TO A SKY-LARK.

Up with me! up with me into the clouds !
For thy song, Lark, is strong;

Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,

With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find

That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary,
And to-day my heart is weary ;

Had I now the wings of a Faery,

Up to thee would I fly.

There is madness about thee, and joy divine

In that song of thine;

Lift me, guide me, high and high,

To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning,

Thou art laughing and scorning;

Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest,

And, though little troubled with sloth,
Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth

To be such a traveller as I.

Happy, happy Liver,

With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver,

Joy and jollity be with us both!

Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven,
Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind;
But hearing thee, or others of thy kind,

As full of gladness and as free of heaven,

I, with my fate contented, will plod on,

And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done.

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FIDELITY.

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

1805.

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IO

1 Tarn is a small Mere, or Lake, mostly high up in the mountains.

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 holds it fast.
Not free from boding thoughts, a while
The Shepherd stood; then makes his way
O'er rocks and stones, following the Dog
As quickly as he may;

Nor far had gone before he found
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!

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At length upon the Shepherd's mind

It breaks, and all is clear :

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He instantly recalled the name,

And who he was, and whence he came;

This Dog, had been through three months' space

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;

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And gave that strength of feeling, great

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Above all human estimate!

1805.

ELEGIAC STANZAS.

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE, IN A STORM,
PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT.

I WAS thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

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ΙΟ

Ah! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand,

To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,

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The consecration, and the Poet's dream ;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!

Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;

On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine

Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;

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Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine

The very sweetest had to thee been given.

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A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,

Such Picture would I at that time have made :
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.

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So once it would have been, - 't is so no more;

I have submitted to a new control :

A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.

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Not for a moment could I now behold

A smiling sea, and be what I have been :

The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;

This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the

Friend,

If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,

This work of thine I blame not, but commend ;

This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

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