderer's laughter answered back
His prey's convulsive laughter.

They saw the captive eye the dead,
With envy of his gory bed,—
Death's quick reward of bravery:
They heard the clank of chains, and then
Saw thirty thousand bleeding men
Dragged manacled to slavery.

‘Fie! fie!’ the younger heavenly spark
Exclaimed:—‘we must have missed our mark,
And entered hell's own portals:
Earth can't be stained with crimes so black;
Nay, sure, we've got among a pack
Of fiends, and not of mortals.’

‘No,’ said the elder; ‘no such thing:
Fiends are not fools enough to wring
The necks of one another—
They know their interests too well:
Men fight; but every devil in hell
Lives friendly with his brother.

‘And I could point you out some fellows
On this ill-fated planet Tellus
In royal power that revel;
Who, at the opening of the book
Of judgment, may have cause to look
With envy at the devil.’

300

Name but the devil, and he'll appear.
Old Satan in a trice was near,
With smutty face and figure:
But spotless spirits of the skies,
Unseen to even his saucer eyes,
Could watch the fiendish nigger.

‘Halloo!’ he cried; ‘I smell a trick:
A mortal supersedes Old Nick,
The scourge of earth appointed.
He robs me of my trade, outrants
The blasphemy of Hell, and vaunts
Himself the Lord's anointed!

‘Folks make a fuss about my mischief:
Damned fools! they tamely suffer this chief
To play his pranks unbounded.’
The cherubs flew; but saw from high
At human inhumanity
The devil himself astounded.

THE DEAD EAGLE

[_]

(Written at Oran, Algiers, 1835)

Fallen as he is, this king of birds still seems
Like royalty in ruins. Though his eyes
Are shut, that look undazzled on the sun,
He was the sultan of the sky, and earth
Paid tribute to his eyry. It was perched
Higher than human conqueror ever built
His bannered fort. Where Atlas' top looks o'er
Zahara's desert to the equator's line—
From thence the winged despot mark'd his prey,
Above the encampments of the Bedouins, ere

301

Their watchfires were extinct, or camels knelt
To take their loads, or horsemen scoured the plain;
And there he dried his feathers in the dawn,
Whilst yet the unwakened world was dark below.

There's such a charm in natural strength and power
That human fancy has for ever paid
Poetic homage to the bird of Jove.
Hence 'neath his image Rome arrayed her turms
And cohorts for the conquest of the world.
And, figuring his flight, the mind is fill'd
With thoughts that mock the pride of wingless man.
True the carred aeronaut can mount as high;
But what's the triumph of his volant art?
A rash intrusion on the realms of air.
His helmless vehicle a silken toy,
A bubble bursting in the thunder-cloud—
His course has no volition, and he drifts
The passive plaything of the winds. Not such
Was this proud bird: he clove the adverse storm,
And cuffed it with his wings. He stopped his flight
As easily as the Arab reins his steed,
And stood at pleasure 'neath heaven's zenith, like
A lamp suspended from its azure dome,
Whilst underneath him the world's mountains lay
Like molehills, and her streams like lucid threads.
Then downward, faster than a falling star,
He neared the earth until his shape distinct
Was blackly shadow'd on the sunny ground,
And deeper terror hushed the wilderness
To hear his nearer whoop. Then up again
He soared and wheeled. There was an air of scorn
In all his movements, whether he threw round
His crested head to look behind him, or

302

Lay vertical and sportively displayed
The inside whiteness of his wing declined
In gyres and undulations full of grace,
An object beautifying heaven itself.

He—reckless who was victor, and above
The hearing of their guns—saw fleets engaged
In flaming combat. It was nought to him
What carnage, Moor or Christian, strewed their decks.
But, if his intellect had matched his wings,
Methinks he would have scorn'd man's vaunted power
To plough the deep. His pinions bore him down
To Algiers the warlike, or the coral groves
That blush beneath the green of Bona's waves,
And traversed in an hour a wider space
Than yonder gallant ship, with all her sails
Wooing the winds, can cross from morn till eve.
His bright eyes were his compass, earth his chart;
His talons anchored on the stormiest cliff,
And on the very lighthouse rock he perch'd
When winds churned white the waves.

The earthquake's self
Disturbed not him that memorable day
When o'er yon tableland, where Spain had built
Cathedrals, cannoned forts, and palaces,
A palsy-stroke of Nature shook Oran,
Turning her city to a sepulchre,
And strewing into rubbish all her homes;
Amidst whose traceable foundations now,
Of streets and squares, the hyaena hides himself.
That hour beheld him fly as careless o'er
The stifled shrieks of thousands buried quick
As lately when he pounced the speckled snake,
Coil'd in yon mallows and wide nettle-fields
That mantle o'er the dead old Spanish town.

303

Strange is the imagination's dread delight
In objects linked with danger, death, and pain!
Fresh from the luxuries of polished life,
The echo of these wilds enchanted me;
And my heart beat with joy when first I heard
A lion's roar come down the Libyan wind
Across yon long, wide, lonely inland lake,
Where boat ne'er sails from homeless shore to shore.

And yet Numidia's landscape has its spots
Of pastoral pleasantness—though far between.
The village planted near the Maraboot's
Round roof has aye its feathery palm-trees
Paired, for in solitude they bear no fruits.
Here nature's hues all harmonize—fields white
With alasum or blue with bugloss—banks
Of glossy fennel, blent with tulips wild
And sunflowers like a garment prankt with gold—
Acres and miles of opal asphodel,
Where sports and couches the black-eyed gazelle.
Here, too, the air's harmonious—deep-toned doves
Coo to the fife-like carol of the lark;
And, when they cease, the holy nightingale
Winds up his long, long shakes of ecstasy,
With notes that seem but the protracted sounds
Of glassy runnels bubbling over rocks.

304

FRAGMENT OF AN ORATORIO, FROM THE BOOK OF JOB

[_]

(Written at Oran, 1835)

Crush'd by misfortune's yoke,
Job lamentably spoke:
‘My boundless curse be on
The day that I was born;
Quench'd be the star that shone
Upon my natal morn.
In the grave I long
To shroud my breast;
Where the wicked cease to wrong,
And the weary are at rest.’
Then Eliphaz rebuked his wild despair:
‘What Heaven ordains 'tis meet that man should bear.
Lately, at midnight drear,
A vision shook my bones with fear;
A spirit passed before my face,
And yet its form I could not trace;
It stopped—it stood—it chilled my blood
The hair upon my flesh uprose
With freezing dread!
Deep silence reigned, and, at its close
I heard a voice that said—
“Shall mortal be more pure and just
Than God, who made him from the dust?
Hast thou not learnt of old how fleet
Is the triumph of the hypocrite;
How soon the wreath of joy grows wan
On the brow of the ungodly man?

305

By the fire of his conscience he perisheth
In an unblown flame:
The Earth demands his death,
And the Heavens reveal his shame.”’

JOB
Is this your consolation?
Is it thus that ye condole
With the depth of my desolation
And the anguish of my soul?
But I will not cease to wail
The bitterness of my bale.
Man that is born of woman,
Short and evil is his hour;
He fleeth like a shadow,
He fadeth like a flower.
My days are pass'd; my hope and trust
Is but to moulder in the dust.

CHORUS
Bow, mortal, bow, before thy God,
Nor murmur at His chastening rod;
Fragile being of earthly clay,
Think on God's eternal sway!
Hark! from the whirlwind forth
Thy Maker speaks—‘Thou child of earth,
Where wert thou when I laid
Creation's corner-stone?
When the sons of God rejoicing made,
And the morning stars together sang and shone?
Hadst thou power to bid above
Heaven's constellations glow?
Or shape the forms that live and move
On Nature's face below?
Hast thou given the horse his strength and pride?
He paws the valley with nostril wide,

306

He smells far off the battle;
He neighs at the trumpet's sound
And his speed devours the ground
As he sweeps to where the quivers rattle
And the spear and shield shine bright,
'Midst the shouting of the captains
And the thunder of the fight.

Having met my illustrious friend the composer Neukomm, at Algiers, several years ago, I commenced this intended Oratorio at his desire, but he left the place before I proceeded farther in the poem; and it has been thus left unfinished.—T.C.

BEN LOMOND

[_]

(Written in 1836)

Hadst thou a genius on thy peak,
What tales, white-headed Ben,
Couldst thou of ancient ages speak,
That mock th' historian's pen!

Thy long duration makes our lives
Seem but so many hours;
And likens to the bees' frail hives
Our most stupendous towers.

Temples and towers thou'st seen begun,
New creeds, new conquerors sway;
And, like their shadows in the sun,
Hast seen them swept away.

Thy stedfast summit, heaven-allied
(Unlike life's little span),
Looks down, a Mentor, on the pride
Of perishable man.

307

CHAUCER AND WINDSOR

Long shalt thou flourish, Windsor! bodying forth
Chivalric times, and long shall live around
Thy Castle the old oaks of British birth,
Whose gnarled roots, tenacious and profound,
As with a lion's talons grasp the ground.
But, should thy towers in ivied ruin rot,
There's one, thine inmate once, whose strain renowned
Would interdict thy name to be forgot;
For Chaucer loved thy bowers and trode this very spot.

Chaucer! our Helicon's first fountain-stream,
Our morning star of song—that led the way
To welcome the long-after coming beam
Of Spenser's light and Shakespeare's perfect day.
Old England's fathers live in Chaucer's lay,
As if they ne'er had died. He grouped and drew
Their likeness with a spirit of life so gay,
That still they live and breathe in Fancy's view,
Fresh beings fraught with truth's imperishable hue.

A THOUGHT SUGGESTED BY THE NEW YEAR

The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages:
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.

308

But as the care-worn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath,
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of death,
Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange; yet who would change
Time's course to slower speeding
When one by one our friends have gone,
And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth a seeming length,
Proportion'd to their sweetness.

MOONLIGHT

[_]

(Written in 1840)

The kiss that would make a maid's cheek flush
Wroth, as if kissing were a sin,
Amidst the Argus eyes and din
And tell-tale glare of noon,
Brings but a murmur and a blush
Beneath the modest moon.

Ye days, gone—never to come back,
When love returned entranced me so
That still its pictures move and glow
In the dark chamber of my heart—
Leave not my memory's future track;
I will not let you part.

309

'Twas moonlight when my earliest love
First on my bosom dropped her head;
A moment then concentrated
The bliss of years, as if the spheres
Their course had faster driven,
And carried, Enoch-like above,
A living man to Heaven.

'Tis by the rolling moon we measure
The date between our nuptial night
And that blest hour which brings to light
The pledge of faith—the fruit of bliss,
When we impress upon the treasure
A father's earliest kiss.

The Moon's the Earth's enamoured bride;
True to him in her very changes,
To other stars she never ranges:
Though, cross'd by him, sometimes she dips
Her light in short offended pride,
And faints to an eclipse.

The fairies revel by her sheen;
'Tis only when the Moon's above
The fire-fly kindles into love,
And flashes light to show it:
The nightingale salutes her Queen
Of Heaven, her heavenly poet.

Then, ye that love! by moonlight gloom
Meet at my grave, and plight regard.
Oh! could I be the Orphéan bard
Of whom it is reported
That nightingales sung o'er his tomb,
Whilst lovers came and courted.

310

ON GETTING HOME THE PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE CHILD, SIX YEARS OLD

PAINTED BY EUGENIO LATILLA

[_]

(Written probably in 1840)

Type of the Cherubim above,
Come, live with me, and be my love!
Smile from my wall, dear roguish sprite,
By sunshine and by candlelight;
For both look sweetly on thy traits:
Or, were the Lady Moon to gaze,
She'd welcome thee with lustre bland,
Like some young fay from Fairyland.
Cast in simplicity's own mould,
How canst thou be so manifold
In sportively distracting charms?
Thy lips—thine eyes—thy little arms
That wrap thy shoulders and thy head
In homeliest shawl of netted thread,
Brown woollen net-work; yet it seeks
Accordance with thy lovely cheeks,
And more becomes thy beauty's bloom
Than any shawl from Cashmere's loom.

Thou hast not, to adorn thee, girl,
Flower, link of gold, or gem or pearl—
I would not let a ruby speck
The peeping whiteness of thy neck:
Thou need'st no casket, witching elf,
No gawd—thy toilet is thyself;
Not ev'n a rose-bud from the bower,
Thyself a magnet—gem and flower.

311

My arch and playful little creature,
Thou hast a mind in every feature;
Thy brow, with its disparted locks,
Speaks language that translation mocks;
Thy lucid eyes so beam with soul,
They on the canvas seem to roll,
Instructing both my head and heart
To idolize the painter's art.

He marshals minds to Beauty's feast—
He is Humanity's high priest
Who proves, by heavenly forms on earth,
How much this world of ours is worth.
Inspire me, child, with visions fair!
For children, in Creation, are
The only things that could be given
Back, and alive—unchanged—to Heaven.

LINES

TO THE COUNTESS AMERIGA VESPUCCI

[_]

(Written in 1840)

Descendant of the chief who stamped his name
On Earth's hesperian hemisphere, I greet
Not only thy hereditary fame
But beauty, wit, and spirit, bold and sweet,
That captivate alike, where'er thou art,
The British and the Transatlantic heart.

312

Ameriga Vespucci, thou art fair
As classic Venus; but the poets gave
Her not thy noble, more than classic, air
Of courage. Homer's Venus was not brave;
She shrieked, and fled the fight. You never fled,
But in the cause of freedom fought and bled.

In the closing lines the allusion is to the part taken by this heroic lady in the previous commotions in Italy.

TO MY NIECE, MARY CAMPBELL

[_]

(Written in 1841)

Our friendship's not a stream to dry,
Or stop with angry jar;
A life-long planet in our sky—
No meteor-shooting star.

Thy playfulness and pleasant ways
Shall cheer my wintry track,
And give my old declining days
A second summer back!

Proud honesty protects our lot,
No dun infests our bowers;
Wealth's golden lamps illumine not
Brows more content than ours.

To think, too, thy remembrance fond
May love me after death,
Gives fancied happiness beyond
My lease of living breath.

Meanwhile thine intellects presage
A lifetime rich in truth,
And make me feel the advance of age
Retarded by thy youth!

313

Good-night! propitious dreams betide
Thy sleep!—awaken gay,
And we will make to-morrow glide
As cheerful as to-day!

LINES ON MY NEW CHILD SWEETHEART

[_]

(Written in 1841)

I hold it a religious duty
To love and worship children's beauty;
They've least the taint of earthly clod,
They're freshest from the land of God;
With heavenly looks they make us sure
The heaven that made them must be pure;
We love them not in earthly fashion,
But with a beatific passion.

I chanced to yesterday behold
A maiden child of beauty's mould;
'Twas near, more sacred was the scene,
The palace of our patriot Queen.
The little charmer to my view
Was sculpture brought to life anew.
Her eyes had a poetic glow,
Her pouting mouth was Cupid's bow:
And through her frock I could descry
Her neck and shoulders' symmetry.
'Twas obvious from her walk and gait
Her limbs were beautifully straight;
I stopped th' enchantress, and was told
Though tall she was but four years old.
Her guide so grave an aspect wore
I could not ask a question more;
But followed her. The little one
Threw backward ever and anon

314

Her lovely neck, as if to say,
‘I know you love me, Mister Gray;’
For by its instinct childhood's eye
Is shrewd in physiognomy;
They well distinguish fawning art
From sterling fondness of the heart.

And so she flirted, like a true
Good woman, till we bade adieu.
'Twas then I with regret grew wild:
Oh, beauteous, interesting child!
Why asked I not thy home and name?
My courage failed me—more's the shame.
But where abides this jewel rare?
Oh, ye that own her, tell me where!
For sad it makes my heart and sore
To think I ne'er may meet her more.

THE CHILD AND HIND

I wish I had preserved a copy of the Wiesbaden newspaper in which this anecdote of the ‘Child and Hind’ is recorded; but I have unfortuately lost it. The story, however, is matter of fact; it took place in 1838: every circumstsance mentioned in the preceding ballad literally happened. I was in Wiesbaden eight months ago, and was shown the very tree under which the boy was found sleeping with a bunch of flowers in his little hand. I could not ascertain whether the hind that watched my hero ‘Wilhelm’ suckled him or not; but it was generally believed that she had no milk to give him, and that the boy must have been for two days and a half entirely without food, unless it might be grass or leaves.—T.C.

[_]

(Written in 1841)

Come, maids and matrons, to caress
Wiesbaden's gentle hind;
And smiling, deck its glossy neck
With forest flowers entwined.

Your forest flowers are fair to show,
And landscapes to enjoy;
But fairer is your friendly doe
That watched the sleeping boy.

'Twas after church—on Ascension day—
When organs ceased to sound,
Wiesbaden's people crowded gay
The deer-park's pleasant ground.

315

There, where Elysian meadows smile,
And noble trees upshoot,
The wild thyme and the camomile
Smell sweetly at their root;

The aspen quivers nervously,
The oak stands stilly bold,
And climbing bindweed hangs on high
His bells of beaten gold.

There is only one kind of bindweed that is yellow, and that is the flower here mentioned, the Paniculatus Convolvulus.

Nor stops the eye till mountains shine
That bound a spacious view
Beyond the lordly, lovely Rhine
In visionary blue.

There monuments of ages dark
Awaken thoughts sublime;
Till, swifter than the steaming bark,
We mount the stream of time.

The ivy there old castles shades
That speak traditions high
Of minstrels, tournaments, crusades
And mail-clad chivalry.

Here came a twelve years' married pair—
And with them wander'd free
Seven sons and daughters, blooming fair,
A gladsome sight to see.

Their Wilhelm, little innocent,
The youngest of the seven,
Was beautiful as painters paint
The cherubim of Heaven.

By turns he gave his hand, so dear,
To parent, sister, brother;
And each, that he was safe and near,
Confided in the other.

316

But Wilhelm loved the field-flowers bright,
With love beyond all measure;
And culled them with as keen delight
As misers gather treasure.

Unnoticed, he contrived to glide
Adown a greenwood alley,
By lilies lured that grew beside
A streamlet in the valley;

And there, where under beech and birch
The rivulet meandered,
He strayed, till neither shout nor search
Could track where he had wandered.

Still louder, with increasing dread,
They called his darling name;
But 'twas like speaking to the dead—
An echo only came.

Hours passed till evening's beetle roams
And blackbirds' songs begin;
Then all went back to happy homes,
Save Wilhelm's kith and kin.

The night came on—all others slept
Their cares away till morn;
But, sleepless, all night watched and wept
That family forlorn.

Betimes the town-crier had been sent
With loud bell up and down;
And told the afflicting accident
Throughout Wiesbaden's town:

The father, too, ere morning smiled,
Had all his wealth uncoffered;
And to the wight would bring his child
A thousand crowns had offered.

317

Dear friends, who would have blushed to take
That guerdon from his hand,
Soon joined in groups—for pity's sake,
The child-exploring band.

The news reached Nassau's Duke: ere earth
Was gladdened by the lark,
He sent a hundred soldiers forth
To ransack all his park.

Their side-arms glittered through the wood,
With bugle-horns to sound;
Would that on errand half so good
The soldier oft were found!

But though they roused up beast and bird
From many a nest and den,
No signal of success was heard
From all the hundred men.

A second morning's light expands,
Unfound the infant fair;
And Wilhelm's household wring their hands
Abandoned to despair.

But happily a poor artisan
Searched ceaselessly till he
Found safe asleep the little one
Beneath a beechen tree.

His hand still grasped a bunch of flowers;
And (true, though wondrous) near,
To sentry his reposing hours,
There stood a female deer—

Who dipped her horns at all that passed

The female deer has no such antlers as the male, and sometimes no horns at all: but I have observed many with short ones suckling their fawns.

The spot where Wilhelm lay;
Till force was had to hold her fast,
And bear the boy away.

318

Hail! sacred love of childhood—hail!
How sweet it is to trace
Thine instinct in Creation's scale,
Even 'neath the human race.

To this poor wanderer of the wild
Speech, reason were unknown—
And yet she watched a sleeping child
As if it were her own;

And thou, Wiesbaden's artisan,
Restorer of the boy,
Was ever welcomed mortal man
With such a burst of joy?

The father's ecstasy—the mother's
Hysteric bosom's swell—
The sisters' sobs—the shout of brothers,
I have not power to tell.

The working man, with shoulders broad,
Took blithely to his wife
The thousand crowns—a pleasant load,
That made him rich for life.

And Nassau's Duke the favourite took
Into his deer-park's centre,
To share a field with other pets
Where deer-slayer cannot enter.

There, whilst thou cropp'st thy flowery food,
Each hand shall pat thee kind;
And man shall never spill thy blood—
Wiesbaden's gentle hind.

319

EPISTLE, FROM ALGIERS, TO HORACE SMITH

[_]

(Written in 1835)

Dear Horace! be melted to tears,
For I'm melting with heat as I rime;
Though the name of the place is Algiers
'Tis no joke to fall in with its clime.

With a shaver from France who came o'er,

On board the vessel from Marseilles to Algiers I met with a fellow passenger whom I supposed to be a physician from his dress and manners, and the attentions which he paid me to alleviate the sufferings of my sea-sickness. he turned out to be a perruquier and barber in Algeria—but his vocation did not lower him in my estimation—for he continued his attentions until he passed my baggage through the customs, and helped me, when half dead with exhaustion, to the best hotel.

To an African inn I ascend;
I am cast on a barbarous shore,
Where a barber alone is my friend.

Do you ask me the sights and the news
Of this wonderful city to sing?
Alas! my hotel has its mews,
But no muse of the Helicon's spring.

My windows afford me the sight
Of a people all diverse in hue;
They are black, yellow, olive, and white,
Whilst I in my sorrow look blue.

320

Here are groups for the painter to take,
Whose figures jocosely combine,—
The Arab disguised in his haik,

A haik is a mantle worn by the natives.

And the Frenchman disguised in his wine.

In his breeches of petticoat size
You may say, as the Mussulman goes,
That his garb is a fair compromise
'Twixt a kilt and a pair of small-clothes.

The Mooresses, shrouded in white,
Save two holes for their eyes to give room,
Seem like corpses in sport or in spite
That have slily whipped out of their tomb.

The old Jewish dames make me sick:
If I were the devil—I declare
Such hags should not mount a broom-stick
In my service to ride through the air.

But hipped and undined as I am,
My hippogriff's course I must rein—
For the pain of my thirst is no sham,
Though I'm bawling aloud for Champagne.

Dinner's brought; but their wines have no pith—
They are flat as the statutes at law;
And for all that they bring me, dear Smith!
Would a glass of brown stout they could draw!

O'er each French trashy dish as I bend,
My heart feels a patriot's grief!
And the round tears, O England! descend
When I think on a round of thy beef.

Yes, my soul sentimentally craves
British beer.—Hail, Britannia, hail!
To thy flag on the foam of the waves,
And the foam on thy flagons of ale.

321

Yet I own, in this hour of my drought,
A dessert has most welcomely come;
Here are peaches that melt in the mouth,
And grapes blue and big as a plum.

There are melons too, luscious and great,
But the slices I eat shall be few,
For from melons incautiously eat
Melancholic effects may ensue.

Horrid pun! you'll exclaim; but be calm,
Though my letter bears date, as you view,
From the land of the date-bearing palm,
I will palm no more puns upon you.

322

EXTRACTS FROM THE MOBIADE

AN UNFINISHED MOCK-HEROIC POEM

[_]

(Written in Edinburgh, winter of 1801-2)

[OMITTED] Monopoly's Briarean hands
Had dragged her harrow o'er a hundred lands,
But, chief, the terrors of her Gorgon frown
Had scared Edina's faint and famished town.
Then Want, the griffin, champed with iron jaws
Our shuddering hearts and agonizing maws;
Chased from our plundered boards each glad regale
Of vermeil ham, brown beef, and buxom ale.
Ah me! no strepent goose at Christmas-tide
Hissed in the strangler's hand, and kicked and died!
No trembling jellies nor ambrosial pie
Regaled the liquorish mouth and longing eye.
Red sunk December's last dishonoured sun,
And the young Year's-Day passed without a bun!
[OMITTED] Then sprung each patriot from his lowly den;
Even tailors would avenge the rights of men!
Huzzaing barbers swell the marching line,
Whose nice hands trim the human face divine;
Sweeps, in their panoply of soot revealed,
The glorious besom of destruction wield;
Their leathern aprons Crispian heroes stock
With tingling brick, huge tile, and massy rock!
[OMITTED] March on, ye champions of the public weal!
Revenge or ruin! death or cheaper meal!
[OMITTED]

323

Fair salutary spot! where health inhales
Her freshest fountains and her purest gales,
I love thy homely name's familiar sound,
Thou green Parnassus of my native ground!
Haunt of my youth! while yet the poet's head
Peeped from yon high and heaven-aspiring shed,
O'erlooking far Edina's gilded vanes
And all her dusky wilderness of lanes,
What time, sublimely lodged, he mounted higher
Than Attic station with his Scotian lyre,
And, warm in Fancy's castle-building hour
Sung to the shelter of his skylight bower.
'Twas then, sweet hill! imagination drew
Thy winding walk some paradise in view;
Each white-robed nymph that sailed thy terrace round
Seemed like a goddess on Elysian ground.
Then spread Illusion, with her pencil warm,
Unearthly hues on every meaner form;
Wings on the grazing horse appeared to grow,
And Delphian woods to wave, and Helicon to flow!

Nor ceased my day-dream till the waning hours
Had shook fair fancy from her throne of flowers,
And o'er my heart emotions less divine
Imperious warned the esurient bard to dine.
Yet, when my bell its awful summons rung,
And menial Mary heard its iron tongue,
Not in plebeian prose I spoke aloud
When mortal wants the immortal spirit bowed.

[OMITTED] Bring me the beef, the dulcet pudding bring;
Or fry the mudlark's odoriferous wing;
Or simmering greens with soft rotation turn,
Champed in the luscious treasure of the churn!

324

Then pour the brown ale, rich as ever ran
From Balder's horn or Odin's creamy can!
Blest in that honeyed draught, let none repine
For nectarous noyeau or ambrosial wine!
But, lest my waning wealth refuse to raise
So fair a feast in these degenerate days,
Take from this Splendid Shilling what may find
Some sweet refection for a sober mind—
The earth-born apple, vegetable grace
Of Erin's sons, a blunder-loving race! &c.