of fervid colloquy. Sickness, 't is true,

The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles
Vhole years of weary days, besieged him close, Of purple shadow! Yes, they wander on
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!

In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,

My gentle-hearted Charles ! fur thou hast pined
And with a natural gladness, he maintain'd And hunger'd after Nature, many a year,
The citadel unconquerd, and in joy

In the great city pent, winning thy way
Was strong to follow the delightful Muse. With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
For not a hidden Path, that to the Shades

And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads,

Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun! Lurk'd undiscover'd by him ; not a rill

Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, There issues from the fount of Hippocrene, Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds ! But he had traced it upward to its source,

Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves ! Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell, And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my Friend, Knew the gay wild-Powers on its banks, and culla Struck with deep joy, may stand, as I have stood, Its med cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone,

Silent with swimming sense ; yen, gazing round Piercing the long-neglected holy cave,

On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
The haunt obscure of old Philosophy,

Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
He bade with lifted torch its starry walls As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Sparkle as erst they sparkled to the flame Spirits perceive his presence.
Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage.
O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts !

A delight
O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!

Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad Philosopher! contemning wealth and death, As I myself were there! Nor in this bower, Yet docile, childlike, full of life and love! This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd Here, rather than on monumental stone,

Much that has soothed me.' Pale beneath the blaze This record of thy worth thy Friend inscribes, Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek. Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see

The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine! And that Walnut-tree

Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay
THIS LİME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON. Full on the ancient Ivy, which usurps

Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass, In the Juno of 1797, some long-expected Friends paid a visit Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

to the Author's Cottage; and on the morning of their ar- Through the late twilight: and though now the Bat
rival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from Wheels silent by, and not a Swallow twitters,
walking during the whole time of their stay. One Evening. Yet still the solitary Humble-Bee
when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the
following lines in the Garden Bower.

Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure :

No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
WELL, they are gone, and here must I remain,

No waste so vacant, but may well employ This Lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost

Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart Beauties and feelings, such as would have been

Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes Most sweet to my remembrance, even when age ”T is well to be bereft of promised good, Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, mean. That we may lift the soul, and contemplate

while, Friends, whom I never more may meet again,

With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last Rook On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,

Beat its straight path along the dusky air Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,

Homewards, I blest it! deering its black wing To that still roaring dell, of which I told :

(Now : dim speck, now vanishing in light) The roaring dell, 'o'erwooded, narrow, deep,

Had cross'd the mighty Orbis dilated glory,
And only speckled by the mid-day sun;

While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,
Where its slim trunk the Ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge ;—that branchless Ash, For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom

Flew creakingt o'er thy head, and had a charm
Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.
Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fann'd by the waterfall! and there my friends
Behold the dark-green file of long lank weeds,*
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the blue clay-stone.

TO A FRIEND
Now, my Friends emerge WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION OF WRITING
Beneath the wide wide Heaven and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,

DEAR Charles! whilst yet thou wert a babe, I ween
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up That Genius plunged thee in that wizard fount

NO MORE POETRY.

• The Asplenium Scolopendrium, called in some countries † Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleathe Adder's Tongue, in others the Hart's Tongue; but With sure to observe that Bartram had observed the same circumering gives the Adder's Tongue as the trivial name of the stance of the Savanna Crane. "When these Birds move Ophioglossum only.

their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate and

50

Hight Castalie: and (sureties of thy faith)

Of tides obedient to external force, That Pity and Simplicity stood by,

And currents self-determined, as might seem, And promised for thee, that thou shouldst renounce Or by some inner Power; of moments awful, The world's low cares and lying vanities,

Now in thy inner life, and now abroad, Stedfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse, When Power stream'd from theė, and thy soul And wash'd and sanctified to Poesy.

received Yes-thou wert plunged, but with forgetful hand The light reflected, as a light bestow'd Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior Son :

Of Fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
And with those recreant unbaptized heels

Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
Thou ’nt flying from thy bounden ministeries, Industrious in its joy, in Vales and Glens
So sore it seems and burthensome a task

Native or outland, Lakes and famous Hills!
To weave unwithering flowers ! But take thou heed: Or on the lonely High-road, when the Stars
For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed Boy,

Were rising; or by secret Mountain-streams, And I have arrows* mystically dipp'd,

The Guides and the Companions of thy way! Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead.? And shall he die unwept, and sink to Earth

Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense * Without the meed of one melodious tear?"

Distending wide, and Man beloved as Man, Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved Bard, Where France in all her towns lay vibrating Who to the “ Illustrioust of his native land

Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst “So properly did look for patronage.”

Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud Ghost of Mæcenas! hide thy blushing face!

Is visible, or shadow on the Main. They snatch'd him from the Sickle and the Plow For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded, To gauge Ale-Firkins.

Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,

Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
Oh! for shame return!

When from the general heart of human-kind
On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian Mount,

Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity! There stands a lone and melancholy tree,

Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down, Whose aged branches in the midnight blast

So summond homeward, thenceforth calm and sure, Mahe solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,

From the dread watch-lower of man's absolute Self, Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled,

With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's tomb.

Far on-herself a glory to behold,
Then in the outskiris, where pollutions grow, The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Pek the rank henbane and the dusky flowers

Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Of night-shade, or its red and tempting fruit. Action and Joy !- An orphic song indeed,
These with stopp'd nostril and glove-guarded hand

A song divine of high and passionate thoughts, krut in nice intertexture, so to twine

To their own music chanted!
The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility.
1796.

O great Bard!
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
With stedfast eye I. view'd thee in the choir

Of ever-enduring men. The truly Great
TO A GENTLEMAN.

Have all one age, and from one visible space

Shed influence! They, both in power and act, COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION Are permanent, and 'T'ime is not with them, OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL Save as it worketh for them, they in it.

Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old,

And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame FRIEND of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good! Among the archives of mankind, thy work Into my heart have I received that lay

Makes audible a linked lay of Truth, More than historic, that prophetic lay,

Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay, Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright) Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes ! Of the foundations and the building up

Ah! as I listend with a heart forlorn,
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell The pulses of my being beat anew :
What may be told, to the understanding mind And even as life returns upon the drown'd,
Revealable ; and what within the mind,

Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of painsBy vital breathings secret as the soul

Keen Pangs of Love, awakening as a babe Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; Thoughts all too deep for words

And Fears self-willid, that shunnid the eye of Hope ;

And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear,

Theme hard as high! Sense of past Youth, and Manhood come in vain, Of smules spontaneous, and mysterious fears And Genius given, and knowledge won in vain ; (The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth), And all which I had cull'd in wood-walks wild,

And all which patient toil had reard, and all, regular; and even when at a considerable distance or high Commune with thee had open'd out-but flowers above us, we plainly hear the quill-feathers; their shafts and Strew'd on my corse, and borne upon my bier, webs upon one another creak as the joints or working of a In the same coffin, for the self-same grave! vessel in a tempestuous wa." * Vide Pined. Olymp. 18. I. 156. Verbatim froro Boros's dedication of his Poems to the No

That way no more! and ill beseems it me, Edity and Gentry of the Caledonian Hunt.

Who came a welcomer in herald's guise,

MUND

а

Singing of Glory, and Futurity,

* Most musical, most melancholy"+ bird !
To wander back on such unhealthful road, A melancholy bird ? Oh! idle thought!
Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill In nature there is nothing melancholy.
Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths But some night-wandering man, whose heart was
Strew'd before thy advancing !

pierced

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Nor do thou,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love
Sage Bard ! impair the memory of that hour (And so, poor Wretch! filled all things with himself,
Of my communion with thy nobler mind

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
By Pity or Grief, already felt too long !

Of his own sorrow), he and such as he,
Nor let my words import more blame than needs. First named these notes a melancholy strain.
The tumult rose and ceased : for Peace is nigh And many a poet echoes the conceit;
Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart. Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
Amid the howl of more than wintry storms,

When he had better far have stretch'd his limbs
The Halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
Already on the wing.

By Sun or Moon-light, to the influxes

Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
Eve following eve,

Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home And of his frame forgetful! so his fame
Is sweetest ! moments for their own sake hail'd Should share in Nature's immortality,
And more desired, more precious for thy song, A venerable thing! and so his song
In silenco listening, like a devout child,

Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
My soul lay passive, by the various strain

Be loved like Nature ! But 't will not be so;
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars, And youths and maidens most poétical,
With momentary Stars of my own birth,

Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring
Fair constellated Foam,* still darting off

In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still,
Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,

Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs
Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the Moon. O’er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
And when–O Friend ! my comforter and guide!

My friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength - A different lore: we may not thus profane
Thy long sustained song finally closed,

Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And thy deep voice had ceased-yet thou thyself

And joyance! "Tis the merry Nightingale Wert still before my eyes, and round us both

That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates That happy vision of beloved faces

With fast thick warble his delicious notes, Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close

As he were fearful that an April night
I sate, my being blended in one thought

Would be too short for him to utter forth
(Thought was it? or Aspiration? or Resolve ?) His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Absorb’d, yet hanging still upon the sound- Of all its music!
And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.

And I know a grove
Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,

And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
THE NIGHTINGALE:

Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.
A CONVERSATION POEM;

But never elsewhere in one place I knew

So many Nightingales ; and far and near,
WRITTEN IN APRIL, 1798. .

In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,

They answer and provoke each other's song, No cloud, no relic of the sunken day

With skirmish and capricious passagings, Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip

And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. And one low piping sound more sweet than all-
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge! Stirring the air with such a harmony,
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, That should you close your eyes, you might almost
But hear no murmuring : it flows silently, Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim, You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright That gladden the green earth, and we shall find

and full, A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade And hark! the Nightingale begins its song, Lights up her love-torch.

.

1

"A beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals * This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars to that of mere description. It is spoken in the character of the of flame danced and sparkled and went out in it: and every melancholy man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The now and then light detachments of this white cloud-like foam author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the chargo darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small con- of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than stellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a Tartar which none could be more painful to him, excopt perhaps that troop over a wilderness.”—The Friend, p. 220.

of having ridiculed his Bible.

A most gentlo Maid, By its own moods interprets, everywhere Who dwelleth in her hospitable home

Echo or mirror seeking of itself, Hard by the castle, and at latest eve

And makes a toy of Thought. (Even like a lady vow'd and dedicato To something more than Nature in the grove)

But O! how oft, Glides through the pathways ; she knows all their How oft, at school, with most believing mind notes,

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, That gentle Maid! and oft a moment's space, To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft What time the Moon was lost behind a cloud, With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt Hath heard a pause of silence; till the Moon Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-lower, Emerging, hath awaken'd earth and sky

Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang With one sensation, and these wakeful Birds From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

So sweetly, that they stirr'd and haunted me As if some sudden gale had swept at once With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear A hundred airy harps! And she hath watch'd Most like articulate sounds of things to come! Many a Nightingale perch'd giddily

So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze, Lulld me to sleep, and sleep prolong’d my dreams'
And to that motion tune his wanton song

And so I brooded all the following mom,
Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head. Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye

Fix'd with mock study on my swimming book:
Farewell, o Warbler! till to-morrow eve, Save if the door half-open'd, and I sna:ch'd
And you, my friends ! farewell, a short farewell!

A hasty glance, and still my heart leap'd up, We have been loitering long and pleasantly, For still I hoped 10 see the stranger's face, And now for our dear homes.- That strain again? Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike! Who, capable of no articulate sound, Mars all things with his imitative lisp,

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, How he would place his hand beside his ear, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, His little hand, the small forefinger up,

Fill up the interspersed vacancies And bid us listen! And I decm it wise

And momentary pauses of the thought!
To make him Nature's Play-mate. He knows well My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
The evening-star; and once, when he awoke With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
In most distressful mood (some inward pain

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream), And in for other scenes! For I was rear'd
I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And he beheld the Moon, and, hush'd at once, And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently, But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
While his fair eyes, that swam with undropp'd tears By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well ! Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clonds,
It is a father's tale : But if that Ileaven Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear
Familiar with these songs, that with the night The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
He may associate joy! Once more, farewell, Of that eternal language, which thy God
Sweet Nightingale! Once more, my friends! farewell. Uiters, who from eternity doth teach

Ilimself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
FROST AT MIDNIGIIT.

Therefore all seasons shall be swect to thce,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth The Frost performs its secret ministry,

With greenness, or the red breast sit and sing
Unhelp'd by any wind. The owlet's cry

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Came loud-and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the cave-drops Have left me to that solitude, which suits

fall Abstruser musings : save that at my side

Heard only in the trances of the blast, My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

Or if the secret ministry of frost "T is calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
And veres meditation with its strange

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low burnt fire, and quivers not;

TO A FRIEND.
Only that film, which flutter'd on the grate,
Sull Autters there, the sole unqniet thing.

TOGETHER WITH AN UNFINISHED POEM.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Thus far my scanty brain hath built the rhyme
Making it a companionable form,

Elaborate and swelling: yet the heart Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit Not owns it. From thy spirit-breathing powers

a

[The Author has published the following humble fragment, LINES TO JOSEPII.COTTLE.

encouraged by the decisive recommendation of more than one

of our most' celebrated living Poets. The language was in My honor'd friend! whose verse concise, yet clear, tended to be dramatic ; that is, suited to the narrator; and the Tunes to smooth melody unconquer'd sense,

metre correxponds to the bomeliness of the diction. It is there

foro presented as the fragment, not of a Poem, but of a comMay your fame fadeless live, as “never-sere”

mon Ballad-talo. Whether this is sufficient to justify the adopThe ivy wreathes yon oak, whose broad defence tion of such a style, in any metrical composition not profess

edly ludicrous, the Author is himself in some doubt. At all * I utterly recant the sentiment contained in the lines

events, it is not presented as Poetry, and it is in no way con

nected with the Author's judgment concerning Poetic diction. of whose omniscient and all-spreading love

Its merits, if any, are exclusively Psychological. The story Aught to implore were impotence of mind, it being written in Scripture. "Ask, and it shall be given you." and my human rearon being moreover convinced of the pro

War, a Fragment. † John the Baptist, a Poem. priety of offering petitions as well as thanksgivings to the Deity. 1 Monody on John Henderson,