That veiling strove to deck your charms divine,

Where once the Austrian fell
Rich viands, and the pleasurable wine,

Beneath the shaft of Tell!
Were yours unearn'd by toil; nor could you see O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure !
The unenjoying toiler's misery.

Thence learnt you that heroic measure.
And yet, free Nature's uncorrupted child,
You hail'd the Chapel and the Platform wild,

Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure !

ODE TO TRANQUILLITY.
Whence learnt you that heroic measure ?

TRANQUILLITY! thou better namo

Than all the family of Fame ! There crowd your finely-fibred frame,

Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper ago All living faculties of bliss ;

To low intrigue, or factious rage; And Genius to your cradle came,

For oh! dear child of thoughtful Truth, His forehead wreathed with lambent flame,

To thee I gave my early youth, And bending low, with godlike kiss

And left the bark, and blest the stedfast shore, Breathed in a more celestial life ;

Ere yet the Tempest rose and scared me with its roar.
But boasts not many a fair compeer
A heart as sensitive to joy and fear?

Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
And some, perchance, might wage an equal strife, On him but seldom, power divine,
Some few, to nobler being wrought,

Thy spirit rests! Satiety
Co-rivals in the nobler gift of thought.

And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Yet these delight to celebrate

Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope
Laurellid War and plumy Stato ;

And dire Remembrance interlope,
Or in verse and music dress

To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind :
Tales of rustic happiness-

The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.
Pernicious Tales ! insidious Strains !
That steel the rich man's breast,

But me thy gentle hand will lead
And mock the lot unblest,

At morning through the accustomd mead; The sordid vices and the abject pains,

And in the sultry summer's heat Which evermore must be

Will build me up a mossy scat; The doom of Ignorance and Penury!

And when the gust of Autumn crowds But you, free Nature's uncorrupted child,

And breaks the busy moonlight clouds, You hailid the Chapel and the Platform wild, Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune, Where once the Austrian fell

Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding Moon Beneath the shaft of Tell! O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!

The feeling heart, the searching soul,
Where learnt you that heroic measure ?

To thee I dedicate the whole !
And while within myself I traco

The greatness of some future race,
You were a Mother! That most holy name,

Aloof with hermit-eye I scan Which Heaven and Nature bless,

The present works of present man I may not vilely prostitute to those

A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile, Whose Infants owe them less

Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile! Than the poor Caterpillar owes

Its gaudy Parent Fly.
You were a Mother! at your bosom sed

The Babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye,
Each twilight-thought, each nascent feeling read,

TO A YOUNG FRIEND,
Which you yourself created. Oh! delight!
A second time to be a Mother,

ON HIS PROPOSING TO DOMESTICATE WITH THE

AUTHOR.
Without the Mother's bitter groans :
Another thought, and yet another,

COMPOSED IN 1796.
By touch, or taste, by looks or tones
O'er the growing Sense to roll,

A MOUNT, not wearisome and hare and stoep,
The Mother of your infant's Soul !

But a green mountain variously up-piled, The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides Where o'er the jutting rocks soft mosses creep, His chariot-planet round the goal of day,

Or color'd lichens with slow oozing weep; All trembling gazes on the Eye of God,

Where cypress and the darker yew start wild ; A moment turn'd his awful face away;

And 'mid the summer torrent's gentle dash And as he view'd you, from his aspect sweet Dance brighten'd the red clusters of the ash; New influences in your being rose,

Beneath whose boughs, by those still sounds beBlest Intuitions and Communions fleet

guiled, With living Nature, in her joys and woes! Calm Pensiveness might muse herself to sleep; Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see

Till haply startled by some fleecy dam, The shrine of social Liberty !

That rustling on the bushy clist above, O beautiful! O Nature's child!

With melancholy bleat of anxious love, "Twas thence you haild the Platform wild, Made moek inquiry for her wandering lamb:

Such a green mountain 't were most sweet to climb,

LINES TO W. L. ESQ.
Een while the bosom ached with loneliness-
How more than sweet, if some dear friend should

WHILE HE SANG A SONG TO PURCELL'S MUSIC. bless

WHILE my young cheek retains its healthful hues, The adventurous toil, and up the path sublime And I have many friends who hold me dear; Now lead, now follow: the glad landscape round, L -! methinks, I would not often hear Wide and more wide, increasing without bound! Such melodies as thine, lest I should lose

All memory of the wrongs and sore distress, O then 't were loveliest sympathy, to mark

For which my miserable brethren weep!

But should uncomforted misfortunes steep
The berries of the half-uprooted ash
Dripping and bright; and list the torrent's dash – My daily bread in tears and bitterness ;

And if at death's dread moment I should lie
Beneath the cypress, or the yew more dark,
Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock ;

With no beloved face at my bed-side,

To fix the last glance of my closing eye, In social silence now, and now to unlock

Methinks, such strains, breathed by my angel-guide, The treasured heart; arm link'd in friendly arm,

Would make me pass the cup of anguish by, Save if the one, his muse's witching charm

Mix with the blest, nor know that I had died ! Muttering brow-bent, at unwatch'd distance lag;

Till high o'erhead his beckoning friend appears,
And from the forehead of the topmost crag
Shouts eagerly: for haply there uprears

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG MAN OF FORTUNE, That shadowing pine its old romantic limbs,

WHO ABANDONED HIMSELF TO AN INDOLENT AND Which latest shall detain the enamour'd sight

CACSELESS MELANCHOLY.
Seen from below, when eve the valley dims,

IIENCE that fantastic wantonness of woe,
Tinged yellow with the rich departing light;
And haply, basin'd in some unsurin'd cleft,

O Youth to partial Fortune vainly dear!
A beauteous spring, the rock's collected tears,

To plunderd Want's half-shelter'd hovel go, Sleeps shelter'd there, scarce wrinkled by the gale!

Go, and some hunger-bitten Infant hear Together thus, the world's vain turmoil left,

Moan haply in a dying Mother's ear: Stretch'd on the crag, and shadow'd by the pine,

Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps brood And bending o'er the clear delicious fount,

O'er the rank church-yard with sere elm-leaves Ah! dearest youth! it were a lot divine

strew'd, To cheat our noons in moralizing mood,

Pace round some widow's grave, whose dearer part While west-winds fann'd our temples toil-bedewid :

Was slaughter'd, where o'er his uncoffin'd limbs Then downwards. slope, oft pausing, from the The flocking flesh-birds scream'd! Then, while thy

heart mount, To some lone mansion, in some woody dále,

Groans, and thine eye a fiercer sorrow dims, Where smiling with blue eye, domestic bliss

Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind) Gives this the Husband's, that the Brother's kiss!

What Nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal!

O abject! if, to sickly dreams resign'd,

All effortless thou leave life's commonweal
Thus rudely versed in allegoric lore,

A prey to Tyrants, Murderers of Mankind.
The Hill of Knowledge I essay'd to trace;
That verdurous hill with many a resting-place,
And many a stream, whose warbling waters pour

SONNET TO THE RIVER OTTER.
To glad and fertilize the subject plains ;
That hill with secret springs, and nooks untrod, DEAR native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West !
And many a fancy-blest and holy sod,

How many various-fated years have past, Where Inspiration, his diviner strains

What happy, and what mournful hours, since last Low murmuring, lay; and starting from the rocks I skimm'd the smooth thin stone along thy breast, Suff evergreens, whose spreading foliage mocks Numbering its light leaps ! yet so deep imprest Want's barren soil, and the bleak frosts of age, Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes And Bigotry's mad fire-invoking rage!

I never shut amid the sunny ray,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise, O meek retiring spirit! we will climb,

Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows gray, Cheering and cheer'd, this lovely hill sublime ;

And bedded sand that vein'd with various dyes And from the stirring world uplifted high

Gleam'd through thy bright transparence! On my (Whose noises, faintly wafted on the wind,

way,

Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled To quiet musings shall attune the mind,

Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs : And oft the toelancholy theme supply),

Ah! that once more I were a careless child ! There, while the prospect through the gazing eye

Pours all its healthful greenness on the soul,
We'll smile at wealth, and learn to smile at fame,
Our hopes, our knowledge, and our joys the same,

SONNET.
As neighboring fountains image, each the whole:
Then, when the mind hath drunk its fill of truth,

COMPOSED ON A JOURNEY HOMEWARD; THE AUTHOR

HAVING RECEIVED INTELLIGENCE OF THE BIRTH We'll discipline the heart to pure delight, Rekindling sober Joy's domestic flame.

OF A SON, SEPTEMBER 20, 1796. They whom I love shall love thee. Honor'd youth! Ort o'er my brain does that strange fancy roll Now may Heaven realize this vision bright! Which makes the present (while the flash doth last)

While others wish thee wise and fair,

A maid of spotless fame,
I'll breathe this more compendious prayer-

Mayst thou deserve thy name!

Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mix'd with such feelings, as perplex the soul
Self-question'd in her sleep; and some have said*

We lived, ere yet this robe of Flesh we wore.

O my sweet baby! when I reach my door,
If heavy looks should tell me thou art dead
(As sometimes, through excess of hope, I fear),
I think that I should struggle to believe

Thou wert a spirit, to this nether sphere
Sentenced for some more venial crime to grieve;
Didst scream, then spring to meet Heaven's quick

reprieve, While we wept idly o'er thy little bier !

Thy Mother's name, a potent spell,

That bids the Virtues hie
From mystic grove and living cell

Confest to Fancy's eye ;

Meek Quietness, without offence;

Content, in homespun kirtle ;
True Love; and True Love's Innocence,

White Blossom of the Myrtle!

SONNET.

Associates of thy name, sweet Child !

These Virtues mayst thou win;
With Face as eloquently mild

To say, they lodge within.

TO A FRIEND WHO ASKED, HOW I FELT WHEN THE

NURSE FIRST PRESENTED MY INFANT TO ME.

So when, her tale of days all flown,

Thy Mother shall be miss'd here;
When Heaven at length shall claim its own,

And Angels snatch their Sister;

CHARLES ! my slow heart was only sad, when first

I scann'd that face of feeble infancy: For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst

All I had been, and all my child might be ! But when I saw it on its Mother's arm,

And hanging at her bosom (she the while

Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile). Then I was thrill'd and melted, and most warm Impress'd a Father's kiss : and all beguiled

Of dark remembrance and presageful fear,

I seem'd to sce an angel-form appear"T was even thine, beloved woman mild !

So for the Mother's sake the Child was dear, And dearer was the Mother for the Child.

Some hoary-headed Friend, perchance,

May gaze with stilled breath ;
And oft, in momentary trance,

Forget the waste of death.

Ev'n thus a lovely rose I view'd

In summer-swelling pride ;
Nor mark'd the bud, that green and rude

Peep'd at the Rose's side.

It chanced, I pass'd again that way

In Autumn's latest hour,
And wond'ring saw the self-same spray

• Rich with the self-same flower.

THE VIRGIN'S CRADLE HYMN.

COPIED FROM A PRINT OF THE VIRGIN IN A CATHOLIC

VILLAGE IN GERMANY.

Ah fond deceit! the rude green bud

Alike in shape, place, name,
Had bloom'd, where bloom'd its parent stud,

Another and the same!

Dormi, Jesu! Mater ridet,
Quæ tam dulcem somnum videt,

Dormi, Jesu! blandule!
Si non dormis, Mater plorat,
Inter fila cantans orat

Blande, veni, soinnule.

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT.

ENGLISH
Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling
Moiher sits beside thee smiling :

Sleep, my darling, tenderly !
If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,
Singing as her wheel she turneth :

Come, soft slumber, balmily!

Its balmy lips the Infant blest
Relaxing from its Mother's breast,
How sweet it heaves the happy sigh
Of innocent Satiety!

And such my Infant's latest sigh!
() tell, rude stone! the passer-by,
That here the pretty babe doth lie,
Death sang to sleep with Lullaby.

ON THE CHRISTENING OF A FRIEND'S CHILD.
This day among the faithful placed
And fed with fontal manna ;

MELANCHOLY.
O with maternal title graced

A FRAGMENT.
Dear Anna's dearest Anna!

STRETCH'D on a moulder'd Abbey's broadest wall, * Ην που ημων η ψυχη πριν εν τωδε τω ανθρωπινω Where ruining ivies propp'd the ruins steep ειδει γενεσθαι.

Her folded arms wrapping her tatter'd pall,
Plat. in Phædon. Had Melancholy mused herself to sleep.

The fern was press'd beneath her hair,

She listen'd to the tale divine, The dark-green Adder's Tongue* was there;

And closer still the Babe she press'd ; And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak,

And while she cried, the Babe is mine! The long lank leaf bow'd fluttering o'er her cheek.

The milk rush'd faster to her breast:

Joy rose within her, like a summer's morn; That pallid cheek was flush'd : her eager look Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born. Beamd eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought, Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,

Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace, And her bent forehead work'd with troubled

Poor, simple, and of low estate! thought.

That Strife should vanish, Battle cease,
Strange was the dream

O why should this thy soul elate ?
Sweet Music's loudest note, the Poet's story,-

Did'st thou ne'er love to hear of Fame and Glory?
TELL'S BIRTH-PLACE.

And is not War a youthful King,
IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

A stately Hero clad in mail ?
MARK this holy chapel well!

Beneath his footsteps laurels spring; The Birth-place, this, of William Tell.

Him Earth's majestic monarchs hail Here, where stands God's altar dread,

Their Friend, their Play-mate! and his bold bright eye Sood his parents' marriage-bed.

Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh. Here first, an infant to her breast,

“ Tell this in some more courtly scene, Him his loving mother prest;'

To maids and youths in robes of state ! And kiss'd the babe, and bless'd the day,

I am a woman poor and mean, And pray'd as mothers use to pray :

And therefore is my Soul elate.

War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled, * Vouchsafe him health, O God, and give

That from the aged Father tears his Child !
The Child thy servant still to live!”
But God has destined to do more
Through him, than through an armed power. “ A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,

He kills the Sire and starves the Son ;
God gave him reverence of laws,

The Husband kills, and from her board Yet stirring blood in Freedom's cause

Steals all his Widow's toil had won; A spirit to his rocks akin,

Plunders God's world of beauty ; rends away The eye of the Hawk, and the fire therein!

| All safety from the Night, all comfort from the Day.

To Nature and to IIoly writ
Alone did God the boy commit:
Where flash'd and roar'd the torrent, oft
His soul found wings, and soar'd alott!
The straining oar and chamois chase
Had form d his limbs to strength and grace:
On wave and wind the boy would toss,
Was great, nor knew how great he was !

“ Then wisely is my soul elate,

That Strife should vanish, Battle cease:
I'm poor and of a low estate; ·

The Mother of the Prince of Peace.
Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn :
Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born!"

Ile knew not that his chosen hand,
Made strong by God, his native land
Would rescue from the shameful yoke
Of Slavery- the which he broke!

HUMAN LIFE,

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY.

If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom
A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare THE Shepherds went their hasty way,

As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,

Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
And found the lowly stable-shed
Where the Virgin-Mother lay:

But are their whole of being! If the Breath

Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
And now they check'd their eager tread,

If even a soul like Milton's can know death,
For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung,
A Mother's song the Virgin-Mother sung.

O Man! thou vessel, purposeless, unmeant,

Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !
They told her how a glorious light,

Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Streaming from a heavenly throng,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd vase, Around them shone, suspending night!

Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
While, sweeter than a Mother's song,

She form'd with restless hands unconsciously! Blest Angels heralded the Savior's birth,

Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! Glory to God on high! and peace on Earth.

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,

Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy Hopes, thy Fears, A botanical mistake. The plant which the poet bere de- The counter-weights !—Thy Laughter and thy Tears scribcs is called the Hart's Tongue.

Mean but themselves, each fittest to create,

And to repay the other! Why rejoices

But soon did righteous Heaven her guilt pursue ! Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good ? Where'er with wilderd steps she wander'd pale,

Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Still Edmund's image rose to blast her view, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Still Edmund's voice accused her in each gale.

Image of image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf, That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold! With keen regret, and conscious guilt's alarms, Yet what and whence thy gain if thou withhold Amid the pomp of affluence she pined :

These costless shadows of thy shadowy self? Nor all that lured her faith from Edmund's arms Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!

Could lull the wakesul horror of her mind.
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none:
Thy being's being is contradiction.

Go, Traveller! tell the tale with sorrow fraught:

Some tearful maid, perchance, or blooming youth,
May hold it in remembrance; and be taught

That Riches cannot pay for Love or Truth.
THE VISIT OF THE GODS.

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER.
NEVER, believe me,

KUBLA KHAN;
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone: -

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.
Scarce had I welcomed the Sorrow-beguiler,
lacchus! but in came Boy Cupid the Smiler;

(The following fragment is here published at the request of a Lo! Phoebus the Glorious descends from his Throne! poct of great and deserved celebrity, and, as far as the Author's They advance, they float in, the Olympians all! ownlopinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, With Divinities fills my

than on the ground of any supposed poctic merils. Terrestrial Hall !

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house betwecn Porlock and Linton,

on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In conHlow shall I yield you

sequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been preDue entertainment,

scribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in bis chair at Celestial Quire ?

the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of up- "Here the khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a

words of the same substance, in Purchas's "Pilgrimage:"buoyance

stately garden thereunto ; and thus ten miles of fertile ground Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance, were inclosed with a wall." The author continued for about That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!

three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, Ha! we mount! on their pinions they walt up my Soul! during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could

not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if

that indeed can be called composition in which all the images O give me the Nectar!

rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the O fill me the Bowl!

correspondent expressions, without any sensation, or conscious

ness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a Give him the Nectar!

distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and Pour out for the Poet,

paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here Hebe! pour free!

preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above That Styx the detested no more he may view,

an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!

surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some

vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision. Thanks, Hebe! I quafl it! Io Pæan, I cry!

yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines ani The Wine of the Immortals

images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the Forbids me to die!

surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas!
without the after restoration of the latter.

Then all the charm
Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair

Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
ELEGY,

And each misshnpes the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely darcst lift up thine eyes

The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
IMITATED FROM ONE OF AKENSIDE'S BLANK VERSE

The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
INSCRIPTIONS.

And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms

Come trembling back, unite, and now once more Near the lone pile with ivy overspread,

The pool becomes a mirror. Fast by the rivulet's sleep-persuading sound,

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author Where “sleeps the moonlight” on yon verdant bed has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been O humbly press that consecrated ground! originally, as it were, given to him. Sajipov adcov acu:

but the to-morrow is yet to come. For there does Edmund rest, the learned swain!

As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a And there his spirit most delights to rove:

very different character, describing with equal fidelity the

dream of pain and disease. --Note to the first Edition, 1816.) Young Edmund! famod for each harmonious strain, And the sore wounds of ill-requited love.

In Xanadu did Kabla Khan
Like some tall tree that spreads branches wide, A stately pleasure-dome decree;

And loads the west-wind with its soft perfume, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
His manhood blossom d: till the faithless pride Through caverns measureless to man,
Of fair Matilda sank him to the tomb.

Down to a sunless sca