XVI.

WHERE lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's creed,
A pitiable doom; for respite brief

A care more anxious, or a heavier grief?
Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed
God's bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed

Must Man, with labor born, awake to sorrow

When Flowers rejoice and Larks with rival speed
Spring from their nests to bid the Sun good morrow?
They mount for rapture, as their songs proclaim
Warbled in hearing both of earth and sky;
But o'er the contrast wherefore heave a sigh?
Like those aspirants let us soar,

our aim,

Through life's worst trials, whether shocks or snares, A happier, brighter, purer heaven than theirs.

1846.

POEMS,

COMPOSED OR SUGGESTED DURING A TOUR, IN THE SUMMER OF 1833.

[HAVING been prevented by the lateness of the season, in 1831, from visiting Staffa and Iona, the author made these the principal objects of a short tour in the summer of 1833, of which the following series of Poems is a memorial. The course pursued was down the Cumberland river Derwent, and to Whitehaven; thence (by the Isle of Man, where a few days were passed) up the Frith of Clyde to Greenock, then to Oban, Staffa, Iona; and back towards England, by Loch Awe, Inverary, Loch Goil-head, Greenock, and through parts of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, and Dumfriesshire to Carlisle, and thence up the river Eden, and homewards by Ullswater.]

I.

ADIEU, Rydalian Laurels ! that have grown
And spread as if ye knew that days might come
When ye would shelter in a happy home,
On this fair Mount, a Poet of your own,
One who ne'er ventured for a Delphic crown
To sue the God; but, haunting your green shade
All seasons through, is humbly pleased to braid
Ground-flowers, beneath your guardianship, self-

sown.

Farewell! no Minstrels now with harp new-strung For summer wandering quiet their household bowers;

Yet not for this wants Poesy a tongue

To cheer the Itinerant on whom she pours
Her spirit, while he crosses lonely moors
Or, musing, sits forsaken halls among.

II.

WHY should the Enthusiast, journeying through this Isle,

Repine as if his hour were come too late?
Not unprotected in her mouldering state,
Antiquity salutes him with a smile,

'Mid fruitful fields that ring with jocund toil,
And pleasure-grounds where Taste, refined Co-

mate

Of Truth and Beauty, strives to imitate,
Far as she may, primeval Nature's style.
Fair land! by Time's parental love made free,
By Social Order's watchful arms embraced,
With unexampled union meet in thee,
For eye and mind, the present and the past;
With golden prospect for futurity,

If that be reverenced which ought to last.

III.

THEY called thee MERRY ENGLAND, in old time;

A happy people won for thee that name,

With envy heard in many a distant clime;

And, spite of change, for me thou keep'st the same Endearing title, a responsive chime

To the heart's fond belief; though some there are Whose sterner judgments deem that word a snare For inattentive Fancy, like the lime

Which foolish birds are caught with. Can, I ask, This face of rural beauty be a mask

For discontent, and poverty, and crime;

These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will? Forbid it, Heaven! and MERRY ENGLAND still

Shall be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme!

IV.

TO THE RIVER GRETA, NEAR KESWICK.

GRETA, what fearful listening! when huge stones
Rumble along thy bed, block after block:
Or, whirling with reiterated shock,

Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans:
But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans
Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert named
The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed,
And the habitual murmur that atones
For thy worst rage, forgotten. Oft as Spring
Decks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones,
Seats of glad instinct and love's carolling,
The concert, for the happy, then may vie
With liveliest peals of birthday harmony;
To a grieved heart, the notes are benisons.

V.

TO THE RIVER DERWENT.

AMONG the mountains were we nursed, loved
Stream!

Thou near the eagle's nest, - within brief sail,
I, of his bold wing floating on the gale,

Where thy deep voice could lull me! Faint the beam

Of human life when first allowed to gleam
On mortal notice. - Glory of the vale,

Such thy meek outset, with a crown, though frail,
Kept in perpetual verdure by the steam

Of thy soft breath! — Less vivid wreath entwined
Nemæan victor's brow; less bright was worn
Meed of some Roman chief, in triumph borne
With captives chained, and shedding from his car
The sunset splendors of a finished war
Upon the proud enslavers of mankind!

VI.

IN SIGHT OF THE TOWN OF COCKERMOUTH.

(Where the Author was born, and his Father's remains are laid.)

A POINT of life between my Parents' dust
And yours, my buried Little-ones! am I;
And to those graves looking habitually,
In kindred quiet I repose my trust.
Death to the innocent is more than just,