Nugae Canorae :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ye Powers unseen, whose pure aërial forms
Hover on Cambria's awful mountains hoar!
Who breathe your fury in her raging storms,
And join your deep yells to the tempest's roar,
Assist my visionary soul to soar
Once more enraptur'd o'er your prospects drear;
Let each sensation warm my heart once more,
That wont to prompt th' enthusiastic tear,
And raise my restless soul when your wild scenes were near!

Sure ye who viewless range those prospects blest,
And swiftly glance o'er many a heath-clad hill—
Sure ye oft animate the glowing breast,
And often warm with many a mystic thrill
The pure poetic fancy!—Oh! deign still
Those high, those speechless pleasures to renew,
Let Memory trace each scene with faithful skill,
And let Imagination's fervour true,
With no dim tints recal each magic mountainview.

In all the tedious intercourse of life,
Say, is there aught of bliss sublime and high?
Amid the fluttering world's unmeaning strife,
Say, is there aught to sooth or satisfy
The soul aspiring to her kindred sky?—
No!—Nature, thou alone canst boast the power
To reillume the melancholy eye—
Cheer the dejection of the restless hour,
Or bid advent'rous thought to trackless regions tower.

If thou, perchance, hast ever felt the smart
Of unrequited friendship, go and soothe,
In independence wild, thy wearied heart!—
The charm of solitary pleasures prove,

Ye who the world's cold scorn may sometimes move
To curse mankind!—and ye that doubt and fear,
Oh! see how Nature beams with boundless love!—
The God of Nature shall instruct you there,
All rapture to the heart, all music to the ear.

And you ye Cambrian hills and valleys sweet,—
You gave such pleasure to a wearied mind,
You fill'd a heart, which thought all joy deceit,
With unfeign'd rapture, and with peace refin'd.
Thanks to your charms and glories unconfin'd!
Thanks to that God who gave a heart to feel!
And may your rude scenes with an influence kind
Continue long the wound of care to heal,
And warm afresh with joy, Affliction's bosom chill!

And you, ye shadowy spirits, that unseen
All wildly glance those fabled scenes among,
Whose solemn voices, oft Night's conscious queen
Salute with murmur sweet, and mystic song;

May you for him that raptur'd roves along,
Or climbs some rock whose fork'd peak cleaves the sky,
If chance the powers of verse to him belong,
Bid dreams of hallow'd import flutter by,
And purge from mortal film, his half-enlighten'd eye!

ODE

TO DERWENTWATER, CUMBERLAND.

August, 1794.

Wild scenes! tho' absent from my sight,
Remembrance often views your wakeful charm:
She cherishes with fond delight
The enthusiastic thrill, the feeling warm,
The glow poetic, and the wild alarm,
That ever wait, enchanting scenes! on you.
She often sees your hanging wood
Wave on the mountain's brow,
And kens your mild reflecting flood
Sleep in the vale below,
With feelings keenly true;------

She views the mountain torrent white with foam,
As its big mass darts wildly from on high;
While conscious shades that shed an awful gloom,
From the rude glare of Day's unwelcome eye
Shroud many a fairy form that loves to hover nigh.
Majestic views!
What trembling effort of my votive muse,
May dare to hail
Shades where Sublimity shall ever dwell?
Where oft She points the melancholy rock,
To make it frown more dread;
And bids the beetling crag more proudly mock
The embrio storm that hovers round its head.
While She, of rapturous thought the Magic Queen,
Wakes every ruder grace,
Beauty, more lovely in an awful scene,
Adorns of nature the expressive face
With many a sweeter charm,
And hues divinely warm,—
Bids the torrent as it flows
In the vale below repose,

Bids the glowing car of day
Shed a soft attemper'd ray,
Gives the groves a fresher green
Where mild zephyr sails serene.
Beauty calms the liquid lake,
And ever bids it sweetly take
The margin rock, and each time-hallow'd wood,
Each mountain wildly high, sublimely rude,
With soft reflected grace in its reposing flood.

Methinks I see in native charm attir'd
All the bright forms of Keswick's happy vale:
Methinks I see the scene, which oft inspir'd
The glow of Genius, and the Muses' tale.
Derwent! I view thy lake of clearest glass,
Which Nature decks in beauty all thine own—
The liquid lustre of its level face
Where the gay pinnace glitters to the sun.
“I feel the balmy gales that blow,”
Its surface brightly clear along;
And now I hear them murmur low,
The lightly trembling woods among.
The cluster'd isles that scarcely peep
From the blue bosom of the deep,

Which loves their grassy sides to lave,
Now meet excursive Fancy's eye,
And with a sweet diversity
Break the wide level of the rippling wave.
Ah! as thy varying scene I mark,
What cloud-clad rocks, what mountains huge appear:
Here Wallow frowns, with Skiddaw in its rear,
A vast stupendous mass! and, hark!
Methinks I seem in Fancy's dream to hear
A deep majestic sound
From yon rude rocks rebound,
Where wild woods ever wave 'mid fragments drear.
On breezes borne, that fan the day,
Now louder, and now louder roars
The hollow sound on Keswic's shores,
As on I urge my way.—
'Till led by Fancy to the impending shade,
O'ercanopied by melancholy rocks,
Lodore is seen to thunder thro' the glade,
And from the appalling steep with fearful shocks

To urge the fragment thro' the opening air,
Big with impending fate and deep despair
To Him, the unlucky wight, that wont to wander near.

Tremendous flood!
Which flingst thy foam on many a fragment rude;
And bid'st the forest quake
And listening nature shake,
As down thou tumblest 'mid the humid wood.
For thee, her showers may summer send,
And still replenish every spring!
For thee, the lone Enthusiast's friend
Her wildest storms may winter bring!
May many a mountain torrent mix with thine,
And seek thy favourite haunt, sublimity divine!

What are the graces of the polish'd scene
Where the wild form of Nature's sought in vain,
Where artificial elegance is seen
A supplement to Beauty's beamy train!
What, when compar'd to Lodore's shade!—
Here wanton Nature's boundless grace,
Fancy, sweet visionary maid,
Is often fondly seen to trace.

Here all the viewless forms that still
Awake the enthusiastic thrill;
Here fairy phantoms that dispense
Rapture to sublimated sense,
Impart their highest influence—
There, Dulness leaning on some statue near
(Her emblem meet) wears out the insipid year,
And talks of Nature with an ideot joy
While Nature, absent maid, ne'er blest her vacant eye.

ELEGY

ON LEAVING EXMOUTH.

August, 1794.

Farewel, sweet scenes familiar to mine eyes,
Oft have I mark'd you with a transport blest;
Tho' now no more for me your charms shall rise,
Or give my soul a transitory rest.

Farewel, thou blue and ever restless main,
On whose clear breast yon bright orb sheds his ray;
While from the vault above with boundless reign,
He proudly flames, the exulting Lord of day.

Farewel, ye little skiffs that calmly scud
With trembling white sail to each zephyr true
Along the wide and undulating flood;
Sweet fairy objects of a fairy view!

And you, ye proud majestic ships, that glide
With swelling canvas, and with pennants gay,
Stately and slow along the obedient tide,
No more for me ye plow your wat'ry way!

Farewel, the glowing sigh, the swelling thought,
The throb mysterious, and the tear so sweet;
Farewel, the joys that inspiration brought,
And Nature wild, in Solitude's retreat.

I haste, alas! from this unruffled main,
I haste from shores where sighs the placid wave,
To scenes of moral misery and pain,
The billowy storms of busy life to brave.

Feelings of peace, ye melting thoughts, I go,
I go, with you to never more sojourn!
Day-dreams of sweet imaginary woe,
I quit your charms realities to mourn!

THE MELANCHOLY MAN.

1795.

I

What means this tumult of thy soul—
Those feelings words could ne'er define—
Those languid eyes that vacant roll—
Those cherish'd thoughts that inly pine?
Why dost thou wildly love to stray
Where dimly gleams the doubtful day,
And all-unconscious muse with pensive pace?
Or why in lorn dejected mood
Bend o'er the melancholy flood,
And with unmeaning gaze the heedless current trace?

II

Ah! why, thou poor, distracted thing!
Those muttered accents, broken, low;
Those visionary tears that spring
From unintelligible woe?

Why does the rose that deck'd thy cheek
Pal'd o'er with care, no more bespeak
The lovely flush of life's luxuriant morn?
Or o'er thy shrunk, ambiguous face,
Bereft of youth's untutor'd grace,
Thy locks all wildly hang, neglected and forlorn?

III

Should eve's meek star with paly eye
Peep lonely o'er the mountain's head,
While on the blue translucent sky
Some feathery clouds are lightly spread;
Why wilt thou seek the rushy heath,
And listen as the gale's low breath
Murmurs forlorn the moss-clad waste along?
When from the white-thorn's blossom'd spray
The red-breast sings his latest lay,
Why with bent downcast brows stand list'ning to the song?

IV

Why does the tear unbidden start,
And why those sighs that wildly swell?
Why flutters thy tumultuous heart,
Thy looks unspoken feelings tell,

If chance beneath thy devious feet
Thou seest the lover's last retreat,
The cold and unblest grave of pale despair?
Why dost thou drop a feeling tear
Upon the flowret lurking near,
And bid it ever droop, a meek memento, there?

V

Why with unwonted longings yearn
O'er this, the last resource of man,
And with mysterious envy turn
Thy only shelter, Worth! to scan?
Why dost thou, to Affliction true,
When April sheds her chilly dew,
Bend o'er the spot, ere peeps the weeping day?
When Eve's unrealizing gleam
Confounds the gaze in visual dream,
Why dost thou love to hear the curfew die away?

VI

Where (monument of past delight,
And truer type of joy's brief reign)
The Ruin gleams, and dim Affright
Shivers the homeward-plodding swain;
Why dost thou love alone to tread
Fragments with ivy overspread,

And mark the grey-tower half enshrin'd in trees;
Or listen, as in vaults beneath
From viewless forms deep murmurs breathe,
And sighs on mossy walls the melancholy breeze?

VII

Why dost thou loiter on the beach
Where rippling dies the bright-blue wave,
And often with fantastic speech
To the deaf ocean idly rave?
Why dost thou bid the billow bear
Thy frame unnerv'd by fancied care
To realms more pure, where genial souls inspire?
Why dost thou view the little skiff,
Which flutters near the frowning cliff,
With many an “aching wish” and impotent desire?

VIII

When in the crowded walks of men,
'Mid festive scenes thou'rt doom'd to mix,
Why on some distant lonely glen
Thine ill-attuned spirit fix?
Why dost thou spurn alluring mirth,
And bend unconscious to the earth,

Mute and unknowing, absent and unknown?
Why dost thou frown on every sport,
And curse indignant those that court
The motley phantom Joy, on Folly's tinsel throne?

IX

And wherefore, when the trump of fame
Inflames the soul to glory's deed,
Such deed with cynic sternness blame,
And quaintly mock th' ephemeral meed?
Why now with misanthropic eye
The springs of action keenly try
Through the pure medium of eternal truth?
Now rais'd above this nether sphere
A mere spectator, judge severe,
Nor chill'd by fears of age, nor warm'd by hopes of youth?

X

Is it because each tie is gone
That bound thee to this fragile state?
Because thou'rt left forlorn, alone,
No friend to love!—no foe to hate?
Has keen affection often brought
The pleasures of a tender thought,

And is such thought for ever now bereft?
Say, hast thou felt an ardent flame
Which not eternity could tame,
And are its joys expir'd, and all its vigour left?

XI

Has fancy to thy madden'd gaze
Display'd th' elysian dells of bliss?
Say, did her secret wonders raise
A wish for happier worlds than this?
And is the wanton faery flown,
And left thee chill'd to conscious stone,
At this cold prospect of unmeaning care?
And is Hope's lustre fled afar,
Nor haply from her pilot star
Gleams one congenial ray, repellent of despair?

XII

Is it that thou didst love mankind
With ardour warm as angels feel;
And did they spurn thy generous mind,
And wanton wound—nor wish to heal?
—If causes dark as these have wrought
The puzzling wreck of splendid thought,

I weep!—and meekly turn from this low earth;
Yet sometimes muse, why miscreants bloom,
While Sorrow's bleak untimely gloom
Blights, ere his powers expand, the trembling child of Worth!

LINES ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT.

1795.

The fluttering gale has sunk to rest,
The sloping sun-beams feebly glow,
Such zephyrs breathe as sooth the breast,
Such radiance pours as softens woe.

The languid notes of lonesome bird,
From yonder coppice sweetly wind;
And thro' the scene are faintly heard
Sounds that are silence to the mind.

As slow my devious feet advance
Thro' Eve's unrealizing gloom,
Mine eyes peruse with eager glance
An Infant's solitary tomb.

'Tis simple! yet the green sod here
That seems to court no stranger's eye,
Than marble claims a tenderer tear,
Than sculpture moves a softer sigh!

A lonely primrose lifts its head,
And here and there pale violets peep;
And, if no venal tears are shed,
The dews from many a daisy weep.

And Pity here is often seen
To prompt the nameless pilgrim's sighs,
For Pity loves to haunt the scene
Where Grief is stript of Art's disguise.

I mark'd the spot!—and felt my soul
Enwrapp'd in Sorrow's softest mood;
The pensive shade that o'er me stole,
It could not lightly be withstood.

I mark'd the spot—and thought how soon
Each earthly blessing is resign'd!
E'en then I saw life's dearest boon
Consign'd to dust—to death consign'd!

And while a parent's hopes and fears,
To fabling Fancy forceful swell;
And while a parent's anxious tears,—
These accents negligently fell:—

“Thou little tenant of the grave,
“Sleep on, untouch'd by mortal strife,
“Unknown the cares that man must brave,
“The ills, that only end with life!

“Of eager hope, unconscious thou,
“Unconscious thou of grief's extreme:
“To thee—an everlasting now!
“To thee—a sleep without a dream!

“Sleep on, poor child!—a fellow worm,
“Who's prov'd for thee life's joy and care,
“Would fain forego the useless term,
“He's tasted life—and death's his prayer.

“To thee, poor child! ere grief is brought
“To vex thy soul, oblivion's given!—
“Oh! if the grave could boast of thought,
“That thought would make the grave—a “heaven!”

Farewell, sweet spot! my soul I feel
Entranc'd in sorrow's softest mood;
These pensive shades that o'er me steal,
They shall not lightly be withstood.

STANZAS, WRITTEN BY ULSWATER, CUMBERLAND.

May, 1795.

Fair lake, I mark thine ample tide,
Thy crisped surface clear and blue;
I mark the groves that fringe thy side
Reflected in thy mirror true.

I mark yon grey rocks rudely wild,
That nod stupendous o'er the vale;
I feel the breezes warm and mild,
That haste to fill yon silken sail.

I see the transient shadow pass
Along thy variegated hills;
And while they lave the margin grass,
I hear thy sweetly murmuring rills.

I hear the mellow-melting horn,
While Echo swells each languid close;
On every breeze is music borne!—
On every object beauty glows!

Welcome the wild tumultuous thrill!
Hail, child of Nature, fond alarm!
To me this sigh is pleasing still,
To me this tear has many a charm.

But yet I wish—thou hov'ring sigh,
But yet I wish—thou glowing tear,
I wish—and yet I scarce know why—
Sophia, when you rise, were near.

ADDRESS TO THE GENIUS OF SHAKSPEARE.

1795.

When first thine eyes beheld the light,
And Nature bursting on thy sight
Pour'd on thy beating heart a kindred day;
Genius, the fire-eyed Child of Fame!
Circled thy brows with mystic flame,
And warm with hope, pronounced this prophetlay.

Thee, darling Boy! I give to know
Each viewless source of Joy and Woe,
For thee my vivid visions shall unfold:
Each form, that freezes sense to stone,
Each phantom of the world unknown,
Shall flit before thine eyes, and waken thoughts untold.

The bent of purpose unavow'd;
Of Hopes and Fears the wildering crowd;
The incongruous train of wishes undefin'd;
Shall all be subjected to thee!
The excess of Bliss and Agony
Shall oft alternate seize thy high-attemper'd mind.

Oft o'er the woody summer vale
When Evening breathes her balmy gale,
Oft by the wild brook's margin shalt thou rove;
When just above the western line
The clouds with richer radiance shine,
Yellowing the dark tops of the mountain-grove.

There Love's warm hopes thy breast shall fill,
For Nature's charms with kindliest skill
Prepare for Love's delicious extacy;
Thy prostrate mind shall sink subdued,
While in a strange fantastic mood,
The wild power fires thy veins, and mantles in thine eye!

For know where'er my influence dwells,
Each selfish interest it expels,

And wakes each latent energy of soul;
Indifference, of the marble mien,
Shall ne'er with lazy spells be seen,
To quench th' immortal wish, that aims perfection's goal.

There shalt thou burst, whate'er it be
That manacles mortality,
And range thro' scenes by fleshly feet untrod;
And Inspiration to thine eye
Shall bid futurity be nigh,
And with mysterious power approximate to God.

CHRISTMAS.

1796.

This is the time when every vacant breast
Expands with simplest mirth. Mem'ry, thou nurse
Of mingled feeling, trace the former years,
And count each jolly festival!

My heart
Scarce knew to feel, ere it more lively beat,
When I beheld the evergreen enwreathe
The ice-emblazon'd lattice; or aloft,
Shadowing the comely flitch, that jovial branch
Beneath whose licens'd shade the honest swain
Imprints the kiss unblam'd: and even now
Something like joy steals to my quicken'd pulse
When Friends bid “merry Christmas.”

Oh! 'tis good
To hear the voice of hospitality;
To feel the hearty grasp of love, to quit
For a brief interval the forms and pressures
Of life's tame intercourse.

And now I glean
The remnants that I may of parted joys
To deck this forlorn year, stealing from hours
Long past and flush with jollity.

There is a time
When first sensation paints the burning cheek,
Fills the moist eye, and quickens the keen pulse,
That mystic meanings half conceiv'd invest
The simplest forms, and all doth speak, all lives
To the eager heart! At such a time to me
Thou cam'st, dear holiday! Thy twilight glooms
Mysterious thoughts awaken'd, and I mus'd
As if possest, yea felt as I had known
The dawn of inspiration. Then the days
Were sanctified by feeling, all around
Of an indwelling presence darkly spake.
Silence had borrow'd sounds to cheat the soul!
And, to the toys of life, the teeming brain,
Impregning them with its own character,
Gave preternatural import; the dull face
Was eloquent, and e'en the idle air
Most potent shapes, varying and yet the same,
Substantially express'd.

But soon my heart,
Unsatisfied with blissful shadows, felt

Achings of vacancy, and own'd the throb
Of undefin'd desire, while lays of love
Firstling and wild stole to my trem'lous tongue.
To me thy rites were mock'ry then, thy glee
Of little worth. More pleas'd I trod the waste
Sear'd with the sleety wind, and drank its blast;
Deeming thy dreary shapes most strangely sweet,
Mist-shrouded winter! In mute loneliness
I wore away the day which others hail'd
So cheerily, still usher'd in with chaunt
Of carol, and the merry ringer's peal,
Most musical to the good man that wakes
And praises God in gladness.

But soon fled
The dreams of love fantastic! Still the Friend,
The Friend, the wild roam o'er the drifted snows
Remain unsung! Then when the wintry view
Objectless, mist-hidden, or in uncouth forms
Prank'd by the arrowy flake might aptly yield
New stores to shaping phantasy, I rov'd
With him my lov'd companion! Oh, 'twas sweet;
Ye who have known the swell that heaves the breast
Pregnant with loftiest poesy, declare
Is aught more soothing to the charmed soul
Than friendship's glow, the independent dream

Gathering when all the frivolous shews are fled
Of artificial life; when the wild step
Boundeth on wide existence, unbeheld,
Uncheck'd, and the heart fashioneth its hope
In Nature's school, while Nature bursts around,
Nor Man her spoiler meddles in the scene!
Farewell, dear day, much hath it sooth'd my heart
To chaunt thy frail memorial.

Now advance
The darkening years, and I do sojourn, home!
From thee afar. Where the broad-bosom'd hills,
Swept by perpetual clouds, of Scotland, rise,
Me fate compels to tarry.

Ditty quaint
Or custom'd carol, there my vacant ear
Ne'er blest! I thought of home and happier days!
And as I thought, my vexed spirit blam'd
That austere race, who, mindless of the glee
Of good old festival, coldly forbade
Th' observance which of mortal life relieves
The languid sameness, seeming too to bring
Sanction from hoar antiquity and years
Long past!

For me, a plain and simple man,
I rev'rence my forefathers, and would hold
Their pious ord'nance sacred! Much I hate
The coxcomb innovator, who would raze
The deeds of other times! Most sweet to me
These chroniclers of life; oft round them twine
Dear recollections of the past, the sum
Of all those comforts which the poor heart feels
While struggling here, bearing with holy care
Its little stock of intermediate joy,
To bless the circle of domestic love.
And now farewell! Thus former years have fed
My retrospective lays! Sad barrenness
Scowls o'er the present time! No boyish sports,
No youthful dreams, or hopes fantastic, now
Endear thy festival! Rapture is fled,
And all that nourish'd high poetic thought
Vanish'd afar; yet Resignation meek
Chastens past pleasure with her evening hues,
And lends a sober charm, mild as the shade
Mantling the scene, which glisten'd late beneath
Day's purple radiance, when grey twilight falls
Soft harmonizing. Rich variety
Pales to a sadden'd sameness!

Nor can I
Forget what I have lost since last I hail'd

Thy jolly tide! The aged Friend is dead!
The Friend who mingled in my boyish sports!
The Friend who solac'd my eccentric heart!
The Friend by whose mild suffrage unimpell'd
I ne'er could taste of joy!—Yes, She is dead!
So be it! Yet 'tis hard to smile, and know
So sad a loss! I bend before my God,
And, silent at the past, commune henceforth
Of days in store, “of righteousness to come,”
Of faith, of hope, and of a better world!

THE WOODMAN.

Written July, 1797.

Ah! wherefore that gibbet which dismally rocks,
As the gale of the hill moans profound;
While the fair spreading valley, now whitened with flocks,
Now with tufted slopes varied, and villages, mocks
The cold heathy mountains around?

There suffered poor Harry, the generous and bold!
The hamlet his virtues well knew;
His the free grace of youth; his eye always told
The feelings of nature; his looks never cold,
When they promis'd the most were most true.

And he loved: nor his loyal affection to bless
The maiden did ever delay:
His tongue's mellow music would sweetly express,
And his eyes melting gaze, and a timid caress,
That his thrilled heart was rapturously gay.

And often the sweets of a virtuous embrace,
If at evening he anxiously hied,
All faint from the copse, would his weariness chase,
In a moment enlighten his moist harass'd face
With a smile of inspirited pride.

Then around the trim hearth he the eve would beguile,
Reclined on the breast of his maid;
Having wooed her to sing, he would watch all the while,
How in her soft lip's inexpressible smile,
Love's witcheries furtively played.

And when the green mead and the full-foliaged spray
Refresh the glad eye, they would roam;
And, twining their arms, would exultingly say,
That, ere the leaves fell, at the close of the day,
They, wedded, should hie to one home.

Ah, bootless the thought! The prospect, though sweet,
Was frail as the tints of the sky,
When the day's radiance fades, and the traveller to cheat,
A gleam riseth beauteous, most vivid and fleet,
For the night-storm is brooding on high.

'Twas summer;—and sultry and parching noontide,
The woodman, with labour oppressed,
The ragings of thirst would relieve;—by the side
Of his path, on a sign, he unluckily spied
All the trophies of Bacchus confessed.

Might ever his breast's irresistible throe
To the o'ertakings of pleasure invite;
He quaffs, till with passion his cheeks deeply glow,
Life's full tides through his veins more tumultuously flow;—
His heart shaped untasted delight!

And now he must go to the green coppice shade;
While o'ercharged with delirious fire,
And passionate impulse, he quickly surveyed
Where a female half-clad was alluringly laid;
And he seized her with maddened desire.

'Twas a poor wandering idiot, diffused in the sun,
Who was basking, that there met his eye:
His good angel forsook him!—Confounded, undone,
He for ever the cause of his ruin would shun,
And wished at that moment to die.

No more on his Mary the wretched youth thought,
Or thinking, he started convulsed!
He would give at that hour the whole world to have bought
The bliss which her image had formerly brought,
Ere conscience that image repulsed.

And though he still loved, yet his love mix'd with shame,
Was bitter as once it was sweet,
When the innocent maiden was near him, the flame
Of tremulous agony shot through his frame,
Nor her look dared he ever to meet.

Now Harry's a father. The crazed outcast sent
A poor babe to his cot: then he cried,
“My arm is my all; will not Justice relent?
“And will nothing but twenty gold pieces prevent
“The idiot from being my bride?”

Distracted at leaving the maid of his love,
And loathing the outcast to wed;—
All agonized;—hopeless;—too poor to remove
The evils that threaten, no longer he strove,
But to prison was cruelly led.

And long he persisted; but, stiffened with cold,
And consumed both by hunger and thirst,—
He at last to his tyrants his happiness sold,
The idiot did wed, and consented to fold
To his heart, what it secretly cursed.

And then did he think, till 'twas madness to think,
On the raptures his Mary had given;
And oft at the sight his poor senses would sink,
When this ungifted wretch made him keenlier shrink
From the raptures of forfeited heaven.

'Twas a cold wintry season, the night it was dark,
And long was the eve;—on his cheek,
While his eye brooded vacantly o'er the pale spark,
As ít died on the hearth, the beholder might mark
Those workings that bid the heart break.

He thought on the maid; on the choice of his youth;
He thought on the days that were flown;
He painted with feelings more vivid than truth
The raptures that wonted his bosom to sooth,
When he counted that Maiden his own.

And he dwelt on her look, on her soft melting gaze,
On the roll of her languishing eye;
And he felt all the throbs of her willing embrace,
And recalled the warm touch of her soft melting face,
And heard the inarticulate sigh.

Then he looked on his mate, and she seem'd to his view
A fiend that tormented his soul!
He lifted his hand; and, oh God! ere he knew
The extent of his crime, the poor victim he slew,
'Twas an impulse he might not control!

For their prey now the blood-hunters anxiously wait,
The unfortunate woodman is bound!
Once more he beholds the heavy hinged gate
Of the prison; the fetters with torturing weight
Again bend him down to the ground.

There agonized, hopeless, remorseful, he lies,
With passions diseasedly rife;—
Disarmed of a conscience that comfort supplies,
With the frenzies of madness he impiously tries
To exhaust the vexed remnants of life.

He is sentenc'd to die; nor to him was the doom
With regret or reluctancy fraught;—
His misery mocks all the threats of the tomb,
And he earnestly prays that the moment may come,
The sabbath of agonized thought.

The day is appointed; slow moves on the throng,
That would glut their foul gaze with his woes;
It trampleth the vale, then windeth along
That desolate hill, whose wild thickets among
A gibbet all fearfully rose.

The scaffold he mounts; the moment is near,
When, echoing far through the crowd,
A shriek of wild agony thrills on his ear,
Oh God!—a poor maniac!—his Mary is here—
She rushes along screaming loud.—

Then death it was horror;—the past was forgot—
From her visage he fearfully shrunk:—
One embrace she implor'd, then quick to the spot
The fear-winged Mary distractedly shot,
On the breast of her lover she sunk.

She was senseless; her pale cheek was worn to the bone,
To the breeze floated wildly her hair;
And he glued to his breast, with a horrible groan,
The love of his youth; and his eyes fixed as stone,
At that moment did deathfully glare.

The pang it is passed;—for the minions of law
Asunder these wretched ones tore;
The cord round his neck they inhumanly draw,
Mary's eyes, tho' half clos'd, the dire spectacle saw,
Nor her senses could mortal restore.

[LINES ON A FRIEND]

1797.

[_]

The Circumstances related in the following Lines fell under the Author's notice, and are detailed without any poetical exaggeration.

Turn not thy dim eyes to the stormy sea,
Thou wretched mourner! for thy Child is gone;
Gone, never to return! Goaded by ills,
Which poor mortality may not endure,
Unshrinking, he hath left his native land,
His native home, all the dear charities
Of brother, son, and friend! and more than these,
The inexplicable lingerings which endear
To the susceptible breast the scenes where first
It learn'd to feel, where young sensation gave
Mysterious import to the characters
Of Nature's volume! But he may not go
Without some sad memorial from the heart
Which knew him best, the heart which sadly mark'd
His full soul, and his vigorous spirit sink
Unmechaniz'd by pain!

And surely thou,
Deserted mother! for a while shalt feel
Some mingled solacings of gloomy joy,
When I relate his wrongs whom thou dost weep,
Yet living, lost for ever.

When a child,
His father died, and died with ear which long
Had drunk the pois'nous tale of calumny.
Five infants totter'd round the widow'd mother,
And he who should have screen'd them, ere he went
To the cold grave; them, and their feeble parent,
With alienated love had left his all
In stranger hands; had listen'd to a lie
Which robb'd their mother of a taintless name;
And the poor tremblers, e'en on life's hard verge,
Knew not a father's kind protection; eat,
Though affluence might have blest them, the scant meal
Uncertain; while their mother, with a heart
Torn, and misgiving of the future dole
Reluctantly supplied, hung o'er her babes
With sorrows heighten'd by a cruel sense
Of what she once had been, with agony

And unexpress'd despair. Meanwhile the fiends,
Who fram'd with slandering tongue the deadly tale,
That numb'd the fibres of the dying man,
E'en till he knew not pity, till he lost
All fleshly yearnings,—they did gorge their prey,
And hug their hidden treasure!

Scarce arriv'd
At manhood, soon as He began to feel,
He felt what injury and injustice are,
And bitter disappointment. He no friend
Possess'd; yet had a bosom that might own
All the varieties of social joy,
From meekest pity to the expansive swell
Of warm benevolence; from passion's throe,
To the holier interchange of kindred souls!
How has he struggled with the instinctive love
That led him to embrace his fellow men,
And bind them to his breast! I only knew
The ruins of his mind; yet have I seen
The smother'd tear for passing wretchedness!
I've seen the faint flush, and the pulse of pity,

Working on his poor cheek, e'en while he forc'd
The unnatural laugh of hard indifference
To cope with nature's pleadings! Oh, my God!
I have e'en heard him, with most strange perversion,
Brag that weak man was fashion'd by his Maker
To live a lonely, uncompanion'd thing;
That he was self-sufficient; that the smile
Of sweet affection was a very cheat,
And love's best energies impertinence:
While ever on his favourite household dog
He look'd such meanings of a hollow heart,
His rebel eye express'd such sad misgivings,
That all he spake fell flat upon the ear,
Self-contradicted.

With some scanty wrecks,
Snatch'd from his father's stores, he struggled long
To brave the world! enrolling his fair name
With those who seek, by jostling with mankind,
To gain some footing on this wretched earth.
But he, the adventurer's wild spontaneous life
Leading, with ardour ever prompt to act
The heart's quick impulses, had not (poor man)
Been school'd in all the subtleties of fraud;

In that nice lore of systematic lies,
Which commerce, unrelenting task-master,
Exacts from those who'd fatten on her smiles!
His manly reason could not tamely brook
To shrink and tremble, and annihilate
Its noblest energies, at the curst saws
Of mammon's sons—No; he had trod too long
His mortal path unbending and erect!
As well they may, in this world's difficult passage,
Who know not cunning's complicated schemes.
He fell, where each half-fashioned unripe knave
Is shuffled off by a more perfect villain.
His prospects blasted, his fair name traduc'd,
His very milk of human kindness turn'd
To pois'nous gall; distracted by the tears
Of his poor mother, and the sobs and prayers
Of brothers, sisters, who look'd up to him
For daily bread, he left his native land,
And with a mind resolved to endure
Through future life a most unnatural blank,
Sail'd o'er the element!

I saw him go
He said not aught that to the standers by
Betray'd a suffering one; but he did look!

Oh God! he look'd pale, stiff as a sear'd oak
Blanch'd by the lightning; and mute vacancy
Sat on his face, as no soul dwelt within!
He went; nor human ear hath heard of him!
Nor human tongue made mention of his name!
Oft I pass by his dwelling, vacant now;
And at such times I almost curse a world
That moulds to guilt the energetic soul
Of loftiest promise; and for saintly worth
Invents a discipline which ends in ruin!

The subject of the tale; whose name the Author has purposely omitted.

LONDON.

In solitude
What happiness!—Who can enjoy alone?
Or, all enjoying, what contentment find?
Milton.

1798.

Thou first of human feelings, social love!
I must obey thy powerful sympathies,
E'en though I've often found that those my heart
Most priz'd, were creatures of its warm desires,
Rather than aught which other men less prone
To affections swift, transforming quality,
Might worthy deem or excellent!

Thy scenes,
Thy tainted scenes, proud city, now detain
My restless feet. 'Twill sooth a vacant hour
To trace what dim inexplicable links
Of hidden nature have inclin'd my soul
To love what heretofore it most abhorr'd.

When first a little one I mark'd far off
The wreathed smoke that capp'd thy palaces:
Oh what a joyous fluttering of the heart,
Oh what exulting hopes were mine! Methought,
Within thy walls there must be somewhat strange,
Surpassing greatly any wondrous dream,
Of fairy grandeur, which my childhood lov'd.
And when I heard the busy hum of men,
And saw the passing crowd in endless ranks,
The many-colour'd equipage, and steeds
Gaily caparison'd; it seem'd to me
As though all living things were centered here.
But other feelings soon transformed these shews
To meerest emptiness, e'en till my soul
Would sicken at their presence; for I've sought
To cherish quiet musings, and disdain'd
The idle forms which play upon the sense,
Yet give the heart no comfortable thoughts.
Yes, I have sought the solitary walk,
Where I might number every absent friend,
And give a tear to each: I've nurs'd my soul
With strangest contemplation, till it wore
A sad and lonely character, untouch'd
By th' operation of external shapes.
Yet, London, now thou'rt pleasant—'tis e'en so!
For I am sick of hopes that stand aloof

From common sympathy; for I am sick
Of pampering delicate exclusive loves,
And silly dreams of rapture, that would pull
The shrinking hand from every honest grasp,
The shrinking heart from every honest pledge,
Not trickt in gracefulness poetical!
Sometimes, 'tis true, when I have pac'd the haunts
Of crowded occupation, I have felt
A sad repression, looking all around,
Nor catching one known face amid the throng,
That answer'd mine with cordial pleasantness.
I've often thought upon some absent friend,
E'en till an assur'd hope that he was nigh
Has made me lift my head, and stretch my arm,
To gaze upon the form, and grasp the hand,
Of him who lived in my wayward dream.
And I have look'd, and all has been to me
A crowded desolation! Not one being,
'Mid that incessant and perturbed throng,
Dreamt of my hopes or fears! Then have I pac'd
With breathless eagerness; and if an eye
Has met my gaze, wherein some trace remote
Lived of one on whom my heart has lean'd,
A gentle thrilling of awaken'd love
Has warm'd my breast, and haply kindled there

A dream of parted days, that so my feet,
It seem'd to me, mov'd not in solitude.
Thus can the heart, by its strange agency,
Extract divine emotion from the scene
Most barren and uncouth; which images
To him who cannot love,—who never felt
That ever active warmth commingling still
Its own existence with all present things,—
Nought beside forms, and bodily substances.

Methinks he acts the purposes of life,
And fills the measure of his destiny
With best approved wisdom, who retires
To some majestic solitude; his mind
Rais'd by those visions of eternal love,
The rock, the vale, the forest, and the lake,
The sky, the sea, and everlasting hills.
He best performs the purposes of life,
And fills the measure of his destiny,
Who holds high converse with the present God
(Not mystically meant), and feels him ever
Made manifest to his transfigur'd soul.
But few there are who know to prize such bliss;
And he who thus would raise his mortal being,
Must shake weak nature off, and be content
To live a lonely uncompanion'd thing,

Exil'd from human loves and sympathies.
Therefore the city must detain my feet;
For I would sometimes gaze upon a face
That smiles on me, and speaks intelligibly
Of one that answers all my hopes and fears.
Nor is to me the sentiment of life
Less acceptable, when I contemplate
Numberless living and progressive beings,
Acting the infinite varieties
Of this miraculous scene. For though the dim
And inharmonious ministrations here,
Of heavenly wisdom, may confound the sense,
The partial sense of man, my soul is glad;
Trusting that all, yea every living thing,
Shall understand, in the appointed time,
And praise the inwoven mystery of sin;
Losing each hope and each propellent fear
In perfect bliss; and “God be all in all!”

See Hartley “On the final Happiness of all Mankind.”

“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work.” St. Paul to Timothy.

LINES TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN.

[_]

I am happy in being able to offer this imperfect tribute to the memory of a woman, whose undeserved sufferings have excited my indignation and pity; and whose virtues, both of heart and mind, my warmest esteem.

This will not be deemed a parasitical profession, when I avow a complete dissent from Mrs. Godwin with regard to almost all her moral speculations.

Her posthumous works, so far from convincing me that “the misery and oppression peculiar to women arise out of the partial laws and institutions of society,” appear little less throughout than an indirect panegyric on the institutions she wishes to abolish. She (with all other great

minds) owed her degree of intellectualization to the very restraints on the passions which she was aiming to annihilate; and the source of the miseries she complained of must rather be sought for in the brute turbulencies of human nature, than in the operation of any laws, conventional or positive.

However, the heart and upright dignity of this excellent woman have much interested me. I never quarrel with opinions; and I fervently wish that the expression of my admiration were more worthy of its object.

“On examining my heart, I find that it is so constituted, I cannot live without some particular affection. I am afraid, not without a passion; and I feel the want of it more in society than in solitude.” Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's Letters, vol. i. p. 178.

1798.

Mary, I've trod the turf beneath whose damp
And dark green coverture thou liest! 'Twas strange!
And somewhat most like madness shot athwart
The incredulous mind, when I bethought myself
That there so many earnest hopes and fears,

So many warm desires, and lofty thoughts,
Affections imitating, in their wide
And boundless aim, heaven's universal love,
Lay cold and silent! Listening to the breeze,
That scarcely murmur'd thro' the misty air,
And looking on the white and solemn clouds,
(The only things whose motion spake of life)
I almost counted to have heard thy voice,
And seen thy shadowy shape; for my full heart
(Tho' to my mortal sense thou ne'er wert known)
Had bodied all thy mental attributes
In th' unintelligent and vacant space.

Mary, thou sleep'st not there!—'Twas but a trance,
An idle trance, that led my wayward thought
To seek a more especial intercourse
With thy pure spirit on the senseless sod,
Where what was thine, not thou, lies sepulchred.
Life is a dream! and death a dream to those
Who gaze upon the dead: to those who die
'Tis the withdrawing of a lower scene
For one more real, pure, and infinite!

Amid the trials of this difficult world,
Surely none press so sorely on the heart

As disappointed loves, and impulses
(Mingling the lonely insulated soul
With all surrounding and external things)
Sever'd from nature's destined sympathies!
This was thy lot on earth!—Yet think not thou,
Man of the world, to triumph here o'er those,
Whose separate and immortalized spirits
Spoil them for life's pernicious intercourse.
This is the school of minds; and every wish,
Drawn from the earthly part, shall raise the being,
And fit it for a wider range, whene'er
The twofold ministry of flesh and spirit
Hath done its troubled business. Therefore thou,
Though here tormented, shalt in better worlds
Be greatly comforted!

I laugh at those
Who blame that upright singleness of soul,
Which ever shap'd the accents of thy tongue!
Look to yourselves, pedantic censurers!
Examine well within; for much, I fear,
Ye would but ill endure the scrutiny
That only gives to her a nobler rank
'Mid beings compos'd of heart and intellect.
In this fantastic scene each one assumes

A borrow'd character, and all agree
To seem a something, which in his secret thought
Each knows he is not; which the God of nature
Ne'er made, or meant a child of his to be!
And if a Man of Truth make no pretence
To some unhuman virtue, the brute crowd
Pluck off his hair, and plant with bitterness
Thorns of reproach on his devoted head!
Heaven knows that we have passions, and have hearts
To love; and they alone embrute or soil
The divine lustre of the better part,
Who love nor intellectual preference seek,
Eradicating from each sympathy
The holiness of reason, and that pure,
And high imagination, which would lose
The bodily in the spiritual.

I revere
That simpleness which gave to her pure lips
A ready utterance to each inward thought.
And I revere that obstinate regard
Which hung upon its object, e'en till all
The tender semblances, which lingering hope

Loves with such earnestness, were fully gone!
For passion, sanctified, will centre all
Its warm hopes in a chosen one! Not dead,
Nor e'er abolish'd, as some idly talk;
Impostors, or base earles, who never knew
Man's dearest charities. And passions ever
Shake with most potent stirrings the sublime
And pregnant minds, which wield with mightiest skill
The multitudinous elements of life.
But if that one forsake the soul which twin'd
So many warm endearments round its choice,
The world will seem a very wilderness!

See Posthumous Works, vol. ii. p. 166.

My earthly by his heavenly overpowered.—Milton.

TO A YOUNG MAN,

ATTACHED TO THE SPORTS OF THE FIELD.

Detested sport,
That owes its pleasure to another's pain;
That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks
Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endued
With eloquence that agonies inspire
Of silent tears, and heart-distending sighs;
Vain tears, alas! and sighs that never find
A corresponding tone in jovial souls.
COWPER'S TASK.

1798.

Oh stay thy hand—thou hast a power to kill
But none to bring forth life! Impressive truth,
Sounding to wisdom like a warning voice,
And teaching that our feebleness to work
The least good thing, should guard us tremblingly
From aught that looks like evil; lest we wrench
From her retired seat the better soul,
The sense which God hath lent us, which that God

Sees not polluted with a slumbering eye;
But vexes him that sets his gift at nought
With aweful darkness, and a fearful wandering!

Thou seest athwart this grove of trembling trees,
Trembling and glistening with the morning light,
Thou seest yon lavrock rise!—to the great sun
He seems to hasten:—save the burning orb
That lives above, nought but this little bird
Varies the mighty solitude of Heaven!
Art thou assur'd the Almighty doth not speak
To that same little bird?—that morning's glories
Are not discourses of his watchful love
Gladd'ning this innocent creature? Could'st thou seek
To stop his song of gratulation, quench
His sense of joy, and all those living powers
That dance so cheerly in him? They serve Heaven
Who love his works! and they most feel a God
Who hold each bodily sense a holy thing,
Communicating measurably to all
The influxes of that eternal Spirit
Whose countenance to man are day-light hues,
And sky, and sea, and forests, lakes, and hills,
And lightnings, thunders, and prodigious storms,
And suns, and all the company of worlds!

I would not kill one bird in wanton sport,
I would not mingle jocund mirth with death,
For all the smoking board, the savoury feast
Can yield most exquisite to pamper'd sense!

Since nature wills that every living thing
Should gratify the purposes of man,
And wait his proud disposal, let him prove,
E'en in this delegated function, prove,
A deep humility, which fears to tread
Where the all-perfect, and unquestion'd God
Hath wrought strange imperfection—perhaps to bend,
And by the influence of an holy sadness,
To tame the o'erweening soul! not give a cause
For riotous Dominion, and for Power
Sweeping with mad career from off this world
Its fair inhabitants!

My friend, I knew
A man who liv'd in solitude: a dell
A mossy dell, green, woody, hung around
With various forest growth, was his abode.
And in the forest many a gleaming plot
Of tenderest grass, its island circlet spread!

This man did rear a hut, and lived and died
In that lone dell! He had no friend on earth,
Nor wanted one—For much he lov'd his God,
And much those works which e'en the lonely man
May taste abundantly! And he did think
So oft on life's great Author, that at last
He worshipp'd him in all things, and believ'd
His poorest creatures holy, and could see
“Religious meanings in the forms of nature,”
Dreaming he saw, e'en in the passing bird,
The crawling worm, or serpent on the grass,
An emanation of his Maker—so
That a new presence stung him into thought
And made him kneel and weep!

Well! this poor man
Liv'd on the scanty fruits this little dell
Afforded. Never did a dying writhe,
Or dying gasp, war with his sense of good.
At last he died, and such had been his life,
That when he yielded up his animal frame,
It only seem'd as if he went to sleep
More quietly than ever!

TO A YOUNG MAN,

Who considered the Perfection of Human Nature as consisting in the Vigor and Indulgence of the more boisterous Passions.

1798.

This is not pleasure! canst thou look within
And say that thou art blest? At close of day
Canst thou retire to thy fire-side alone,
Quiet at heart, nor heeding aught remote,
The power of wine, or power of company,
To fill thy human cravings? Hast thou left
Some treasured feelings, unexhausted loves,
Thoughts of the past, and thoughts of times to come,
Mingled with sweetness all and deep content,
For Solitude's grave moment? Canst thou tell
Of the last sun-set how 'twas freak'd with clouds,
With clouds of shape sublime and strangest hues?
Canst thou report the storm of yester-night,
Its dancing flashes and its growling thunder?
And canst thou call to mind the colourless moon,

What time the thin cloud half obscured the stars,
Muffling them, till the Spirit of the Night
Let slip its shadowy surge, and in the midst
One little gladdening twinkler shook its locks?

Oh, have these things within thee aught besides
Human remembrance? Have they passion, love?
Do they enrich thy dreams, and to thy thoughts
Add images of purity and peace?
It is not so, cannot be so, to those
Who in the revels of the midnight cup,
Or in the wanton's lap, lavish the gifts,
God's supreme gifts, the energy, and fire,
That stir, and warm the faculty of thought!
If thou defile thyself, that joy minute,
Deep, silent, simple, dignified, yet mild,
Must never be thy portion! Thou hast lost
That most companionable and aweful sense,
That sense which tells us of a God in Heaven
And beauty on the earth: that sense which lends
A voice to silence, and to vacancy
A multitude of shapes and hues of life?
Go then, relinquish pleasure;—would'st thou know
The throb of happiness, relinquish wine,
And greedy lust, and greedier imagings
Of what may constitute the bliss of man!

Oh! 'tis a silent and a quiet power,
An unobtrusive power, that winds itself
Into all moods of time and circumstance!
It smiles, and looks serene; in the clear eye
It speaks refreshing things, but never words
It makes its instruments, and flies away
As 'twere polluted, from the soul that dares
To waste God's dear endowments heedlessly,
And without special care that present joy
May bring an after-blessing.

LINES SUGGESTED BY THE FAST,

Appointed for Wednesday, February 27, 1799.

Humble yourselves, my Countrymen!—Bow down
The stubborn neck of Pride! for, east and west,
Do Anarchy and Outrage raise a shout,
And tempt with blasphemy the God of Heaven!—
Humble yourselves, my Countrymen!—behold,
Save in this quiet isle, how Discord stalks,
Spoiling the fair Creation. Discord, child
Of grasping Lust, who, many-handed beast,
Seizes whate'er of rich munificence,
Or plenteous benefit is pour'd abroad;
Wallowing unprofited, and unendow'd,
'Mid all that ministers to use and joy.

Why have We such immunity from woe?
Why is the wrath of heaven averted hence?
What have We left undone, or what perform'd,

To appease the God of Justice?—Countrymen—
With minds not unprepar'd; and consecrate
From all imaginations light, and vain,
From all unholy and polluting things,
Seek out the hidden cause: and, if ye find
(As sure ye will) no argument to calm
The humble man who loves his brethren all,
And knows their crimes; and night, and morn, puts up
A silent prayer for them who heed him not;
With deeply smitten, and o'erflowing hearts,
Turn to the God of Love!—

There is abroad
An evil spirit; a spirit evil and foul,
Who, under fair pretence of modern lights,
And vain philosophy, parcels the dole
Of human happiness (that quality
Sought for six thousand tedious years in vain)
With lavish distribution! who with speech
Drest up in metaphysic eloquence,
And eked out plausibly with abstract phrase,
Would snatch from God himself the agency
Of good and ill!—would spoil for ornament,
Particular and relative, this universe;

Where circumscribed frailty and defect,
And harmless prejudice, and discipline,
Lead on the social and religious man,
(A thing more sensitive than rational,
Whom one poor unrepealable restraint
More benefits than thousand abstract truths)
To gifted penitence, and righteous rule,
And meek suspension of the human will,
Till He imbibe the Heaven-evolved lore
Of Wisdom and divine Philosophy,
Through many a fruitful, and unfruitful age
Piously register'd! And so prepar'd,
By patient noting of the ministries
Of Heaven below; in shadows manifest;
And dim relations; binding ages past,
With present times, and ages yet unborn;
By persevering patience so prepar'd,
(And mind that loves to find a good in evil.
Not banish evil for uncertain good.)
The vast procession of created beings,
The Will that links the vilest elements,
In a perpetued influence,
To Highest natures, He shall comprehend:
Till the magnificence of forms unveil'd
The universal world shall seem to him

A scene of order, and progressive joy,
A blaze of light where God himself transfus'd
Lives in no fabled presence!

This foul spirit
God's holy place irreverently treading,
Break its solemnities, and shameless brings,
Scandal on many a sacred ordinance.
It mocks neglected worth, and secret grief,
That dare not lift a streaming eye to Heaven!
It promiseth the beauteous fruit of peace,
And virtue's coronal, no trial past,
No fiery anguish of the human will
Quench'd with sweet drops of mercy!

'Twould revoke
The judgment and the privilege annex'd
To Wealth and Talents, Influence and Power!
'Twould snatch the promis'd blessing from the poor,
Hatching an obstinate sedition
From pamper'd lust and infidel despair;
And blot out from its calendar of grace
Faith and forbearance; and deride the heart
That seeks in this “tempestuous state of things,”

To live a life whose inoffensive rule
Owes not its charter to the earth's wise men.

How were the graces of the mind produc'd?
Did not omniscient Deity defer
To banish hence, the appointed difference
Of states and things, of joys and earthly stores,
Of office and magnificence, and rank,
Which some, misnamed wise, affect to call
(Masking their hate in scorn) human abuse,
A vicious usurpation?—Countrymen,—
Beware of these, so opulent in speech,
So fair and plausible,—beware of these!—
For they would separate what their God has join'd
In mystic co-existence, evil and good,
Pleasure and Pain, Honour and Infamy!—
This is a scheme of means—we vainly look,
For ends, or resting-places here obtain'd!—
Where were temptation, Vice annihilate?
Could Charity exist where never came
The ills of persecution? Love perform
Its perfect work where hate inflicts no wound?
Could pity weep had man no miseries?
Meekness endure did proud men ne'er prevail?

Or Faith with fixed eye, be crown'd above
Did not some clouds obscure the moral world?

I ask of Thee, thou poor oppressed Man,
Who friendless feel'st thyself, save when thou turn'st
To the Everlasting Friend—I ask of Thee
Whose actions never have been understood,
Whom falsely fixed blame (attach'd to deeds
Inexplicable, save to the All-seeing One)
Has led a superficial world to cast
Among its vile dishonourable things;—
I ask of thee, whether the darkest hour
Of man's rejection, has not brought a boon
Thou prizest more than worlds.—Thou lovedst all,
And perhaps thou lovedst One, a fellow being,
Better than life itself;—thou hadst a soul
Of deepest, tenderest feeling;—yet for thee
There was a fix'd and secret interdict
Inwoven in the mystery of thy fate,
Which blasted all thy promises of joy!
It seem'd that thou wert guilty—'twas not so!
Thou wert what proud men call unfortunate!—
I ask of thee again, oppressed man,
If this withdrawing of all goodly things,

All the desirable blessings of the earth,
Has not more wrought in thee; more solid peace,
More quiet joy, and heavenly grace, produc'd,
Than aught a smiling providence could give?

And these resources which we ne'er foresee,
But which experience, sanctified by Heaven,
Holds it most safe to trust, this evil spirit
Would utterly destroy; impatient ever
Of present ill; and ne'er from pious faith
Trusting that all things tend to happiness.—
This evil spirit misnamed Liberty—
Licentiousness 'mong wise men deem'd, and call'd
By angels blasphemy; rejects a God
Not seeing as man sees; who sets at nought
All earthly wisdom, and of smallest things
Works mighty marvels of stupendous power!

But heed not, Countrymen, the bleating Wolf!
Humble yourselves before the God of Heaven,
Remembering still that Liberty ne'er comes
Where more of wishes, more of lusts intrude
Than human skill has power to gratify!
That liberty comes not with laws relax'd;
With troublous opposition, and with rude
And boisterous promise that futurity,

Blest with the flush of prosperous event,
And grac'd with revel joys, shall put to shame
The pale experience. Rather, Liberty,
Thou liv'st with social confidence and peace!
Where, reasoning from the unfallacious past,
We trust with sweet and sober certainty
The issue of the meditated deed.—
Or rather, Liberty, thou lov'st to dwell
Where personal honour, not defined rules;
Where manly generosity, and pride
That shrinks from every stain; not civic laws
That force us to be free, till Freedom's self
Becomes a galling servitude;—are found!

Then bow yourselves, my Countrymen, and own,
That, in a world where voluntary slaves
Exist by millions—wretched slaves to vice—
That, in a world where victims to the sword,
Famine, and pestilence, are swept away
As summer insects by an eastern blast,—
That, in a world like this—you're Blest and Free!

LINES TO A BROTHER AND SISTER,

Written soon after a Recovery from Sickness

6th April, 1799.

I

'Tis surely hard, the melancholy day
To waste without the cheering voice of friend:
To see the morning dart its golden ray,
To see the night in misty dews descend,
Nor catch one sound where Love and Meekness blend.
'Tis surely hard for him who knows how dear
A kindred soul, eternally to send
A fruitless prayer for smiles and words that cheer,
The wish in looks revealed and rapture's holy tear,

II

Him whom the spirit of attachment warms,
The nameless thrilling and the soft desire:
Him whom the glance of melting beauty charms,
Its young allurement and its living fire;

For him in tedious languor to expire,
Dreaming of bliss, yet wake to deep despair;
Fitted for love, of every joy the sire,
To drag a life of unrequited care,
For him, such silent woe, 'tis surely hard to bear.

III

Thank Heaven, such lot hath never yet been mine,
For if the gloom of discontent should fall,
And my young spirit for a season pine,
I cannot, save with gratitude, recall
Gay-painted hours of dancing festival,
When new and joyous friendships bore away
All fears of what in future might befall,
All recollections of uncheer'd dismay,
Giving to full content the heartsome holiday.

IV

And still (with pride my heart the truth reveals)
Beneath my quiet and paternal roof,
Mine eyes for ever meet the look that heals
Pale Sorrow's anguish with a kind reproof.

For all the prodigal regards of youth
And all the sympathies of gentlest love,
And all the sweet simplicity of truth,
In silent harmony for ever move
Along the heaven-blest scene ordained for us to rove.

V

Brothers and Sisters! friends of infancy!
Oh how my heart rejoices when I speak
Of all the sweetness of the home-bred tie,
Whose gentle charities and graces meek
Spread with a fairer hue the youthful cheek
Than blushing passions deep and fiery glow;
Yes! it beseems that I could never seek,
My heart so turns to you, were ye to go,
A new or foreign aid to mitigate the blow.

VI

When morn first wakes me with its cheering smile,
That cheering smile, it seems, my friends, to wear,
Is friendship's charm transfused, that all the while
Lives in the silent spirit of the air:

Your voices, looks, and kind inquiries bear
Their living incense to each gladdened view;
And all that beams around so gay and fair,
Is Love's officious toil, that paints anew
Each form that looks like life with no terrestrial hue.

VII

And when meek evening glides athwart the sky
And drowsy silence hangs upon the earth,
Save that some distant hum which breathes to die,
May chance from haunts of bacchanalian mirth
To meet his ear who sadly wandering forth
Courts every hinting of departed bliss;
Yes, when meek evening glides, there spring to birth
Thousand dear images of happiness,
The Brother's honest grasp, the Sister's holy kiss.

VIII

And most to you my two beloved friends!
My Sister, and my Brother, most to you
My heart its cordial gratulation sends;
Olivia, Robert, friends both tried and true!

Chiefly, this moment, would my soul renew
To you its pledged affections, latest met:
(The absent ever it shall keep in view)
But oh, Companions of my youth, not yet
May I your female care and manly zeal forget.

IX

Yes, all without was drear, and all within
Was dark and hopeless! pale disease had shed
Her dullest glooms, and fain would I have been
A quiet slumberer, number'd with the dead.
But you with sweet solicitation led,
And tender blandishment, my troubled breast
From fears and doubts, and terrors fancy-fed,
And lulled my spirit to a heavenly rest
With Hope and Peace and Joy, and many a long-lost guest.

X

Then Sister, Brother! friends whom ne'er I hail
Without some gentle stirring of the heart;
Then Sister, Brother! friends who never fail
To hold in absence, with a secret art,
A sweet communion with my better part,
Accept my thanks, accept my humble lays!
And for one moment if your features dart
That simple welcome which affection pays,
Though faultering, weak, and poor, my verse were rich in praise!

These were the only two of the family whom the author met at home on returning from a journey: soon after which meeting this poem was written.

LINES TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.

Written at Barnwell, near Cambridge, and descriptive of the adjacent Country.

March 1st, 1800.

Southey, once more her interrupted voice
The Muse resumes To tell thee, Honoured Friend,
Though absent far, in Fancy's airy dream
That oft thy presence my lone hour beguiles,
Were sure a bootless toil. Thou knowest well
Thy station in my heart. What then select
To grace the humble verse? Perchance 'twould fill
A vacant hour to learn what scenes surround
The abode of him to whom thy love recurs
With sweet memorial unimpaired by time.

No rocks or mountains here, or “sea in storms,”
The world of sight endear. One joyless plain,
A map that imitates the cold March sky,
Lies evermore before the weary view.

Yet here I snatch my hours of untold bliss!
And curious, busy, in the anxious search
Of forms inanimate, on which to fix
My wayward sympathies, I haply find
A charm in barrenness; a power to please,—
Though bleakest winter lowers on every side,—
In many a shape which other eyes might pass
Unnoticed, unremembered.

The rude thorn,
Coated with yellow moss, on whose sere boughs
Hang scarlet berries, and some flakes of wool,
That hoarsely rustles on the wide grey moor;
The chalky hill, which terminates the view,
Crowned with a clump of firs, that make me think—
So small things wake sublime remembrances—
Of Scottish mountains, and of Scottish woods;
And other more remote acclivities,
With almost undistinguishable swell
Lying like pale clouds on the horizon's bound,
Amuse my soul with many a pleasing dream.

The little sinuous stream of underwood,
Shrouded in blackness of the winter months,
Stealing beneath the chalky eminence;—
Amid whose shade the church tower peeps alone,
Now a dim sullen mass of duskiest hue,
Unchecquer'd, save by one distinctest spot,
The single window of the embattled pile.
And now with shade half cloth'd, and half with light;
And near the wood, and still beneath the hill,
A snow-white cottage gleaming silently:—
All these to me are images of joy,
That suit the hour of meditative thought,
And bring refreshment to that purer mind,
Which seeks, by harmony of outward forms,
To 'stablish inward harmony and love,
And build on visible and earthly things
Unearthly thoughts! I love the wide extent,
The interminable sweep of unfenced moor,
That bares its bosom to the face of heaven!
Where, when the faint sun pours a silvery light,
The wandering clouds a partial blackness shed;
And o'er whose thistled heaps and clodded soil,
And whistling stubble, flies the cutting wind.

I love the shrill song of the merry lark,
Or fitful twitter of the lonely bird,
Which, at this season, from these naked plains,
Is all the music nature sends to heaven.

Rather than human converse, found in haunts
Of traffic, learning, pleasure, or of pride,
Love I these quiet unpretending friends!
And these are all the quiet rural friends
I here can boast possessing. Save one spire,
One spire, and woody village, whence, full oft,
My soul refreshed, through the unwearied gaze,
Drinks silent happiness! The glistening spire
Smiles in the sunbeam with a heavenly light;
And on a green bank fenced by orchard trees,
Lying towards that spot, we see, at noon,
Or hear, while bleating tenderly, young lambs
Enjoy the first warm cherishings of spring.
And, in the general waste, the trees around
Wave not unnotic'd, though their naked boughs
Boast not their summer richness, and the meads
Spread their green turf so sweetly to the stream

Silently flowing, that I seem to find
This scene, by crowds frequented every day,
Who note it not, a world of loveliness:
And, all forgetful of sublimer charms,
I look with gratitude to Him who made
All fair varieties, and gave to me
A sense those fair varieties to feel.

The Tower of Cherry-Hinton Church.

The village of Chesterton, which, in connexion with a wooded and meadowy foreground, formed with its stream, as seen from the Author's parlour at Barnwell, an exquisite scene.

LINES, WRITTEN 10TH APRIL, 1800.

Oh rus! quandoque ego te aspiciam? quando licebit
Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis
Ducere sollicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ.
Horatii Opera, 4th Sat.

[_]

In this poem the author writes in an assumed character. No man can despise the pretensions to happiness of a solitaire more than himself; but, in the alternative between society and solitude, circumstances will sometimes imperiously urge to the choice of the latter, even where the warmest social affections are implanted in the heart, and where no moral delinquency exists in the character of the person who thus retires from the world.

“I hear people talk of the raptures of solitude; and with what tenderness of affection they can love a tree, a rivulet, or a mountain. Believe

me, they are pretenders; they deceive themselves, or they seek, with their eyes open, to impose upon others. In addition to their trees and their mountains, I will give them the whole brute creation; still it will not do. There is a principle in the heart of man which demands the society of his like. He that has no such society, is in a state but one degree removed from insanity. He pines for an ear into which he might pour the story of his thoughts; for an eye that shall flash upon him with responsive intelligence; for a face, the lines of which shall talk to him in dumb, but eloquent discourse, for a heart that shall beat in unison with his own. If there is any thing in human form that does not feel these wants, that thing is not to be counted in the file for a man; the form it bears is a deception, and the legend, man, which you read in its front, is a lie. Talk to me of rivers and mountains! I venerate the grand and beautiful exhibitions and shapes of nature; no man more. I delight in solitude. I could shut myself up in it for successive days. But I know that every man, at the end of a course of this sort, will seek for the intercourse of sentiments and language. The magnificence of nature, after a time, will produce

much the same effect upon him, as if I were to set down a hungry man to a sumptuous service of plate, where all that presented itself on every side was massy silver and burnished gold, but there was no food.”

In short, let a man be ever so happy in solitude, nothing is more true than the old remark, that he will want some one to whom he may say, “I am happy.”

In solitude
What happiness! Who can enjoy alone?
Or, all enjoying, what contentment find?
MILTON.

Yes, in this world, neglected Genius, pine;
The prize of happiness shall ne'er be thine;
A melancholy journey thou must run,
Until the tedious race of life be done,
Save when to fill thy craving breast, are given
Some kind prelusive images of heaven.
No, Genius, no! 'tis well for thee, if soon
Thou quit with apathy life's giddy noon.
If thou alike or praise, or blame, canst hear,
With iron soul untouched by hope or fear;

If thou canst scorn each benefit, and fly
From friendship, gratitude, and sympathy;
'Tis well;—go on thy way;—and strive to keep,
Such is life's cheat, this undisturbed sleep.
Look not on cheeks that glow, and eyes that play
With radiance softer than the vernal day;
Look not on tears that start in passion's name,
Nor heed mild tones which music's self might claim;
Heed not the eloquence of lips which tell
Of all the secret ecstacies that dwell
With truth sincere, and love supremely blest,
By a responsive, sympathizing breast.
No!—these are mysteries of life's sacred store
Which, once unfolded, thou canst rest no more.
Thy die is cast; thy day of peace is fled;
And Nature's blackest storms surround thy head.
To common mortals these are common joys;
But not to thee;—the perilous charm destroys;
Or leaves such sad fastidious gloom behind,
That moping apathy benumbs the mind.
Go then, relinquish pleasure wouldst thou taste
One hour of comfort in life's gloomy waste.
Relinquish human converse, human things,
And all those schemes with which the wide world rings.

Yet there are charms for thee: spring's sunny hues,
The whispering breeze, and morning's glittering dews;
The toll of village bell at eventide,
The vacant ramble by the wild brook side;
The village tower that peeps among the trees,
The silent stream which curls at every breeze;
The transient sun-gleams, and the shadowy spot
Of sailing cloud, which like a breath is not;
The merry lark, that sings sweet songs of mirth,
And every bud that gems this various earth:
When calm, luxuriant, summer's fervid days
Have sunk away in one effulgent blaze,
The timid white stars, one by one, to eye,
Or deepening crimson of the twilight sky;
The witchery of rolling clouds that weave
The solemn pageant of departing eve.
The awful rock, the mountain wrapp'd in storms,
And Nature's majesty of sterner forms;
Tempest, whose blackness all creation shrouds;
The solemn march of winter's midnight clouds.
The moon's soft radiance breaking forth so white,
Amid the murmur of the gales of night;
When clouds with clouds fantastically play,
And wave their pale skirts to her liquid ray;

Or when alone the silent orb on high
Looks on the world with clear serenity;
From gloomy wood emerging to the sight,
And pouring down the vale her flood of light.
The velvet meadow, and the peaceful stream,
Where through light poplars plays the chequered gleam;
The rocking forest roused to music deep,
As o'er its wavy top thick tempests sweep;
The quiet lake reflecting in its tide
A wond'rous world to other waves denied;
Or else, in conflict, vexed by tempests rude,
Beating the dark cliff with its foamy flood:
Or now, in distant blackness, scarce survey'd
Far, far beneath the mountain's threatening shade,
While through the clouds—that rest, the stormy day,
Like travellers weary of a trackless way,
'Mid druid piles, and haunted caverns rude,
The rifted rocks of giant solitude—
Full many a mountain stream is seen to flow,
Sprung from the skies, a track of vapoury snow;
The solemn music of the ocean roar,
Or wildly surging on some desart shore;
Or when scarce curling with the zephyr bland,
Its blue waves tremble on the silvery sand.

The sweeping blast that cleaves the sounding sky;
The moorland's desolate immensity;
The lonesome bird of night, which sadly calls
To mountain streams, and mossy waterfalls;
These joys unblamed, thy mystic soul may know;
These, unpolluted by an after-woe;
For Innocence, and Purity, combine
To bless the worshipper at Nature's shrine.
To these devoted, Genius, thou shalt prove
A heaven, in solitude, of silent love.

Fleetwood, by Mr. Godwin, vol. ii. p. 200.

LINES TO THE SCENERY OF CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORELAND.

Written at Barnwell, near Cambridge, April, 1800.

To quit a world where strong temptations try,
And, since we cannot conquer, learn to fly.
Goldsmith.

Sin, has ne possim naturæ adcedere partes,
Frigidus obstiterit circum præcordia sanguis;
Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes;
Flumina amem silvasque inglorius.
Georgicon Virgilii, lib. ii.

Fair scenes, I may not see you, yet my heart
From your enchantment will not long depart:
I turn from man's unprofitable strife,
From all the fruitless stir of polished life,
To think on you; to bid your prospects roll,—
A wondrous vision,—o'er my gladden'd soul.
Ah, scenes beloved, that I with you could stray,
And loiter out with you the summer day;

Could I the rosy beams of morning view
Shed on your gorgeous heights its magic hue;
Could I recline beneath your rocking woods,
Whose secret shades, where solemn Fancy broods,
Shroud the deep murmurs of your mountain floods;
Or could I slumber on those banks which lave
Their fairy verdure in the crystal wave
Of many a Lake that lies beneath the sky
In solitary, silent majesty:
Your visionary train of forms sublime
Should wake the ardour of the lofty rhyme;
Should lift my soul above whate'er of low
It haply learned in other scenes to know.
To you I turn!—I turn from human lore:
Of what the world affords I ask no more.
To me kind Heaven has given a faithful friend,
And competence: no more Heaven's self can send!
Now, all I seek is peace, a silent nook,
Whence, with unruffled spirit, I may look
On all those tempests of life's early morn,
That wrung a heart by restless passion torn;
And told, did pitying Heaven not interpose,
Of short-liv'd raptures, and of fatal woes.

Ah, scenes of peace!—Might I your charms explore,
Devote to nature, I would ask no more!
Might I with you consume my daily bread,
And pillow nightly my reposing head;
With you awake at morning's breezy voice,
And in my calm course, like yon sun, rejoice;
Might I with you wear out the sultry day
Viewing your wonders in the noon-tide ray;
With you repose at shadowy even-tide,
And list her meek songs by some wild brook's side;
Or many a cloud of lurid red descry,
Weaving bright visions for the poet's eye:
Might I, when April's mildest evenings seem
Like some pale mourner's earliest smiles to gleam,
View the soft azure of her dewy cloud
With faint flush tinged the silent landscape shroud;
Oh! would kind Heaven on me such scenes bestow,
'Twould give a comfort to each parted woe.

Here, as I welcome morning's silken ray,
And drink the spirit of the vernal day,
And turn with anxious thought, mine eyes around,
To catch whate'er in this bleak waste is found;
If chance the heathy hill at distance rise
Bath'd in the aërial brightness of the skies;
Or winnowing zephyr of the fruitful west
Shed healthy freshness on my weary breast;
If chance a clear brook musically flow
Adown some nameless mead, where willows grow,
Along whose mossy banks of tenderest green
The earliest violets of the year are seen,
And many a daisy, mixed with primrose pale,
Bends at the touch of spring's rejoicing gale,
The gale which loves to trace the streamlet's source,
And steals as wedded to its nameless course;
If chance a cot, beneath some bowery oak,
Send up in silence its pale wreath of smoke;
If sudden noon-beams, like enchantment, wake
The voice of sylvan mirth from mead or brake;

If dewy meads with bright luxuriance glow,
And every flower with new-born radiance blow;
If chance a village church, or village cot,
Mark the embowered hamlet's peaceful spot,
Where waves the elm beside the churchyard wall,
Vocal with red-breast's trill, or sparrow's call;
Around whose hollow trunk, beneath whose shade,
Stands the known bench for rustic converse made;
And stretches towards the road the slanting green,
Where village hinds in pastime oft are seen;
While merry bells in tuneful peals convey
The jocund news of heartsome holiday:
If chance these rustic sounds and shapes impart,
Some comfort to my nature-kindling heart,
Clothed in the wildness of poetic light,
Your brighter wonders sweep before my sight.

The little hill, at distance seen to rise,
Of mountain speaks, whose summits pierce the skies;
Brings to my view the majesty of forms,
Which bid defiance to the North's bleak storms;
The rising zephyr tells of sportive gales,
That curl your lakes and fan your laughing vales;

Or, borne aloft on pinion more sublime,
To the peaked cliff's aërial summit climb;
The crystal stream which winds where willows grow,
With more than mountain murmurs seems to flow,
Near its smooth lapse, and sand of sunny dyes,
The chasm yawns, and rock-piled summits rise;
And o'er its vacant banks does fancy see
The stormy torrent's fearful imagery,
The peaceful cottage to my soul recalls
Your more fantastic shed, with leafy walls,
Where I, with Love, would gladly wear away
What more remains of life's mysterious day:
It brings the little hut, the nameless stream,
Where Hope might ponder on her softest theme;
It brings the mead that spreads before the door,
Its cheerful verdure, and its flowery store;
It brings the woods above the roof that rise,
Whence many a glad bird's song salutes the skies;
It brings the garden prankt with many a flower,
The sacred transports of the evening bower,
Where, clothed in peacefulness, my soul should prove
The father's fondness, and the husband's love:

It brings with all its charms the imaged cell,
Which hopeful fancy fears to love too well!

As yet this must not be! my weary feet,
Must still awhile toil on where proud men greet.
The obtrusive world's unprofitable load
Must still with many a pang my bosom goad:
Yet grant, oh Heaven, a spirit to endure,
Not yield; though art in every shape allure.
E'en now I feel within my burthen'd mind
An anxious trouble 'mid your charms to find,
That day of rest from each polluting thing,
Which silence, solitude, and nature bring;
And every shape and sound that here annoy
Speak, though in accents rude, of future joy.

In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course.—Psalm 19th, Verses 4th and 5th.

And wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees.

See Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads.

LINES TO THE SABBATH.

April 23, 1803.

[_]

The Author is well aware that, as far as the following Poem appears to be argumentative, the principle which it inculcates is indefensible: it seems like inferring that, because an institution may be abused, however excellent it may be in its design, it should not be used.

Wherever, whenever, and on whatsoever occasion, human beings meet together, they will carry human passions with them; to church, as well as to market; to the meeting-house, as well as to the ball-room: the good done by means of positive religious rites is prodigious; and it would be difficult to make out a case of any counter-balancing evil of which they are the cause; therefore let it not be supposed that, because

100

the Author in the following Poem satirizes the intrusion of vulgar passions within the sacred threshold, he no longer wishes that threshold to be passed: on the other hand, he only laments that it is not more universally passed, as such a phenomenon would be one of the most conclusive prognostics that those very passions which he has described were on the decline. In one word, let the following poem be considered rather as a picture, than as an enunciation of principles.

Ah, holy day, I love to hear the chime
Of merry bells that usher in thy morn:
The rustic trimly clad, the rural lass,
Delight my heart. I love to see them speed,
Along the meadow pathway, to the style
That bounds the church-yard. The suspense
Of toil, the universal quietude

101

That dwells on all things, quietude from sounds
Of human labour, shed a pleasing calm.
Nature alone puts forth her voice to-day,
The joyous birds, the bleat of sportive lambs,
The low of cattle, zephyrs breathing peace,
And health; the music of the woods that wave
Their dancing heads, and vocal, as they wave,
With sounds like those breath'd from the Æolian lyre,
When on its trembling strings the faint breeze pants,
Or ocean's deeper voice from distance heard;
The gratulation of a thousand streams
Sparkling like crystal to the glorious sun:—
All these unite in choral harmony:
And frivolous art withdraws the obtrusive strife,
That Nature's song may reach the ear of all.

Haste, let me join the comely throng that seeks
The House of God: there be my prayer breathed forth
With more expressive accent, and the song
Of praise ascend more ardent, with the hymn
Mingled of countless grateful spirits: there

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The decent rite, the anthem's chaunted lay,
The hallowed vestment, and the sacred grace
Of hoar antiquity's religious garb,
Shall aid the pious feeling, and express
The shapeless fervours of abstracted love,
Devotion's undefined extasy
In saintly forms of import well conceived.

Vain dream, alas! for though the form may speak
The inward sentiment that now disturbs
The o'ercharged heart,—though all inanimate things,
The decent rite, the anthem's chanted lay,
The hallowed vestment, and the sacred grace
Of hoar antiquity's religious garb,—
Though to the feeling heart when, undisturbed,
It contemplates the scene, an energy
May seem to breathe within the gothic walls,
Filling the sanctuary, like that of old,
With an invisible, present Deity:—
Though all the circumstance of things unite
To aid profound impression, they unite
In vain; for what can inert objects do,
Mute and inanimate, when all the soul,

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The spirit of the assembly, counteract
Their weak, inefficacious agency.

Where does the dowager, seldom visible,
Come forth with all her “honours thick upon her,”
Chariot, and footman, with embroidered gold,
Flying, with prayer-book in his hand, to ope
The already unclasped pew, and shewing wide
To the abashed assembly, she can keep
Menials for vanity as well as use?—at church.
Where does the importance of the country squire,
Hedged in the immunities of his kingly pew,
Find a fit scene of action?—at his church.
Where does the high-bred lady condescend
To exhibit all her store of courtly airs,
Her nods, grimace, and regulated smiles,
And all precedency's theatric forms?—
At church.—Where does the giddy serving-maid,
Or farmer's daughter, love to expose the charm
Of ribbands, hats, and lace, that Folly's food
Which will ere long to ruin tempt her heart?
At church.—Say, where do vanity and pride,
Pretence, and sly hypocrisy resort?—
To church:—and where, if piety be found,

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Simple, with cheek bedewed with contrite tears,
Will flinty scoffers point and smile?—at church.

Mark the sleek pastor, how he hurries through
The sacred office! The simplicity
Of gospel days, the tongue that utters things
Accordant with the heart, the heart that feels
Accordant to the law and testimony—
Where are they found? The pompous hierophant
Hiding beneath professional pretence
The love of power; or the coxcomb, pert,
Scented, accomplished, as the spruce gallant—
Too oft characterize the anointed band.

I know that there are some who bear the mark
Of true apostleship, who feel for souls,
Weep for the wandering, pray for the distress'd,
And, interceding, stand between their God
And many a trembling sinner; of their flock
The spiritual fathers; when occasion bids,
The temporal fathers too; weeping to see
The havock and disorder vice has made,
They bear a balm for every human wound.
But these how few! and he that deeply feels
The worth of piety, that simply longs

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To utter, what he cannot bear to keep
In selfish silence, whither shall he fly
If Sanctity, Simplicity, and Love,
Pity, and Mercy, Truth without pretence,
Be qualities to spiritual fellowship
Essential, indispensible esteemed.

The author might add, that even the poet, par excellence religious, Cowper, might be deemed irreligious, if to satirize the abuse of religious institutions, render a man obnoxious to such an epithet. See his description of the coxcomb parson, and various other passages in his poems.

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LINES WRITTEN IN RETIREMENT, IN A MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY.

Nec vixit malè, qui natus moriensque fefellit.

26th April, 1803.

Driven from the sweet society of man,
Where shall the solitary being find
Companions for his thoughts, associates
Meet and instructive?—May the simple lay
Point out to those by adverse circumstance,
And manifold adventure, separate
From cheerful haunts of man, to those divorc'd
For ever from the smiles of fickle fortune,
Haply some soothing solaces of pain,
Some secret sources of concealed delight,
Innocent, yet ennobling, free to all,
And independent of another's will.

107

Man hath an eye to see; but, indisposed,
Neglects the gift, save in the gaudy scene
Of glittering art. But there are forms unknown,
Save to the watchful, meditative eye,
Which yield sincere delight. The harmonious scenes
Of nature, and the harmonious scenes of art,—
Where modest art, not striving for a vain
Pre-eminence, is nature's minister,—
Affect a feeling deeper than the sense
Of beauty: thoughts of moral good they raise,
Visions of innocence, and holy peace;
Not those fantastic dreams of old Romance,
And pastoral Folly; these severe and pure,
As those enervating, corrupt, inane.

Can heart unmoved, that hath a sentiment
Of goodness left, the cottager behold,
Who duly to his toil goes forth at morn,
And brings at close of each laborious week
His hard-earned pittance; while his partner's thrift
In wholesome fare discreetly parcels out
The fruit of honest industry. His babes
Cleanly, though coarsely clad, his neat fire-side,
Bespeak accordant industry at home;

108

And save when sickness visits—common foe
Of rich and poor—the unregarded hut,
Where dwells this humble pair, go when you will,
Your eyes may feast upon a scene of peace.

Nor do domestic scenes in rural life
Alone delight: the grey stone church, the cot
Of rudest fabric, or the pastoral farm,
Placed midway on some tempest-howling hill,
Protected solemnly by ancient pines,
Are not unnoticed by the poet's eye,
Nor by his heart unfelt. There is a scene
To which I often turn; the rustic bridge
'Neath whose grey arch, in days of wintry gloom,
Whitens far off the torrent's foam; the bridge;
The inn for tired foot-passenger, who haunts
These seldom trodden scenes; the village school,
The village green, where little rustics sport,
And dance, and sing; the mill, the waterfall,
Make up the measure of its simple charms;

109

But, these all lie embosomed where the swell
Of mighty mountains, and untravelled hills,
Protects them from the intrusive eye of man,
And wanton Art's capriciousness: this knot
Of little dwellings, should the night o'ertake
The weary mountaineer, with glimmering light
Might haply cheer the wanderer: should his hand
The latch uplift, a cordial welcome there
Might chance await his weary form; perchance
The foaming can, the gossip's merry tale,
The blazing hearth, and kind officiousness,
Might rouse the sense of long-forgotten joy.

Mark yon grey scar, where, from the rifted cliff,
The holly, birch, the oak, the yew, and ash,
Start; while the huge mass of that hanging rock,
Cloathed with the ivy's mantling evergreen,
Resembles most some fortress imminent,
Or tower of ancient castle, piled alone

110

On pathless height abrupt, 'mid woods and wilds,
And savage precipice: in wintry hours
When, like dishevelled tresses, brown sere leaves,—
'Mid here and there some haply interspersed
Of sickly yellow, some of blacker dye,—
Rustling with bleak winds, shiver on the oak,
Still the green ivy mantles the grey scar,
And shadowy pines wave darkling; mingled hues
From tawny oak, the ivy, rock, and pine,
Enrich the wild, fantastic imagery.
But when the smiling hours of spring advance,
And vernal suns arise, the slender birch
First grateful yields its bloom to fostering gales
Trembling with fairy leaf of feathery gold:
Its silvery stems innumerable, like shafts
Taper and glossy, mock the forest's gloom,
And through its depths conspicuously shine,
As polished pillars of white marble, seen
At night, in some old temple's vast expanse.

Nor, leaving loftier scenes, in days of spring,
Do shady lanes retired, a mean delight
Afford;—'mid leafy thicket, plume-like fern,
On mossy bank, there pale primroses peep;
The harebell, orchis, and wild strawberry,

111

Anemone; the scented violet,
Azure and white; veronica, tho' last,
Not least in loveliness, whose spikes are bathed
In brightest blue transparency of Heaven.
These are the forms which in his solitude
Amuse the poet's mind, dispel his cares,
And cheat away retirement's languid hours.

Come, dear Sophia, let us wander forth,
And taste the charms of nature: while our hearts
Distend with mutual feeling, the warm tear
Shall gush at thoughts of present happiness,
And haply too the smile of gratitude
Shall play upon our lips, and thankful throbs
Swell in each breast to Him, to whom we owe
Escape from past perplexity and care.

This is as exact a description, as it is in the power of the Author to give, of a scene on which a little knot of buildings is collected together, situated about two miles from Ambleside, Westmoreland, and called Skelwith Bridge.

This description also is topographically exact. The scene is to be found on the right hand side of the river Brathay, about a mile and a half from Ambleside, and is seen to most advantage from the opposite side of that stream.

112

LINES WRITTEN 19TH AUGUST, 1807.

“For, who can enjoy the world without deceiving, or being deceived?”—Mrs. Grant's Letters.

Whence, and what are we?—Wherefore are we made
The sport of passions that defy controul?
Why do these dreams of happiness invade,
With ardent impulse, my aspiring soul?

Say, am I born to live the sport of dreams,
Of lying dreams, that flatter, and that fly?
Are they illusive, these delicious gleams
That prompt the soaring wish, the immortal sigh?

I might be happy, could I cease to think,
That all I have is but entrusted power;
I might be happy, could my reason wink
At pleasure's thrill, and love's enraptured hour.

113

I might be happy, could these conflicts cease,
Or reason take possession of my soul!
Could stern resolve bid passion be at peace,
And every struggle of my will controul.

Why are we destined thus to wage a war?
Nor from the fated proof have power to fly?
Here, conscience, awful priestess! cries, beware!—
There every sense is wooed by extasy!

Is this thy destiny, Oh man?—Are these
The terms on which thy soul its life received?
Reason, thou canst not tell me how to appease
This questioning of what may be believed!

Experience teacheth that the noblest mind,
The pang that weans from life shall likeliest brave!
Here pause:—and with a faith devout, not blind,
Implore thy God to pity and to save!

114

LINES ON AN HOUR-GLASS.

Addressed to Miss H--- W---

28th Jan. 1808.

“When Time doth float on Pleasure's wing,
And hours glide on, allur'd by joy,
Reflection's sigh from thee shall spring,
Thou little monitory toy!

“When anxious care doth ply the loom
Of life, with fingers dull and slow,
Thou shalt remind me that this gloom
Came, and with changeful time will go.”

Thus Harriet whispered as the sand,
Ebbed softly from her hour-glass near:
A faithful friend could not withstand
The occasion for a vow sincere.

115

(For as this toy, the welcome guest
Of buoyant mirth or languid care,
Doth solemn thoughts to one suggest,
And to the other solace bear,—

So she, disinterested friend,
Has smiles for joy, for sorrow sighs;
Though still her inward feelings tend
With sacred grief to sympathize).

“Oh, may no present hour, attired
In gloom, a prayer for change draw forth!
Yet each successive hour, inspired
By hope, exceed the last in worth:

May fancy wreathe around this toy
Blooms stolen from the Elysian clime;
And Peace, the monitor of Joy,
Brood on the tranquil lapse of time!

These sands, that fall in silent showers,
To their first source we turn once more;
May friendship so for thee the hours
Of youth, in distant age restore!”

116

Oh, Harriet, thoughtless of thy power!
And humble, useful glass, like thee,
The highest blessing thou dost shower
Unconscious of thy destiny.

E'en as this toy, that through life's span
The quick illapse of time revealed,
Doth bring prime benefits to man—
Till Time to Eternity doth yield;

So of the virtues' holy train,
Disinterested love shall call
For Heaven's most gratulating strain—
Till self be lost!—God all in all!

117

LINES,

Written in consequence of hearing of a young Man that had voluntarily starved himself to death on Skiddaw, and who was found after his decease in a bed of turf, piled with his own hands, previous to that event.

29th June, 1808.

What didst thou feel, thou poor unhappy youth,
Ere on that sod thou laid'st thee down to rest?
Ah, little know the children of this world
What some are born to suffer! Did some dread
And perilous thought possess thy blasted mind?
Did fierce remorse assail thee? Wert thou torn
With fatal, incommunicable thoughts?
I pity thee, poor stranger! In a world
Fearful, a world of nameless phantoms framed,
Was thy abode!—Thou sawest not with eyes,
Thou heardest not with ears, nor felt'st with touch,
Like eyes, and ears, and touch of other men.
Thine was a cruel insulation, thine

118

A malady beyond the reach of love,
Beyond the reach of melting sympathy.

Oh, when Heaven wills that the external world
And the internal world should be at war;
When Heaven suffers that sensation's chords
Shall all be out of tune; when every sense
At variance with the other, like a wrench'd
And shattered instrument of music, yields
A harsh report of discontinuous pangs,
As infinite in number as in fear,
To the universal influences of life,
What does not man endure!—Yet man e'en then
Perchance has somewhat of the flush of health,
Has strength of muscle, and the swelling limb,
So he is pitied not! Though if he smile,
His smile like wandering spectre of the night,
Apparent in some beauteous maiden's shape,
Fills with more deadly chill, because it wears
The form of joy in circumstance of woe!—
Though if he speak, the incongruous attempt
Betrays the treachery of his voiceless thought!
His words are like the sound of crazy bells,
Swinging in open air, no longer pealed
By hands accordant; but the tempest wakes
Or sullen breeze, when nightly visitant,

119

Strange discord from their hoarse and iron tongues!
His accents, unaccountably impelled,
Or rush with fearful spontaneity,
Or languidly eke out their dying tones;
And sentences half finished, broken words,
Abrupt transitions, discontinuous thought,
Of intellectual alienation tell.
Say, fared it so with thee? Then be at peace!
And may the God the fortitude who gave
To bear thy silent voluntary pangs,
Receive thee in the arms of pitying love.

120

LINES, WRITTEN 29TH JULY, 1808.

Oh Love, the bosom formed for thee
No meaner joy can move;
Not to be loved is not to be,
To him who knows to love.

'Tis not the rapturous transport sought,
In passion's granted aim;
'Tis not the kiss with nectar fraught,
The look without a name;

But 'tis the soft endearing sense,
The wish with wish that blends,
That to each word an influence
Of fascination lends.

'Tis the fond partial estimate,
In confidence sublime;
The thought that swells with warmth so great,
That reason seems a crime.

121

'Tis this, oh Love, or chiefly this,
Which, for the once-loved breast,
When ceases thy celestial bliss,
Robs future life of rest.

122

LINES TO MY CHILDREN.

Written under the Influence of great Depression of Spirits, 11th June, 1819.

Heu! quam minus est reliquis versari, quam vestrum meminisse.

My babes, no more I behold ye,
Little think ye how he ye once lov'd,
Your father who oft did enfold ye,
With all that a parent e'er proved.

How with many a pang he is saddened,
How many a tear he has shed,
For the eight human blossoms that gladden'd
His path, and his table, and bed.

123

None knows what a fond parent smothers,
Save he who a parent has been,
Who once more, in his daughters, their mother's,
In his boys has his own image seen!

And who—Can I finish my story?—
Has seen them all shrink from his grasp;
Departed the crown of his glory,
No wife, and no children to clasp!—

By all the dear names I have utter'd,
By all the most sacred caresses,
By the frolicksome nothings I've mutter'd,
In a mood that sheds tears while it blesses;

By the kisses so fond I have given,
By the plump little arm's cleaving twine,
By the bright eye, whose language was heaven,
By the rose on the cheek pressed to mine;

By its warmth that seemed pregnant with spirit;—
By the little feet's fond interlacing,
While others pressed forward to inherit
The place of the one thus embracing;

124

By the breast that with pleasure was troubled,
Since no words were to speak it availing;
Till the bliss of the heart was redoubled
As in smiles on the lips 'twas exhaling;

By the girl, who, to sleep when consign'd,
The promised kiss still recollected;
And no sleep on her pillow could find,
If her father's farewel were neglected;

Who asked me, when infancy's terrors
Assail'd her, to sit by her bed;
And for the past day's little errors
On my cheek tears of penitence shed.

By those innocent tears of repentance,
More pure e'en than smiles without sin,
Since they mark with what delicate sentence
Childhood's conscience pronounces within.

By the dear little forms, one by one,
Some in beds closely coupled half-sleeping,
While the cribb'd infant nestled alone—
Whose heads at my coming all peeping,

125

Betrayed that the pulse of each heart
Of my feet's stealing fall knew the speech;
While all would not let me depart,
Till the kiss was bestowed upon each;

By the boy, who, when walking and musing,
And thinking myself quite alone,
Would follow the path I was chusing,—
And thrust his dear hand in my own;

(Joy more welcome because unexpected,
By all this fond store of delights,
Which, in sullen mood, had I neglected,
Every curse with which Heaven requites,

Were never sufficient for crushing
A churl so malign and hard-hearted)
But by the warm tears that are gushing,
As I think of the joys that are parted;

Were ye not as the rays that are twinkling
On the waves of some clear haunted stream,
Were ye not as the stars that are sprinkling
Night's firmament dark without them?

126

My forebodings then hear!—By each one
Of the dear dreams through which I have travell'd,
The cup of enjoyment from none
Can I take, till the spells, one by one,
Which have wither'd ye all, be unravell'd.

Sophia.

Owen.

127

STANZAS.

LET THE READER DETERMINE THEIR TITLE.

Written 27th and 28th June, 1819.

“I have, of late, lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise; and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o'erhanging, this majestical roof, look you, fretted with golden fires, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.”—Shakspeare.—Hamlet.

Oh, that a being in this latter time
Lived such as poets in their witching lays,
Feigned were their demi-gods in nature's prime!
The Dryad sheltered from noon's scorching rays

128

By leafy canopy;—the Naiad's days
Stealing by gently wedded to some spring,
In pure connatural essence;—while the haze
Of twilight in the vale is lingering,
The Oread from mountain top the sun-rise welcoming.

Oh, that a man might hope to pass his life,
Where through lime, beech, and alder, the proud sun
His leafy grot scarce visited;—where strife
Is known not;—to absolve—to impeach him none;—
His moral life, and that of nature, one:—
Where fragrant thyme, and crisped heath-bells prank
The ground, all memory of the world to shun,
And piercing, while his ears heaven's music drank,
Nature's profoundest depths, the God of Nature thank.

To drink the pure crystalline well, to lave
His strong limbs in some Naiad haunted stream,
On that sod, which one day might be his grave,
To shelter him from noon-tide's scorching beam,

129

In cool recess;—and thus, while he might dream
His life away, his appetite assuaged
By kernell'd fruits with which the earth doth teem;—
Forget that he hath been where men engaged
In civilized contention, foamed and raged.

Oh, that the wild bee, who, with busy wing,
Hums, as she travels on from flower to flower:
Oh, that the lark that now is carolling
Above yon ancient ivy-mantled tower;
Oh, that the stock-dove from her secret bower,
The gurgling fall of waters; the deep sound
Of pines, whose film-like leaves scarce own the power
Of panting breeze, most like the voice profound
Of ocean, when its roar, by distance, is half-drowned:

Oh, that the bleat of lambs, the shepherd's reed,
The tinkling bell which warns the flock to fold;
Oh, that the harmonies we little heed,
Eternal harmonies, and manifold,

130

Throughout God's works in pathless mazes rolled,
All concords that in heaven and earth delight,
Sweet to the sense of hearing, as we hold
The form of beauty to the lover's sight,—
Oh! that in one vast chorus these would all unite!

My God! this world's a prison-house to some;
And yet to those who cannot prize its treasure,
It will not suffer them in peace to roam
Far from its perturbation and its pleasure.
No! though ye make a compact with its measure,—
Except to one or two by fortune blest!—
'Twill only mock your efforts; thus your leisure,
Yielded to her, becomes a sad unrest;—
It pays the fool the least that worships her the best.

Yet, on the other hand, if ye forego
Her haunts, and all her trammels set aside,
Though 'tis her joy ungratefully to throw
Scorn on her slaves, her vassals to deride,—

131

“Hewers of wood, drawers of water,” plied
With daily drudgery know this truth full well—
She will from pole to pole, through time and tide,
Still follow you with persecuting spell,
And by her whispers foul, make solitude a hell.

Therefore breathed I this prayer, that, as in years
Long parted, beings were supposed to live
Exempt from human ties;—from human tears,
And human joys;—endowed with a reprieve
From friends to flatter, or foes to forgive;—
So it might fare with me!—Oh, Liberty,
I ask for thee alone;—with thee to weave
Quaint rhymes, to breathe the air, were heaven to me;
To dream myself the only living thing, save thee!

When Heaven has granted thought and energy,
Passion, Imagination, Fancy, Love,
Pleasures and pains, hopes, fears, that will not die,
'Tis surely hard to be condemned to rove

132

In a perpetual wilderness; to move
Unblest by freedom, and humanity;—
I blame not those for whom the world hath wove,
Spells that to them are bèst reality—
Some are there 'twill not serve, nor yet will let them fly.

Oh! for an island in the boundless deep!
Where rumour of the world might never come;
Oh, for a cave where weltering waves might keep
Eternal music!—round which, night-winds roam
Incessantly, mixed with the surging foam;
And from their union bring strange sounds to birth;—
Oh, could I rest in such an uncouth home,
No foes except the elements;—the earth,
The air;—though sad, I'd learn to make with them strange mirth.

I'd learn the voices of all winds that are;
The music of all waters: and the rude
Flowers of this isle, although both “wild and rare,”
Should be by me with sympathy endued.

133

I would have lovers in my solitude;
Could animal being be sustain'd, the mind
Such is her energy, would find all good;
And to her destiny eftsoons resigned,
In solitude would learn the infinite to find.

Oh! thou first Cause, thou giver of each blessing,
E'en were I cursed, so vain a thing I'm not
As to suppose nothing is worth possessing;—
That misery's the universal lot.
A cold hand lies on me;—a weight;—from what,
Whence, where, or how,—boots it not here to tell:
I only wish that I could be forgot,
And that I might inherit some small cell,
With blessings short of heaven, and curses short of hell.

This medium is my prayer. Thought, gift divine!
When first—like Alpheus, sung by bards of old,
Who sank into the earth, that he might join
The adored Arethuse;—the bedded hold

134

Through which thy rich and copious treasures roll'd,
Is shaken with the tempest of despair;
And when first sapped by sorrows manifold,
Thy streams no longer murmur clear and fair,
Buried in silent caves of agony and care;

When first, instead of each translucent rill,
Fed by thy parent fount, which issued forth,
Wandering playfully “in its own sweet will;”
Instead of dimpling brooks, whose voice was mirth;
Clear waves, that to and fro upon the earth
Ran amid grass, and flowers, and plume-like ferns,
As they were free by charter of their birth;
Or clear tide lapsing from thy copious urns,
So calm, the bending grass but tells one where it turns;

When first, instead of such prodigious wealth,
Waters that stray through meads, and while they stray,
So silently they flow, and with such stealth,
The richer green—the lustier flowers betray

135

Alone, the secret of their noiseless way:
While others take a more fantastic course,
And with such involutions sing and play
'Twixt sandy banks, or with a note more hoarse,
O'er rocks and sparry beds, forgetful of their source,

That one might deem they were without a law,
Lawless as winds, if winds could be, or ere
The Almighty architect impressed an awe
On nature's wildest freebooters;—or were,
Like as is sung of the crystalline sphere,—
Involved in maze of such perplexity,
That e'en that skill which made intention clear,
So intricate was it, one might deny
The very law itself from its transcendency.

When first, I say—I've played the truant long,
From the theme I had espoused—the streams of thought
Are poisoned at their source; the bosom wrung
With tempests that contained them,—care distraught,

136

Man prays for death; he cannot then be brought
To meek submission:—all is auarchy
Within;—with insurrection fraught,
His state is like a kingdom, where the die
Is hazarded, of sacrilegioùs victory.

But, let hours, days, weeks, months, and years pass by,
A sullen acquiescence then succeeds,
And the first proof of nature's sanity
Is, that the mind its own condition heeds:
Though it be choaked with thorns, and clogged with weeds,
A parent's fondness still it 'gins to feel
For its own creations; and to this succeeds
Strongest imagination;—the barbed steel
From foes has pierced too deep for other men to heal.

137

No! still betwixt him and his fellow men
The irrepassible gulph, when once passed, gapes;
Yet, though his thoughts, that creep as in a den
The slimy insect, e'en in all their shapes
Have nothing reconciling, yet escapes
Nought that is harmful; like the bloated toad,
They are dark, they are dreary, loathsome: human apes
Thence deem them poisonous: they are a weary load;
And not the less since undeservedly bestowed.

But oh, mistake them not!—They are free from ill!
The seven-months' babe, whose little hand's at rest,
While his warm lips imbibe the milky rill,
Cushioned upon his mother's well-known breast,
Is not more innocent of feeling, drest
In any garb of hatred or of ire,—
I speak of one I've known; earth hath no rest
For such as he:—no correspondent wire
In any human breast can recognize the lyre,—

138

Like the lorn harp of Tara on the walls,
Swept by the invisible breathings of the wind,
When as that harp had ceased in Tara's halls,
To pour the soul of harmony refin'd—
That tells his fate. Strange melodies assigned
To it, harsh discord seem to th' ears of all:
Yet not a note doth breathe from it designed
To give a pang: it mayn't be musical:—
Well may a shattered lyre, a shattered bard befall.

Tones untranslateable should it discourse,
When by its master touched; oh, deem not ye,
Because ye know them not, and think them hoarse,
That in those tones no mystery may be,
Such as unravelled might give harmony
To its wild cadences!—Then let him sing;
And though his song please not, yet still if he
Feels, while it floats around, as though a wing
Protected him with tremulous faint o'er shadowing.

'Tis more than naked skies, and naked stars,
'Tis more than Heaven's canopy bestows,
'Tis more than storms, and elemental wars,
And murky clouds, winds, rain, sleet, hail, and snows,

139

Think not that I blame these. They are not my foes.
I seek communion, covet sympathy,
E'en with their wildest moods:—they suit my woes—
I meant to say when souls from agony
A little respite feel, souls will self-questioned be.

And now, oh God! e'en let my wish once more,
Ere this lay cease, be to thy love confessed,
Grant me to vegetate on some wild shore;
Since I cannot be happy, as the best
I e'er can hope to be, let mine own breast
Be to itself its sole companion;—there,
Though much of wretchedness, and much unrest
Be housed, at least there need be no despair
From that which I once deemed sole source of cureless care:

That in my poor thought was malignity,—
I never wished to harm a living thing,—
Pain was a frightful mystery to me;
I've often shudder'd at the moth's scorched wing;
Oft from the path the snail or worm would fling,

140

Doomed to the tread of careless passenger:—
How little dreamt I then this shuddering,
From the heart's nice calculation, whence we infer
Futurity, was my fate's harbinger.

No!—no!—Oh God!—If there be one beneath
The cope of Heaven; or e'en in Heaven enshrin'd,
Who, with accusing voice, could dare to breathe
That pang of body, or that pang of mind,
From me resulting, were to them assign'd,
With perverse wilfulness, when next I look
Towards the starry vault, may I be blind!
Blot out my name from thy eternal book!
A shelter for my head let earth afford no nook!

But since, on the other hand, I may proclaim
That “peace on earth, and good-will towards men,”
Have, save through inadvertence, been the aim
Which governed heart, and tongue, and act, and pen;
Why should I not, oh Father, once again

141

Find that some peace is yet in store for me?
Leave to me thought, oh leave to me a den,
And then from agony to be set free
Sufficeth for the heart broken by agony.

Once more, oh Father, hear!—Thy will is power!—
Act, thy decision is;—all, all is thine!—
The pangs that shake me, bodings that devour,
Both how I agonize, and how I pine,
Thou knowest well: and though each faltering line
Of mine betray affliction's cleaving curse,
Thou knowest well the torments that are mine
As far exceed the pictures of my verse,
As atoms are exceeded by the universe.

Lays such as these might then seem roundelays,
And madrigals, compared to truth's plain theme,
To elegies, to epitaphs, on days,
On friends, on joys, departed like a beam
Of summer, or the lightning's trackless gleam:
Oh, then, my humble prayer do not deny
If I implore, or that the feverish dream
Of life might end, or that in liberty
Forgotten I might live, since unwept I must die.

------Mazes intricate,
Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular,
Then most, when most irregular they seem.

—Milton.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing,
And the first motion, all the interimis
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream;
The genius, and the mortal instruments,
Are then in council; and the state of man
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.

Shakspeare.—Julius Cæsar

I tax ye not, ye elements, with unkindness.

SHAKSPEARE.

A sort of secret foreknowledge, which is, in fact, only a nice calculation made by the feelings, before we permit it to become an operation of the judgment. Canterbury Tales, by Miss Lee.