XIV.

T

MO one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven, to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel, -
- an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.

XV.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

HE poetry of earth is never dead:

TW

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's he takes the lead In summer luxury, he has never done With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

G

XVI.

TO KOSCIUSKO.

OOD Kosciusko! thy great name alone

Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling; It comes upon us like the glorious pealing Of the wide spheres an everlasting tone. And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown, The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing, Are changed to harmonies, for ever stealing Turough cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.

It tells me too, that on a happy day,

When some good spirit walks upon the earth,
Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore,
Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth
To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away
To where the great God lives for evermore.

H

XVII.

APPY is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown

Through its tall woods with high romances blent
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,

And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see

Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.

F

XVIII.

THE HUMAN SEASONS.

OUR Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

XIX.

ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER.

YOME hither, all sweet maidens soberly,
aye, and with a light,

Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joined be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see,

Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit's night,
Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea:
'Tis young Leander toiling to his death;
Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile :
He's gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

XX.

TO AILSA ROCK.

HEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid !

Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowl's screams!

When were thy shoulders mantled in huge

streams!

When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid ? How long is't since the mighty power bid

Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams? Sleep in the lap of thunder or sun-beams, Or when gray clouds are thy cold cover-lid? Thou answer'st not, for thou art dead asleep! Thy life is but two dead eternities

The last in air, the former in the deep;

First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,

Another cannot wake thy giant size.

XXI.

ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES.

Y spirit too weak;

M-Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,

That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain,
Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,

That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time - with a billowy main
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.

H

XXII.

TO HAYDON.

(WITH THE PRECEDING SONNET.)

AYDON! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;

Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,
That what I want I know not where to seek.
And think that I would not be over-meek,
In rolling out upfollowed thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak.
Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture'
hem?

For, when men stared at what was most divine
With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm,
Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shine

Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them!

XXIII.

WRITTEN IN THE COTTAGE WHERE BURNS WAS BORN.

THIS mortal body of a thousand days

TH

Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room, Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays, Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom! My pulse is warm with thine old Barley-bree, My head is light with pledging a great soul, My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see, Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal; Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor, Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, O smile among the shades, for this is fame!

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