Spare the fine tremors of her feeling frame! At each response the sacred rite requires, O'er her fair face what wild emotions play! Ah soon, thine own confest, ecstatic thought! TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY ****. Aн, why with tell-tale tongue reveal* For this presumption, soon or late, THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK, The goats wind slow their wonted way, And while the torrent thunders loud, IMITATION OF AN ITALIAN SONNET. Love, under friendship's vesture white, Laughs, his little limbs concealing; And oft in sport, and oft in spite, Like pity meets the dazzled sight, Smiles through his tears revealing. But now as rage the god appears! He frowns, and tempests shake his frame!Frowning, or smiling, or in tears, 'Tis love; and love is still the same. AN EPITAPH† ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST. TREAD lightly here; for here, 'tis said, TO THE GNAT. WHEN by the greenwood side, at summer eve, No guardian sylph, in golden panoply, Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear. The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, a welcome guest. Around my ivied porch shall spring The village church, among the trees, WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT, 1786. WHILE through the broken pane the tempest sighs, And my step falters on the faithless floor, Shades of departed joys around me rise, With many a face that smiles on me no more; With many a voice that thrills of transport gave, Now silent as the grass that tufts their grave! AN ITALIAN SONG. DEAR is my little native vale, The ring-dove builds and murmurs there; Close by my cot she tells her tale To every passing villager. The squirrel leaps from tree to tree, In orange groves and myrtle bowers, AN INSCRIPTION. SHEPHERD, or huntsman, or worn mariner, See an anecdote related by Pausanias, iii. 20. · That birds may come and drink upon his grave, Making it holy !* WRITTEN IN THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOT BLUE was the loch, the clouds were gone, Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees, The fairy isles fled far away; Night fell; and dark and darker grew All into midnight shadow sweep, Glad sign, and sure! for now we hail *A Turkish superstition. † A famous outlaw. Signifying, in the Erse language, an isthmus. § Loch Long. A phenomenon described by many navigators. O blest retreat, and sacred too! Sacred as when the bell of prayer And crosses deck'd thy summits blue. A FAREWELL. ONCE more, enchanting maid, adieu! Yet give me, give me, ere I go, -Say, when to kindle soft delight, O say-but no, it must not be. INSCRIPTION FOR A TEMPLE. DEDICATED TO THE GRACES. APPROACH With reverence. There are those within Whose dwelling-place is heaven. Daughters of Jove, From them flow all the decencies of life; TO THE BUTTERFLY. CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight, -Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept *At Woburn Abbey. WRITTEN IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. OCTOBER 10, 1806.* WHOE'ER thou art, approach, and, with a sigh, O say, of him now rests there but a name; What though with war the madding nations rung, When in retreat he laid his thunder by, For letter'd ease and calm philosophy, Blest were his hours within the silent grove, Where still his godlike spirit deigns to rove; Blest by the orphan's smile, the widow's prayer, For many a deed, long done in secret there. There shone his lamp on Homer's hallow'd page; There, listening, sate the hero and the sage; And they, by virtue and by blood allied, Whom most he loved, and in whose arms he died. Friend of all human kind! not here alone (The voice that speaks, was not to thee unknown) Wilt thou be miss'd. O'er every land and sea, Long, long shall England be revered in thee! And, when the storm is hush'd-in distant yearsFoes on thy grave shall meet, and mingle tears! *After the funeral of the Right Hon. Charles James Fox. + Venez voir le peu qui nous reste de tant de grandeur, etc.-Bossuet. Oraison funèbre de Louis de Bourbon. Et rien enfin ne manque dans tous ces honneurs, que celui à qui on les rend.-Ibid. § Alluding particularly to his speech on moving a new writ for the borough of Tavistock, March 16, 1802. See that admirable delineation of his character by Sir James Mackintosh, which first appeared in the Bombay Courier, January 17, 1807. JAMES GRAHAME. THE poem of The Sabbath will long endear the name of JAMES GRAHAME to all who love the due observance of Sunday, and are acquainted with the devout thoughts and poetic feeling which it inspires. Nor will he be remembered for this alone; his British Georgics and his Birds of Scotland, rank with those productions whose images and sentiments take silent possession of the mind, and abide there when more startling and obtrusive things are forgotten. There is a quiet natural ease about all his descriptions; a light and shade both of landscape and character in all his pictures, and a truth and beauty which prove that he copied from his own emotions, and painted with the aid of his own eyes, without looking, as Dryden said, through the spectacles of books. To his fervent piety as well as poetic spirit the public has borne testimony, by purchasing many copies of his works. The Birds of Scotland is a fine series of pictures, giving the form, the plumage, the haunts, and habits of each individual bird, with a graphic fidelity rivalling the labours of Wilson. His drama of Mary Stuart wants that passionate and happy vigour which the stage requires; some of his songs are natural and elegant; his Sabbath Walks, Biblical Pictures, and Rural Čalendar, are all alike remarkable for accuracy of description and an original turn of thought. He was born at Glasgow, 22d April, 1765; his father, who was a writer, educated him for the bar, but he showed an early leaning to the Muses, and such a love of truth and honour as hindered him from accepting briefs which were likely to lead him out of the paths of equity and justice. His Sabbathing and simple expression of concern for their sufwas written and published in secret, and he had the pleasure of finding the lady whom he had married among its warmest admirers; nor did her admiration lessen when she discovered the author. His health declined; he accepted the living of Sedgeware, near Durham, and performed his duties diligently and well till within a short time of his death, which took place 14th September, 1811. giving vent to the familiar sentiments of his bosom. We can trace here, in short, and with the same pleasing effect, that entire absence of art, effort, and affectation, which we have already noticed as the most remarkable distinction of his attempts in description. Almost all the other poets with whom we are acquainted, appear but too obviously to put their feelings and affections, as well as their fancies and phrases, into a sort of studied dress, before they venture to present them to the crowded assembly of the public: and though the style and fashion of this dress varies according to the taste and ability of the inventors, still it serves almost equally to hide their native proportions, and to prove that they were a little ashamed or afraid to exhibit them as they really were. Now, Mr. Grahame, we think, has got over this general nervousness and shyness about showing the natural and simple feelings with which the contemplation of human emotion should affect us; or rather, has been too seriously occupied, and too constantly engrossed with the feelings themselves, to think how the confession of them might be taken by the generality of his readers, to concern himself about the contempt of the fastidious, or the derision of the unfeeling. In his poetry, therefore, we meet neither with the Musidoras and Damons of Thomson, nor the gipsy-women and Ellen Orfords of Crabbe; and still less with the Matthew Schoolmasters, Alice Fells, or Martha Raes of Mr. Wordsworth;but we meet with the ordinary peasants of Scot. land in their ordinary situations, and with a touch The great charm of Mr. Grahame's poetry, (says a writer in the Edinburgh Review,) appears to us to consist in its moral character; in that natural expression of kindness and tenderness of heart, which gives such a peculiar air of paternal goodness and patriarchal simplicity to his writings; and that earnest and intimate sympathy with the objects of his compassion, which assures us at once that he is not making a theatrical display of sensibility, but merely ferings, and of generous indulgence for their faults. He is not ashamed of his kindness and condescen⚫ sion, on the one hand; nor is he ostentatious or vain of it, on the other; but gives expression in the most plain and unaffected manner to sentiments that are neither counterfeited nor disguised. We do not know any poetry, indeed, that lets us in so directly to the heart of the writer, and produces so full and pleasing a conviction that it is dictated by the genuine feelings which it aims at communicating to the reader. If there be less fire and eleva. tion than in the strains of some of his contemporaries, there is more truth and tenderness than is commonly found along with those qualities, and less getting up either of language or of sentiment than we recollect to have met with in any modern composition. 288 THE SABBATH. ARGUMENT. Murmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen; Description of a Sabbath morning in the country. The labourer at home. The town mechanic's morning walk; his meditation. The sound of bells. Crowd The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din proceeding to church. Interval before the service Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness. begins. Scottish service. English service. Scriptures Less fearful on this day, the limping hare read. The organ, with the voices of the people. The sound borne to the sick man's couch: his wish. The Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man, worship of God in the solitude of the woods. The Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free, shepherd boy among the hills. People seen on the Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large; heights returning from church. Contrast of the present And, as his stiff unwieldy bulk he rolls, times with those immediately preceding the Revolu- His iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning ray. tion. The persecution of the Covenanters: A Sabbath But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys. conventicle: Cameron: Renwick: Psalms. Night conventicles during storms. A funeral according to Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day. the rites of the church of England. A female charac- On other days the man of toil is doom'd ter. The suicide. Expostulation. The incurable of To eat his joyless bread, lonely; the ground an hospital. A prison scene. Debtors. Divine serBoth seat and board; screen'd from the winter's cold vice in the prison hall. Persons under sentence of death. The public guilt of inflicting capital punish-But on this day, imbosom'd in his home, And summer's heat, by neighbouring hedge or tree; ments on persons who have been left destitute of religious and moral instruction. Children proceeding to a Sunday-school. The father. The impress. Appeal on the indiscriminate severity of criminal law. Comparative mildness of the Jewish law. The year of jubilee. Description of the commencement of the jubilee. The sound of the trumpets through the land. The bondman and his family returning from their servitude to take possession of their inheritance. Emigrants to the wilds of America. Their Sabbath worship. The whole inhabitants of Highland districts who have emigrated together, still regret their country. Even the blind man regrets the objects with which he had been con versant. An emigrant's contrast between the tropical climates and Scotland. The boy who had been born on the voyage. Description of a person on a desert island. His Sabbath. His release. Missionary ship. The Pacific ocean. Defence of missionaries. Effects of the conversion of the primitive Christians. Transition to the slave trade. The Sabbath in a slave ship. Appeal to England on the subject of her encouragement to this horrible complication of crimes. Transition to war. Unfortunate issue of the late war-in Francein Switzerland. Apostrophe to TELL. The attempt to resist too late. The treacherous foes already in possession of the passes. Their devastating progress. Desolation. Address to Scotland. Happiness of seclusion from the world. Description of a Sabbath evening in Scotland. Psalmody. An aged man. Description of an industrious female reduced to poverty by old age and disease. Disinterested virtuous conduct to be found chiefly in the lower walks of life. Test of charity in the opulent. Recommendation to the rich to devote a portion of the Sabbath to the duty of visiting the sick. Invocation to health-to music. The Beguine nuns. Lazarus. The Resurrection. Dawnings of faith-its progress -consummation. He shares the frugal meal with those he loves; Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day. But now his steps a welcome sound recalls: These, mingled with the young, the gay, approach How still the morning of the hallow'd day! |