It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
O the one life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere-
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

And thus, my love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;

Full many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject lute!

And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps,
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of All?

But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O beloved woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallow'd dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said and holily dispraised
These shapings of the unregenerate mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
Who with his saving mercies healed me,
A sinful and most miserable Man,

Wilder'd and dark, and gave me to possess

Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honor'd Maid!

Was green and woody, and refresh'd the eye.
It was a spot which you might aptly call
The Valley of Seclusion! once I saw
(Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quietness)
A wealthy son of commerce saunter by,
Bristowa's citizen: methought, it calm'd
His thirst of idle gold, and made him muse
With wiser feelings; for he paused, and look'd
With a pleased sadness, and gazed all around,
Then eyed our cottage, and gazed round again,
And sigh'd, and said, it was a blessed place.
And we were bless'd. Oft with patient ear
Long-listening to the viewless sky-lark's note
(Viewless or haply for a moment seen
Gleaming on sunny wings), in whisper'd tones
I've said to my beloved, "Such, sweet girl!
The inobtrusive song of Happiness,
Unearthly minstrelsy! then only heard
When the soul seeks to hear; when all is hush'd,
And the Heart listens!"

But the time, when first
From that low dell, steep up the stony Mount
I climb'd with perilous toil, and reach'd the top,
Oh! what a goodly scene! Here the bleak Mount,
The bare bleak Mountain speckled thin with sheep
Gray clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields;
And River, now with bushy rocks o'erbrow'd,
Now winding bright and full, with naked banks;
And Seats, and Lawns, the Abbey and the Wood,
And Cots, and Hamlets, and faint City-spire;
The Channel there, the Islands and white Sails,
Dim Coasts, and cloud-like Hills, and shoreless
Ocean-

It seem'd like Omnipresence! God, methought,
Had built him there a Temple: the whole World
Seem'd imaged in its vast circumference,
No wish profaned my overwhelmed heart.
Blest hour! It was a luxury,-to be!

Ah! quiet dell; dear cot, and Mount sublime!
I was constrain'd to quit you. Was it right,
While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd and bled,
That I should dream away the intrusted hours
On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use?

Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye
Drops on the cheek of One he lifts from Earth:
And He that works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half: he chills me while he aids,
My Benefactor, not my Brother Man!
Yet even this, this cold beneficence,

Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st
The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe!
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,

REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A PLACE Nursing in some delicious solitude

OF RETIREMENT.

Sermoni propriora.-Hor.

Low was our pretty Cot: our tallest rose
Peep'd at the chamber-window. We could hear,
At silent noon, and eve, and early morn,
The Sea's faint murmur. In the open air
Our myrtles blossom'd; and across the Porch
Thick jasmins twined: the little landscape round

Their slothful loves and dainty Sympathies!

I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,
Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of Science, Freedom, and the Truth in Christ.

Yet oft, when after honorable toil

Rests the tired mind, and waking loves to dream,
My spirit shall revisit thee, dear Cot!
Thy jasmin and thy window-peeping rose,
And myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air.
And I shall sigh fond wishes-sweet Abode!

In the June of 1797, some long-expected Friends paid a visit to the Author's Cottage; and on the morning of their ar-Through the late twilight: and though now the Bat rival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One Evening. when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the Garden Bower.

Now, my Friends emerge WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION OF WRITING

1 he Asplenium Scolopendrium, called in some countries † Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleathe Adder's Tongue, in others the Hart's Tongue; but With-sure to observe that Bartram had observed the same circumering gives the Adder's Tongue as the trivial name of the stance of the Savanna Crane. "When these Birds move Ophioglossum only. their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate and

Hight Castalie: and (sureties of thy faith)
That Pity and Simplicity stood by, ・

And promised for thee, that thou shouldst renounce
The world's low cares and lying vanities,
Stedfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse,
And wash'd and sanctified to Poesy.

Yes-thou wert plunged, but with forgetful hand
Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior Son :

And with those recreant unbaptized heels

Thou 'rt flying from thy bounden ministeries

So sore it seems and burthensome a task

Of tides obedient to external force,
And currents self-determined, as might seem,
Or by some inner Power; of moments awful,
Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
When Power stream'd from thee, and thy soul
received

The light reflected, as a light bestow'd-
Of Fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
Industrious in its joy, in Vales and Glens
Native or outland, Lakes and famous Hills!

To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed: Or on the lonely High-road, when the Stars
For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed Boy,
And I have arrows mystically dipp'd,

Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead?
And shall he die unwept, and sink to Earth
"Without the meed of one melodious tear?"
Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved Bard,
Who to the "Illustrioust of his native land
So properly did look for patronage."
Ghost of Maecenas! hide thy blushing face!
They snatch'd him from the Sickle and the Plow-
To gauge Ale-Firkins.

Oh! for shame return!
On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian Mount,
There stands a lone and melancholy tree,
Whose aged branches in the midnight blast
Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,
Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled,
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's tomb.
Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,
Pick the rank henbane and the dusky flowers
Of night-shade, or its red and tempting fruit.
These with stopp'd nostril and glove-guarded hand
Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine
The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility.

TO A GENTLEMAN.

1796.

Were rising; or by secret Mountain-streams,
The Guides and the Companions of thy way'

Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
Distending wide, and Man beloved as Man,
Where France in all her towns lay vibrating
Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst
Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud
Is visible, or shadow on the Main.

For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,
Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
When from the general heart of human-kind
Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!

-Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down
So summon'd homeward, thenceforth calm and sure
From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute Self,
With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
Far on-herself a glory to behold,
The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Action and Joy!—An orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts,
To their own music chanted!

O great Bard'
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
With stedfast eye I view'd thee in the choir
Of ever-enduring men. The truly Great
Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,

COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION Are permanent, and Time is not with them,

OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL

MIND.

FRIEND of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good!
Into my heart have I received that lay
More than historic, that prophetic lay,
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind,
By vital breathings secret as the soul
Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words!—

Theme hard as high!
Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears
The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth),

regular; and even when at a considerable distance or high above us, we plainly hear the quill feathers; their shafts and webs upon one another creak as the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea."

* Vide Pind. Olymp. iii. 1. 156.

↑ Verbatim from Burns's dedication of his Poems to the Noility and Gentry of the Caledonian Hunt.

Save as it worketh for them, they in it.
Nor less a sacred roil, than those of old,
And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame
Among the archives of mankind, thy work
Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,
Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes'
Ah! as I listen'd with a heart forlorn,
The pulses of my being beat anew:
And even as life returns upon the drown'd,
Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains-
Keen Pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outery in the heart;
And Fears self-will'd, that shunn'd the eye of Hop
And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear
Sense of past Youth, and Manhood come in vain
And Genius given, and knowledge won in vain
And all which I had cull'd in wood-walks wild
And all which patient toil had rear'd, and all,
Commune with thee had open'd out-but flowers
Strew'd on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

That way no more! and ill beseems it me
Who came a welcomer in herald's guise.

Singing of Glory, and Futurity,

To wander back on such unhealthful road,
Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill
Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths
Strew'd before thy advancing!

Nor do thou,
Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour
Of my communion with thy nobler mind
By Pity or Grief, already felt too long!
Nor let my words import more blame than needs.
The tumult rose and ceased: for Peace is nigh
Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart.
Amid the howl of more than wintry storms,
The Halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours
Already on the wing.

Eve following eve,

Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hail'd
And more desired, more precious for thy song,
In silence listening, like a devout child,
My soul lay passive, by the various strain
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,
With momentary Stars of my own birth,
Fair constellated Foam,* still darting off
Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,
Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the Moon.

And when-O Friend! my comforter and guide!|
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength!
Thy long sustained song finally closed,
And thy deep voice had ceased-yet thou thyself
Wert still before my eyes, and round us both
That happy vision of beloved faces-
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close
I sate, my being blended in one thought
Thought was it? or Aspiration? or Resolve?)
Absorb'd, yet hanging still upon the sound-
And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.

THE NIGHTINGALE:

A CONVERSATION POEM;
WRITTEN IN APRIL, 1798.

No cloud, no relic of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring: flows silently,

O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,

Most musical, most melancholy" bird!

A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wandering man, whose heart was
pierced

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love

(And so, poor Wretch! filled all things with himself
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrow), he and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain.
And many a poet echoes the conceit;
Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
When he had better far have stretch'd his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
By Sun or Moon-light, to the influxes
Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And of his frame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in Nature's immortality,
A venerable thing! and so his song
Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
Be loved like Nature! But 't will not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical,
Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still,
Full of meek sympathy, must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

My friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance! "T is the merry Nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music!

And I know a grove
Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many Nightingales; and far and near,
In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
They answer and provoke each other's song,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all-
Stirring the air with such a harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,
Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,
You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright
and full,

Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.

"A beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals † This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superio coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars to that of mere description. It is spoken in the character of the of flame danced and sparkled and went out in it: and every melancholy man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The now and then light detachments of this white cloud-like foam author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small con-of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than stellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a Tartar which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that troop over a wilderness."-The Friend, p. 220. of having ridiculed his Bible.