Poems by Hartley Coleridge :: :: University of Virginia Library

This sonnet, and the two following, my earliest attempts at that form of versification, were addressed to R. S. Jameson, Esq., on occasion of meeting him in London after a separation of some years. He was the favourite companion of my boyhood, the active friend and sincere counsellor of my youth. “Though seas between us broad ha' roll'd” since we “travell'd side by side” last, I trust the sight of this little volume will give rise to recollections that will make him ten years younger. He is now Judge Advocate at Dominica, and husband of Mrs. Jameson, authoress of the “Diary of an Ennuyée,” “Loves of the Poets,” and other agreeable productions.

When we were idlers with the loitering rills,
The need of human love we little noted:
Our love was nature; and the peace that floated
On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills,

The peace that sleeps upon the dewy hills.

Wordsworth's Song at the feast of Brougham Castle.

To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills:
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted,
That, wisely doating, ask'd not why it doated,
And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills.
But now I find, how dear thou wert to me;
That man is more than half of nature's treasure,
Of that fair Beauty which no eye can see,
Of that sweet music which no ear can measure;
And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure,
The hills sleep on in their eternity.

II. TO THE SAME.

In the great city we are met again,
Where many souls there are, that breathe and die,
Scarce knowing more of nature's potency,
Than what they learn from heat, or cold, or rain,
The sad vicissitude of weary pain:—
For busy man is lord of ear and eye,
And what hath nature, but the vast, void sky,
And the throng'd river toiling to the main?
Oh! say not so, for she shall have her part
In every smile, in every tear that falls,
And she shall hide her in the secret heart,
Where love persuades, and sterner duty calls:
But worse it were than death, or sorrow's smart,
To live without a friend within these walls.

III. TO THE SAME.

We parted on the mountains, as two streams
From one clear spring pursue their several ways;
And thy fleet course hath been through many a maze
In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams
To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams
Brighten'd the tresses that old Poets praise;
Where Petrarch's patient love, and artful lays,
And Ariosto's song of many themes,
Moved the soft air. But I, a lazy brook,
As close pent up within my native dell,
Have crept along from nook to shady nook,
Where flowrets blow, and whispering Naiads dwell.
Yet now we meet, that parted were so wide,
O'er rough and smooth to travel side by side.

IV.

The Man, whose lady-love is virgin Truth,
Must woo a lady that is hard to win:
She smiles not on the wild and wordy din
Of all-confiding, all-protesting Youth;
The Sceptic's apathy; the garb uncouth,
And Cynic sneer of o'er-experienced Sin,
The Serpent, writhing in its worn-out skin,
Craving again to flesh its sated tooth,
She quite abhors. She is not fond, nor coy—
Self-seeking love, and self-appraising scorn,
She knows not. She hath utterly forsworn,
Her worldly dower of wealth, and pride, and joy—
Her very beauty none but they discover,
Who for herself, not for her beauty, love her.

V.

What was't awaken'd first the untried ear
Of that sole man who was all human kind?
Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind,
Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere?
The four mellifluous streams which flow'd so near,
Their lulling murmurs all in one combined?
The note of bird unnamed? The startled hind
Bursting the brake—in wonder, not in fear,
Of her new lord? Or did the holy ground
Send forth mysterious melody to greet
The gracious pressure of immaculate feet?
Did viewless seraphs rustle all around,
Making sweet music out of air as sweet?
Or his own voice awake him with its sound?

VI.

I Loved thee once, when every thought of mine
Was hope and joy,—and now I love thee still,
In sorrow and despair:—a hopeless will
From its lone purpose never can decline.
I did not choose thee for my Valentine
By the blind omen of a merry season,—
'Twas not thy smile that brib'd my partial reason,
Tho' never maiden's smile was good as thine:—
Nor did I to thy goodness wed my heart,
Dreaming of soft delights and honied kisses,
Although thou wert complete in every part,
A stainless paradise of holy blisses:
I lov'd thee for the lovely soul thou art,—
Thou canst not change so true a love as this is.

VII.

Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No,
It is immortal as immaculate Truth.
'Tis not a blossom, shed as soon as youth
Drops from the stem of life—for it will grow
In barren regions, where no waters flow,
Nor ray of promise cheats the pensive gloom.
A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er a tomb,
That but itself and darkness nought doth shew,
Is my love's being,—yet it cannot die,
Nor will it change, though all be chang'd beside;
Tho' fairest beauty be no longer fair,
Tho' vows be false, and faith itself deny,
Tho' sharp enjoyment be a suicide,
And hope a spectre in a ruin bare.

VIII.

Whither is gone the wisdom and the power
That ancient sages scatter'd with the notes
Of thought-suggesting lyres? The music floats
In the void air; e'en at this breathing hour,
In every cell and every blooming bower
The sweetness of old lays is hovering still:
But the strong soul, the self-constraining will,
The rugged root that bare the winsome flower
Is weak and wither'd. Were we like the Fays
That sweetly nestle in the fox-glove bells,

Popular fancy has generally conceived a connection between the Fox-glove and the good people. In Ireland, where it is called Lusmore (the great herb) and also Fairy-cap, the bending of its tall stalks is believed to denote the unseen presence of supernatural beings. The Shefro, or gregarious Fairy, is represented as wearing the corolla of the Fox-glove on his head, and no unbecoming headdress either. See Crofton Croker's “Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland,” a book to the author of which, unknown as he is to me, I gladly seize this opportunity of returning thanks for huge delight and considerable accession of fairy lore. Crofton Croker is evidently a man of genius and poetical feeling. Is it not to be wished that he had given more free way to the poetry of his nature? He seems almost afraid lest some one should suspect him of fearing and believing in the good people himself, and consequently tells his stories as if he did not believe them, which makes them appear more like great big Irish lies than the genuine educts of superstition. Now this may be proper enough in such tales as Daniel O'Rourke's Voyage to the Moon, Ned Sheehy's Excuse, and some others; but still superstition is one thing, and lying another, and though the superstitious are often mendacious, or rather destitute of any standard of truth within their minds, and when hard pushed will consciously and conscientiously forge to keep up the credit of their creed, (countless are the falsehoods that have been told as well as believed, for conscience sake,) yet really superstitious persons do not, Falstaff-like, set about of malice prepense to raise a laugh by the enormity of their inventions. Many thanks to Crofton for his three delectable little volumes; but I do suspect, that from injudicious emulation of Tam-o-Shanter, he sometimes “mars a curious tale in telling it.” It is his manifest endeavour to be as Irish as possible, but are his Irishmen always genuine Milesians? Are they not too much like the Kilmallocks, and Mactwolters, and Brulgrudderies? all excellent fellows in their way, but not fit company for Fairies. A certain dash of the ludicrous is not amiss in a terrible story, because fear is a ridiculous passion, whether its object be man or goblin; but it should be naïveté, or unconscious humour, not irony or sarcasm, far less the slang knowingness of a heaxer.

Of all the imaginations of Erin, the Banshce is the most affecting, and the best authenticated. There are some narratives of this apparition attested by startling evidence. But perhaps the most beautiful fancy is the Thierna-na-Oge, or land of youth, a region of perpetual spring beneath the waters, where there is no decay, no change, no time, but all remains as at the moment of submersion. To this Moore alludes in those lines:—

On Lough Neagh's bank, as the fisherman strays,
When the clear, cold eve's declining,
He sees the round towers of other days,
In the wave beneath him shining.

To return to the Fox-glove. Query. Is not the proper etymology Folk's, i.e. Fairie's glove? Surely Renard does not wear gloves in popular tradition.

Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipp'd shells
Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays,
Then might our pretty modern Philomels
Sustain our spirits with their roundelays.

IX

Long time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I;
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking,
I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran:
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, tho' I be old,
Time is my debtor for my years untold.

X.

Youth, love, and mirth, what are they—but the portion,
Wherewith the Prodigal left his Father's home,
Through foreign lands in search of bliss to roam,
And find each seeming joy a mere abortion,
And every smile, an agonised distortion
Of pale Repentance' face, and barren womb?
Youth, love, and mirth! too quickly they consume
Their passive substance, and their small proportion
Of fleeting life, in memory's backward view,
Still dwindles to a point, a twinkling star,
Long gleaming o'er the onward course of Being;
That tells us whence we came, and where we are,
And tells us too, how swiftly we are fleeing
From all we were and loved, when life was new.

XI.

How long I sail'd, and never took a thought
To what port I was bound! Secure as sleep,
I dwelt upon the bosom of the deep
And perilous sea. And though my ship was fraught
With rare and precious fancies, jewels brought
From fairy-land, no course I cared to keep,
Nor changeful wind nor tide I heeded ought,
But joy'd to feel the merry billows leap,
And watch the sun-beams dallying with the waves;
Or haply dream what realms beneath may lie
Where the clear ocean is an emerald sky,
And mermaids warble in their coral caves,
Yet vainly woo me to their secret home;
And sweet it were for ever so to roam.

XII.

Once I was young, and fancy was my all,
My love, my joy, my grief, my hope, my fear,
And ever ready as an infant's tear,
Whate'er in Fancy's kingdom might befal,
Some quaint device had Fancy still at call,
With seemly verse to greet the coming cheer;
Such grief to soothe, such airy hope to rear,
To sing the birth-song, or the funeral,
Of such light love, it was a pleasant task;
But ill accord the quirks of wayward glee,
That wears affliction for a wanton mask,
With woes that bear not Fancy's livery;
With Hope that scorns of Fate its fate to ask,
But is itself its own sure destiny.

XIII.

Too true it is, my time of power was spent
In idly watering weeds of casual growth,—
That wasted energy to desperate sloth
Declined, and fond self-seeking discontent,—
That the huge debt for all that nature lent
I sought to cancel,—and was nothing loth
To deem myself an outlaw, sever'd both
From duty and from hope,—yea, blindly sent
Without an errand, where I would to stray:—
Too true it is, that, knowing now my state,
I weakly mourn the sin I ought to hate,
Nor love the law I yet would fain obey:
But true it is, above all law and fate
Is Faith, abiding the appointed day.

XIV. On a Picture of the Corpse of Napoleon lying in State.

Lo! there he lies. Is Death no more than this?
Is this the worst that mighty mortal can
Inflict upon his fellow? Could the man—
The strongest arm of angry Nemesis,—
The rod that routed hosts were fain to kiss,
Whom failing Faith afar with terror eyed,
And Atheism madly deified—
Could he with all his wars and policies
Effect but this? To antedate a year
That cold unfeeling calm, that even now
Blanks the dark meaning of that deep-lined brow,
And from the loose lip half uncurls the sneer?
If such be Death, O man, then what art thou,
That for the fear of Death would'st live in fear?

XV. TO WORDSWORTH.

There have been poets that in verse display
The elemental forms of human passions:
Poets have been, to whom the fickle fashions
And all the wilful humours of the day
Have furnish'd matter for a polish'd lay:
And many are the smooth elaborate tribe
Who, emulous of thee, the shape describe,
And fain would every shifting hue pourtray
Of restless Nature. But, thou mighty Seer!
'Tis thine to celebrate the thoughts that make
The life of souls, the truths for whose sweet sake
We to ourselves and to our God are dear.
Of Nature's inner shrine thou art the priest,
Where most she works when we perceive her least.

Thou worshippest at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee, when we know it not. Wordsworths' sonnets.

XVI. NOVEMBER.

The mellow year is hasting to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last,
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast—
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows;
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,

The Chinese, or monthly rose, so frequently seen clustering round the cottage-porch, both in the remotest vales and in the immediate outskirts of busy, smoky towns, is almost destitute of scent. The manner in which this cheerful foreigner persevers in the habits of a warmer climate, through all vicissitudes of ours, is a remarkable instance of vegetable nationality.

Oft with the Morn's hoar crystal quaintly glass'd,
Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows:
In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine,
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define,
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy twine.

XVII On parting with a very pretty, but very little Lady.

'Tis ever thus. We only meet on earth
That we may know how sad it is to part:
And sad indeed it were, if, in the heart,
There were no store reserved against a dearth,
No calm Elysium for departed Mirth,
Haunted by gentle shadows of past Pleasure;
Where the sweet folly, the light-footed measure,
And graver trifles of the shining hearth
Live in their own dear image. Lady fair,
Thy presence in our little vale has been
A visitation of the Fairy Queen,
Who for brief space reveals her beauty rare,
And shews her tricksy feats to mortal eyes,
Then fades into her viewless Paradise.

XVIII. NIGHT.

The crackling embers on the hearth are dead;
The indoor note of industry is still;
The latch is fast; upon the window sill
The small birds wait not for their daily bread;
The voiceless flowers

In the “Bride's Tragedy,” by Thomas Beddoes, of Pembroke College, Oxon, occurs a hypothetical simile which some prosewitted dunce of a reviewer thought proper to assail with great animosity. Something, I forget what, is

Like flower's voice—if they could but speak.

Whoever feels the beauty of that line, has a soul for poetry.

—how quietly they shed
Their nightly odours;—and the household rill
Murmurs continuous dulcet sounds that fill
The vacant expectation, and the dread
Of listening night. And haply now she sleeps;
For all the garrulous noises of the air
Are hush'd in peace; the soft dew silent weeps,
Like hopeless lovers for a maid so fair—
Oh! that I were the happy dream that creeps
To her soft heart, to find my image there.

XIX. THE FIRST BIRTH DAY.

The Sun, sweet girl, hath run his year-long race
Through the vast nothing of the eternal sky—
Since the glad hearing of the first faint cry
Announc'd a stranger from the unknown place
Of unborn souls. How blank was then the face,
How uninform'd the weak light-shunning eye,
That wept and saw not. Poor mortality
Begins to mourn before it knows its case,
Prophetic in its ignorance.

Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air
We waule and cry.
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.

Shakspeare: King Lear, Act 4.

The thought, which is obvious enough indeed, occurs in an older writer than Shakspeare, and might probably be traced to some of the fathers, or to Seneca. Robert Greene reproaches Shakspeare with reading Seneca done into English.

But soon
The hospitalities of earth

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own.
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

—Wordsworth.

engage
The banish'd spirit in its new exile—
Pass some few changes of the fickle Moon,
The merry babe has learn'd its Mother's smile,
Its Father's frown, its Nurse's mimic rage.

XX.

Whither—Oh—whither, in the wandering air,
Fly the sweet notes that 'twixt the soul and sense
Make blest communion? When and where commence
The self-unfolding sounds, that every where
Expand through silence? seems that never were
A point and instant of that sound's beginning,
A time when it was not as sweet and winning,
As now it melts amid the soft and rare,
And love-sick ether?

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them.
Shakspeare: Antony and Cleopatra, Act. 2.

Imitators and alterers do not often improve upon Shakspeare, but when they do, it is but fair to give them credit for it. Dryden, in his “All for Love,” has omitted all the philosophy, and two thirds of the poetry of Shakspeare's play, but he has certainly made a much more compact and consecutive drama; and by putting the description of Cleopatra's “grand aquatic procession” into the mouth of Antony himself, has made it a natural and dramatic portion of the play; whereas, in Shakspeare, it has too much the air of a quotation from an epic or descriptive poem. Neither Shakspeare nor Dryden have done much more than versify Plutarch's, or rather Dr. Philemon Holland's prose, and they were wise in not hunting after useless originality: but Shakespeare has added some exquisitely poetical touches.

At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackles
Swell with the touches of those flower soft hands,
That yarely frame their office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And left a gap in nature.

If Antony owed to the Egyptian Queen the loss of his empire and life, he is indebted to her for a less hateful renown than would have clung to his name had she never “pursed up his heart on the river of Cydnus.” The murderer of Cicero is merged in the lover of Cleopatra.

Gone it is—that tone
Hath pass'd for ever from the middle earth,

The phrase occurs in a hymmn of the Saxon poet Cædmon, and seems to imply, not the supposed centrality of the earth in the firmament, but the intermediate condition between the poles of good and evil. I have here adapted it to signify, that on earth we only contemplate objects in transitu, being unable to trace any process to its origin or its termination.

Yet not to perish is the music flown—
Ah no—it hastens to a better birth—
Then joy be with it—wheresoe'er it be,
To us it leaves a pleasant memory.

XXI.

Love is but folly,—since the wisest love,
Itself disclaiming, would invent a use
For its free motion.—Penitents recluse,
That scarce allow the natural heart to move,
With amorous ditties woo the mystic dove,
Or fondly bid their heavenly Spouse unloose
Their sacred zones.—The politic excuse
Of worldlings would to worldly endso improve
The gentle madness.—Courtiers glibly preach
How Love and Woman best rehearse the play
That statesmen act.—The grave fine-spoken leech
Counts how the beatings of the pulse betray
The sweet disease.—And all the poets teach
That love alone can build the lofty lay.

XXII.

Youth, thou art fled,—but where are all the charms
Which, tho' with thee they came, and pass'd with thee,
Should leave a perfume and sweet memory
Of what they have been?—All thy boons and harms
Have perish'd quite.—Thy oft renew'd alarms
Forsake the fluttering echo.—Smiles and tears
Die on my cheek, or, petrified with years,
Shew the dull woe which no compassion warms,
The mirth none shares. Yet could a wish, a thought,
Unravel all the complex web of age,—
Could all the characters that Time hath wrought
Be clean effaced from my memorial page
By one short word, the word I would not say,
I thank my God, because my hairs are grey.

XXIII.

I thank my God because my hairs are grey!
But have grey hairs brought wisdom? Doth the flight
Of summer birds, departed while the light
Of life is lingering on the middle way,
Predict the harvest nearer by a day?
Will the rank weeds of hopeless appetite
Droop at the glance and venom of the blight
That made the vermeil bloom, the flush so gay,
Dim and unlovely as a dead worm's shroud?
Or is my heart, that, wanting hope, has lost
The strength and rudder of resolve, at peace?
Is it no longer wrathful, vain, and proud?
Is it a Sabbath, or untimely frost,
That makes the labour of the soul to cease?

XXIV.

It must be so,—my infant love must find
In my own breast a cradle and a grave;
Like a rich jewel hid beneath the wave,
Or rebel spirit bound within the rind
Of some old wreathed oak, or fast enshrin'd
In the cold durance of an echoing cave:—
Yea, better thus than cold disdain to brave:—
Or worse,—to taint the quiet of that mind,
That decks its temple with unearthly grace.
Together must we dwell, my dream and I,—
Unknown must live, and unlamented die,
Rather than soil the lustre of that face,
Or drive that laughing dimple from its place,
Or heave that white breast with a painful sigh.

XXV. FROM COUNTRY TO TOWN.

Written in Leeds, July, 1832.

I left the land where men with Nature dwelling,
Know not how much they love her lovely forms—
Nor heed the history of forgotten storms,
On the blank folds inscribed of drear Helvellyn;
I sought the town, where toiling, buying, selling—
Getting and spending, poising hope and fear,
Make but one season of the live-long year—
Now for the brook from moss-girt fountain welling,
I see the foul stream hot with sleepless trade;
For the slow creeping vapours of the morn,
Black hurrying smoke, in opake mass up-borne,
O'er dinning engines hangs, a stifling shade—
Yet Nature lives e'en here, and will not part
From her best home, the lowly-loving heart.

XXVI. CONTINUED.

'Tis strange to me, who long have seen no face,
That was not like a book, whose every page
I knew by heart, a kindly common-place—
And faithful record of progressive age—
To wander forth, and view an unknown race;
Of all that I have been, to find no trace,
No footstep of my by-gone pilgrimage.
Thousands I pass, and no one stays his pace
To tell me that the day is fair, or rainy—
Each one his object seeks with anxious chase,
And I have not a common hope with any—
Thus like one drop of oil upon a flood,
In uncommunicating solitude—
Single am I amid the countless many.

XXVII.

If I have sinn'd in act, I may repent;
If I have err'd in thought, I may disclaim
My silent error, and yet feel no shame—
But if my soul, big with an ill intent,
Guilty in will, by fate be innocent,
Or being bad, yet murmurs at the curse
And incapacity of being worse
That makes my hungry passion still keep Lent
In keen expectance of a Carnival;
Where, in all worlds, that round the sun revolve
And shed their influence on this passive ball,
Abides a power that can my soul absolve?
Could any sin survive, and be forgiven—
One sinful wish would make a hell of heaven.

XXVIII. TO SHAKSPEARE.

The soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean—or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathom'd centre. Like that Ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drown'd hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds. Great Poet, 'twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny,
Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart,
Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

XXIX.

Why should I murmur at my lot forlorn?
The self-same Fate that doom'd me to be poor
Endues me with a spirit to endure
All, and much more, than is or has been borne
By better men, of want, or worldly scorn.
My soul has faith, my body has the nerve
To brave the penance that my sins deserve.
And yet my helpless state I deeply mourn:
Well could I bear to be deserted quite,—
Less should I blame my fortune were it worse,—
But taking all, it yet hath left me friends,
For whom I needs must mourn the wayward spite
That hides my purpose in an empty purse,
Since what I grateful wish, in wishing ends.

XXX.

What can a poor man do but love and pray?
But if his love be selfish, then his prayer,
Like noisome vapour, melts in vacant air.
I am a debtor, and I cannot pay.
The alms which drop upon the public way,—
The casual tribute of the good and fair,
With the keen, thriftless avarice of despair
I seize, and live thereon from day to day,
Ingrate and purposeless.—And yet not so:
The mere mendicity of self-contempt
Has not so far debased me, but I know
The faith, the hope, the piety, exempt
From worldly doubt, to which my all I owe.
Since I have nothing, yet I bless the thought,—
Best are they paid whose earthly wage is nought.

XXXI.

What is young Passion but a gusty breeze
Ruffling the surface of a shallow flood?
A vernal motion of the vital blood,
That sweetly gushes from a heart at ease,
As sugar'd sap in spicy-budding trees?
And tho' a wish be born with every morrow,
And fondest dreams full oft are types of sorrow,
Eyes that can smile may weep just when they please.
But adult Passion, centred far within,
Hid from the moment's venom and its balm,
Works with the fell inherency of sin,

This ineradicable taint of sin. Childe Harold: Canto IV., 126.

Nor feels the joy of morn, nor evening calm:
For morn nor eve can change that fiery gloom
That glares within the spirit's living tomb.

XXXII. FROM PETRARCA.

“Solo e pensoso i piu deserti campi.”

In this and other translations from the Italian, I have not succeeded in preserving the simple purity of the original diction so completely as I could have wished. Italian words are so beautiful, that they are when “unadorned, adorned the most.” English, with all its excellencies, is so deficient in euphony, and so large a part of its vocabulary is debased by association, that it always requires strong or deep pathos, beautiful images, profound thought, rapid and striking interest, or much artifice in composition; something, in short, to withdraw the attention from the coarseness of the vehicle. We cannot emulate the simplicity of the Greeks or the Italians. The poet, indeed, who can and dare, may be austere; but austerity and simplicity are different things. Simplicity is never, austerity is always, conscious of itself. The Sunday habit of a modest country girl is simple—the regulation dress of a nunnery is meant to be austere. Simplicity does not seek what it feels no need of—Austerity rejects what it judges unfit.

But neither simplicity nor austerity are necessarily poetical. The simple must be beautiful, the austere must be great, or they have no place in genuine poetry. A daisy is simple, a turnip still simpler, yet the former belongs to the poetry of Nature, the latter to her most utilitarian prose.

Lonely and pensive o'er the lonely strand,
“With wandering steps and slow,” I loiter on,
My eyes at watch, to warn me to be gone
If mark of human foot impress the sand;
Else would my piteous plight be rudely scann'd,
And curious folk would stare to see the wan
And deathlike images of joy foregone,
And how I inly waste like smouldering brand.
Or I would fain believe the tangled wood
Which girds the small field on the mountain side
The one sole witness to my crazy mood;
But ah! what sandy waste, or forest dim,
My haunt obscure from Love can ever hide?
Where'er I think, I converse hold with him.

XXXIII.

The vale of Tempe had in vain been fair,
Green Ida never deem'd the nurse of Jove;
Each fabled stream, beneath its covert grove,
Had idly murmur'd to the idle air;
The shaggy wolf had kept his horrid lair
In Delphi's cell, and old Trophonius' cave,
And the wild wailing of the Ionian wave
Had never blended with the sweet despair
Of Sappho's death-song: if the sight inspired
Saw only what the visual organs shew,
If heaven-born phantasy no more required,
Than what within the sphere of sense may grow;
The beauty to perceive of earthly things,
The mounting soul must heavenward prune her wings.

XXXIV. TO A LOFTY BEAUTY, FROM HER POOR KINSMAN.

Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries,
Nor seen thy girlish, sweet vicissitude,
Thy mazy motions, striving to elude,
Yet wooing still a parent's watchful eyes,
Thy humours, many as the opal's dies,
And lovely all;—methinks thy scornful mood,
And bearing high of stately womanhood,—
Thy brow, where Beauty sits to tyrannize
O'er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee;
For never sure was seen a royal bride,
Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride—
My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee;
But when I see thee at thy father's side,
Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.