"My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
"Thus fares it still in our decay: And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.
"The blackbird in the summer trees, The lark upon the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please, Are quiet when they will.
"With nature never do they wage A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free :
"But we are pressed by heavy laws; And often glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
"If there is one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
IF thou indeed derive thy light from
Shine, poet, in thy place, and be content! The star that from the zenith darts its beams, Visible though it be to half the earth, Though half a sphere be conscious of its brightness,
Is yet of no diviner origin,
No purer essence, than the one that burns, Like an untended watch-fire, on the ridge Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem [lamps, Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter Among the branches of the leafless trees.
WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF
MACPHERSON'S "OSSIAN."
OFT have I caught from fitful breeze
Fragments of far-off melodies,
With ear not coveting the whole,
A part so charmed the pensive soul:
While a dark storm before my sight
Was yielding, on a mountain height
Loose vapours have I watched, that won
Prismatic colours from the sun;
The household hearts that were his own, Nor felt a wish that heaven would show
"My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved."
The image of its perfect bow.
What need, then, of these finished strains? Away with counterfeit remains !
An abbey in its lone recess,
A temple of the wilderness,
Wrecks though they be, announce with feeling
The majesty of honest dealing.
“Now both himself and me he wrongs, Spirit of Ossian ! if imbound
The man who thus corolains!
I live and sing my idiengs
Upon these happy plains,
"And, Matthew, for thy children dead I'll be a son to thee!"
At this he grasped my hand, and said, "Alas! that cannot be."
We rose up from the fountain-side;
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide;
And through the wood we went ;
And, ere we came to Leonard's rock,
He sang those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church clock,
And the bewildered chimes.
In language thou mayst yet be found,
If aught (intrusted to the pen,
Or floating on the tongues of men,
Albeit shattered and impaired)
Subsist thy dignity to guard,
In concert with memorial claim
Of old gray stone, and high-born name,
That cleaves to rock or pillared cave,
Where moans the blast or beats the wave,
Let truth, stern arbitress of all
Interpret that original,
And for presumptuous wrongs atone;
Authentic words be given, or none !
Time is not blind;-yet he, who spares
Pyramid pointing to the stars,
Hath preyed with ruthless appetite
On all that marked the primal flight
Of the poetic ecstasy
Into the land of mystery.
No tongue is able to rehearse
One measure, Orpheus! of thy verse;
Musæus, stationed with his lyre
Supreme among the Elysian quire,
Is, for the dwellers upon earth,
Mute as a lark ere morning's birth.
Appeared, in pres nce of that spiritual
That aids or supersedes our grosser sight,
The form and rich habiliments of one
Whose countenance bore resemblance to
the sun,
Why grieve for these, though passed away When it reveals, in evening majesty,
The music, and extinct the lay?
When thousands, by severer doom,
Full early to the silent tomb
Have sunk, at nature's call; or strayed
From hope and promise, self-betrayed;
The garland withering on their brows;
Stand with remorse for broken vows;
Frantic-else how might they rejoice?
And friendless, by their own sad choice.
Hail, bards of mightier grasp ! on you
I chiefly call, the chosen few,
Who cast not off the acknowledged guide,
Who faltered not, nor turned aside;
Whose lofty genius could survive
Privation, under sorrow thrive ;
In whom the fiery muse revered
The symbol of a snow-white beard.
Bedewed with meditative tears
Dropped from the lenient cloud of years.
Brothers in soul ! though distant times
Produced you, nursed in various climes,
Ye, when the orb of life had waned,
A plenitude of love retained;
Hence, while in you each sad regret
By corresponding hope was met,
Ye lingered among human kind,
Sweet voices for the passing wind;
Departing sunbeams, loth to stop,
Though smiling on the last hill top
Such to the tender-hearted maid
Even ere her joys begin to fade;
Such, haply, to the rugged chief
By fortune crushed, or tamed by grief;
Appears, on Morven's lonely shore,
Dim-gleaming through imperfect lore,
The Son of Fingal; such was blind
Mæonides of ampler mind;
Such Milton, to the fountain head
Of glory by Urania led!
"Rerum natura tota est nusquam magis quam
in minimis."-PLIN. Nat. Hist.
BENEATH the concave of an April sky, When all the fields with freshest green were dight,
Features half lost amid their own pure
light.
Poised, like a weary cloud, in middle air
He hung, then floated with angelic ease
(Softening that bright effulgence by degrees)
Till he had reached a summit sharp and
bare,
[the noontide breeze.
Where oft the venturous heifer drinks
Upon the apex of that lofty cone
Alighted, there the stranger stood alone;
Fair as a gorgeous fabric of the East
Suddenly raised by some enchanter's power,
Where nothing was; and firm as some old
And was it granted to the simple ear
Of thy contented votary
Such melody to hear!
Him rather suits it, side by side with thee,
Wrapped in a fit of pleasing indolence,
While thy tired lute hangs on the hawthorn
tree,
To lie and listen, till o'er-drowsed sense
Sinks, hardly conscious of the influence,
To the soft murmur of the vagrant bee.
A slender sound! yet hoary time
Doth to the soul exalt it with the chime
Of all his years;-a company
Of ages coming, ages gone;
(Nations from before them sweeping,
Regions in destruction steeping,)
But every awful note in unison
With that faint utterance, which tells
Of treasure sucked from buds and bells,
For the pure keeping of those waxen cells;
Where she, a statist prudent to confer
Upon the public weal; a warrior bold,-
Radiant all over with unburnished gold,
And armed with living spear for mortal
A cunning forager
[fight;
That spreads no waste ;-a social builder;
In whom all busy offices unite
With all fine functions that afford delight, Safe through the winter storm in quiet dwells!
And is she brought within the power
Of vision?-o'er this tempting flower
Hovering until the petals stay
Her flight, and take its voice away!-
Observe each wing-a tiny van!-
The structure of her laden thigh,
How fragile !--yet of ancestry
Mysteriously remote and high,
High as the imperial front of man,
The roseate bloom on woman's cheek;
The soaring eagle's curvèd beak;
The white plumes of the floating swan ;
Old as the tiger's paw, the lion's mane
Ere shaken by that mood of stern disdain
At which the desert trembles.-Humming
bee !
[unknown;
Thy sting was needless then, perchance
The seeds of malice were not sown;
All creatures met in peace, from fierceness
free,
And no pride blended with their dignity.
Tears had not broken from their source;
Nor anguish strayed from her Tartarian
The golden years maintained a course Not undiversified, though smooth and [shadow, then We were not mocked with glimpse and Bright seraphs mixed familiarly with men ; And earth and stars composed a universal heaven!
ODE TO LYCORIS.
MAY, 1817.
AN age hath been when earth was proud
Of lustre too intense
To be sustained; and mortals bowed
The front in self-defence.
Who then, if Dian's crescent gleamed,
Or Cupid's sparkling arrow streamed
While on the wing the urchin played,
Could fearlessly approach the shade?
Enough for one soft vernal day,
If I, a bard of ebbing time,
And nurtured in a fickle clime,
May haunt this horned bay;
Whose amorous water multiplies
The flitting halcyon's vivid dyes;
And smooths her liquid breast-to show
[one! These swan-like specks of mountain snow,
White as the pair that slid along the plains Of heaven, when Venus held the reins !
In youth we love the darksome lawn
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then, twilight is preferred to dawn,
And autumn to the spring.
Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness.
Lycoris (if such name befit
Thee, thee my life's celestial sign!)
When nature marks the year's decline,
Be ours to welcome it;
Pleased with the harvest hope that runs
Before the path of milder suns,
Pleased while the sylvan world displays
Its ripeness to the feeding gaze;
Pleased when the sullen winds resound the
Of the resplendent miracle.
But something whispers to my heart
That, as we downward tend,
Lycoris! life requires an art
To which our souls must bend ;
A skill--to balance and supply;
And, ere the flowing fount be dry,
As soon it must, a sense to sip,
Or drink, with no fastidious lip.
Frank greeting, then, to that blithe guest
Diffusing smiles o'er land and sea
To aid the vernal Deity
Whose home is in the breast!
May pensive autumn ne'er present
A claim to her disparagement !
While blossoms and the budding spray
Inspire us in our own decay;
Still, as we nearer draw to life's dark goal,
Be hopeful spring the favourite of the soul !
That, were power granted to replace them | Not far had gone before he found
From out the pensive shadows where they lie)
In the first warmth of their original sunshine,
Loth should I be to use it: passing sweet Are the domains of tender memory!
A BARKING sound the shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks :
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.
The dog is not of mountain breed ;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?
It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps, till June, December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn* below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land;
From trace of human foot or hand.
There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere;
Thither the rainbow comes-the cloud-
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
Not free from boding thoughts, a while The shepherd stood: then makes his way Towards the dog, o'er rocks and stones, As quickly as he may ;
A human skeleton on the ground; The appalled discoverer with a sigh Looks round, to learn the history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the shepherd's mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recalled the name,
And who he was, and whence he came ; Remembered, too, the very day
On which the traveller passed this way.
But hear a wonder, for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry, [space
This dog had been through three months'
A dweller in that savage place.
Yes, proof was plain that since the day
When this ill-fated traveller died,
The dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his master's side:
How nourished here through such long time
He knows who gave that love sublime;
And gave that strength of feeling great
Above all human estimate.
ON SEEING THE FOUNDATION PREPARING FOR THE ERECTION OF CHAPEL,
BLEST is this isle-our native land;
Where battlement and moated gate
Are objects only for the hand
Of hoary time to decorate:
Where shady hamlet, town that breathes
Its busy smoke in social wreaths,
No rampart's stern defence require,
Nought but the heaven-directed spire,
And steeple tower (with pealing bells
Far heard)-our only citadels.
O lady! from a noble line
Of chieftains sprung, who stoutly bore
* A tarn is a small mere or lake, mostly high The spear, yet gave to works divine up in the mountains,
A bounteous help in days of yore,
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