When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And blest are they who in the main
This faith, even now, do entertain:
Live in the spirit of this creed;
Yet find that other strength, according to their need.
I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust;
Full oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd
The task imposed, from day to day;
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.
Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy control;
But in the quietness of thought;
Me this uncharter'd freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose which ever is the same.
Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face;
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
To humbler functions, awful power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh! let my weakness have an end?
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
ind, in the light of truth, thy bondman let me live i
NUNS fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground:
Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be}
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find short solace there, as I have found.
UPON THE SIGHT OF A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE.
PRAISED be the art whose subtle power could stay
Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape;
Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape,
Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day;
Which stopp'd that band of travellers on their way
Ere they were lost within the shady wood;
And show'd the bark upon the glassy flood
For ever anchor'd in her sheltering bay.
Soul-soothing art! which morning, noontide, ever
Do serve with all their changeful pageantry!
Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime,
Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given
To one brief moment, caught from fleeting time,
The appropriate calm of blest eternity.
THE fairest, brightest hues of ether fade;
The sweetest notes must terminate and die;
O friend! thy flute has breathed a harmony
Softly resounded through this rocky glade;
Such strains of rapture as* the genius play'd
In his still haunt on Bagdad's summit high;
He who stood visible to Mirza's eye,
Never before to human sight betray'd.
Lo, in the vale, the mists of evening spread!
The visionary arches are not there,
Nor the green islands, nor the shining seas;
Yet sacred is to me this mountain's head,
From which I have been lifted on the breeze
Of harmony, above all earthly care.
Bee the "Vision of Mirza" in the Spectator
WEAK is the will of man, his judgment blind;
Remembrance persecutes, and hope betrays;
Heavy is woe; and joy, for human kind,
A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!"
Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days
Who wants the glorious faculty assign'd
To elevate the more than reasoning mind,
And colour life's dark cloud with orient rays.
Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined:
'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.
HAIL Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour!
Not dull art thou as undiscerning Night;
But studious only to remove from sight
Day's mutable distinctions. Ancient power!
Thus did the waters gleam, the mountains lower
To the rude Briton, when, in wolf-skin vest
Here roving wild, he laid him down to rest
On the bare rock, or through a leafy bower
Look'd ere his eyes were closed. By him was seen
The selfsame vision which we now behold,
At thy meek bidding, shadowy power, brought forth;
These mighty barriers, and the gulf between;
The floods, the stars; a spectacle as old
As the beginning of the heavens and earth!
THE shepherd, looking eastward, softly said,
"Bright is thy veil, O Moon, as thou art bright
Forthwith, that little cloud, in ether spread,
And penetrated all with tender light,
She cast away, and show'd her fulgent head
Uncover'd; dazzling the beholder's sight
As if to vindicate her beauty's right,
Her beauty thoughtlessly disparagèd.
Meanwhile that veil, removed or thrown aside,
Went, floating from her, dark'ning as it went;
And a huge mass, to bury or to hide,
Approach'd this glory of the firmament;
Who meekly yields, and is obscured; content
With one calm triumph of a modest pride.
How sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks
The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood!
An old place, full of many a lovely brood,
Tall trees, green arbours, and ground flowers in flocks;
And wild rose tiptoe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like to a bonny lass, who plays her pranks
At wakes and fairs with wandering mountebanks,-When she stands cresting the clown's head, and mocks The crowd beneath her. Verily I think,
Such place to me is sometimes like a dream
Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam
Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,
And leap at once from the delicious stream.
WHERE lies the land to which yon ship must go?
Festively she puts forth in trim array;
As vigorous as a lark at break of day:
Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow?
What boots the inquiry? Neither friend ror foe
She cares for; let her travel where she may,
She finds familiar names, a beaten way
Ever before her, and a wind to blow.
Yet still I ask, what haven is her mark?
And, almost as it was when ships were rare,
(From time to time, like pilgrims, here and there
Crossing the waters) doubt, and something dark,
Of the old sea some reverential fear,
Is with me at thy farewell, joyous bark!
EVEN as a dragon's eye that feels the stress
Of a bedimming sleep, or as a lamp
Sullenly glaring through sepulchral damp,
So burns yon taper 'mid its black recess
Of mountains, silent, dreary, motionless:
The lake below reflects it not; the sky,
Muffled in clouds, affords no company,
To mitigate and cheer its loneliness.
Yet round the body of that joyless thing,
Which sends so far its melancholy light,
Perhaps are seated in domestic ring
A gay society with faces bright,
Conversing, reading, laughing; or they sing,
While hearts and voices in the song unite.
MARK the concentred hazels that inclose
Yon old grey stone, protected from the ray
Of noontide suns: and even the beams that play
And glance, while wantonly the rough wind blows,
Are seldom free to touch the moss that grows
Upon that roof-amid embowering gloom,
The very image framing of a tomb,
In which some ancient chieftain finds repose
Among the lonely mountains. Live, ye trees!
And thou, grey stone, the pensive likeness keep
Of a dark chamber where the mighty sleep:
For more than fancy to the influence bends
When solitary Nature condescends
To mimic Time's forlorn humanities.
COMPOSED AFTER A JOURNEY ACROSS THE HAMILTON HILLS, YORKSHIRZ
DARK, and more dark, the shades of evening fell;
The wish'd-for point was reach'd—but late the hour;
And little could we see of all that power
Of prospect, whereof many thousands tell.
The western sky did recompense us well
With Grecian temple, minaret, and bower;
And, in one part, a minster with its tower
Substantially express'd-a place for bell
Or clock to toll from! Many a glorious pile
Did we behold, fair sights that might repay
All disappointment! and, as such, the eye
Delighted in them: but we felt, the while,
We should forget them: they are of the sky,
And from our earthly memory fade away.
And from our earthly memory fade away."
THESE words were utter'd in a pensive mood,
Mine eyes yet lingering on that solemn sight;
A contrast and reproach to gross delight,
And life's unspiritual pleasures daily woo'd!
But now upon this thought I cannot brood;
It is unstable, and deserts me quite :
Nor will I praise a cloud, however bright,
Disparaging man's gifts, and proper food.
The grove, the sky-built temple, and the dome,
Though clad in colours beautiful and pure,
Find in the heart of man no natural home:
The immortal mind craves objects that endure:
These cleave to it; from these it cannot roam,
Nor they from it: their fellowship is secure.
|