The fern was press'd beneath her hair,

She listen'd to the tale divine, .
The dark-green Adder's Tongue* was there;

And closer still the Babe she press'd; And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak,

And while she cried, the Babe is mine! The long lank leaf bow'd fluttering o'er her cheek. The milk rush'd faster to her breast:

Joy rose within her, like a summer's morn; Chat pallid cheek was flush'd : her eager look Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born Beam'd eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought, Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,

Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace, And her bent forehead work'd with troubled

Poor, simple, and of low estate!
thought.

That Strife should vanish, Battle cease,
Strange was the dream-

O why should this thy soul elate ?
Sweet Music's loudest note, the Poet's story,

Did'st thou ne'er love to hear of Fame and Glory?
TELL'S BIRTH-PLACE.

And is not War a youthful King,
IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

A stately Hero clad in mail ?
Mark this holy chapel well!

Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;
The Birth-place, this, of William Tell.

Him Earth's majestic monarchs hail Here, where stands God's altar droad,

Their Friend, their Play-mate! and his bold bright eye Stood his parents' marriage-bed.

Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh

up

If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom
A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

Swallow life's brief flash for aye, we fare THE Shepherds went their hasty way,

As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,

Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
And found the lowly stable-shed
Where the Virgin-Mother lay:

But are their whole of being! If the Breath

Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
And now they check'd their eager tread,

If even a soul like Milton's can know death,
For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung,

O Man! thou vessel, purposeless, unmeant, A Mother's song the Virgin-Mother sung.

Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !
They told her how a glorious light,

Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Streaming from a heavenly throng,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd yase. Around them shone, suspending night!

Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
While, sweeter than a Mother's song,

She form'd with restless hands unconsciously! Blest Angels heralded the Savior's birth,

Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! Glory to God on high! and peace on Earth.

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,

Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy Hopes, thy Fears, A botanical Nelstake. The plant which the poet bere de

The counter-weights !--Thy Laughter and thy Tears scribes is called the Hart's Tongue.

Mean but themselves, each fittest to create,

And to repay the other! Why rejoices

But soon did righteous Heaven her guilt pursue! Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good ? Where'er with wilder'd steps she wander'd pale,

Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Still Edmund's image rose to blast her view,
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Still Edmund's voice accused her in each gale.

Image of image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf,
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold! With keen regret, and conscious guilt's alarms,
Yet what and whence thy gain if thou withhold Amid the pomp of affluence she pined:

These costless shadows of thy shadowy self? Nor all that lured her faith from Edmund's arms Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!

Could lull the wakeful horror of her mind.
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none :
Thy being's being is contradiction.

Go, Traveller! tell the tale with sorrow fraught

Some tearful maid, perchance, or blooming youth
May hold it in remembrance; and be taught

That Riches cannot pay for Love or Truin.
THE VISIT OF THE GODS.

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER.

NEVER, believe me,

KUBLA KHAN;
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone :

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.
Scarce had I welcomed the Sorrow-beguiler,
Iacchus! but in came Boy Cupid the Smiler;

[The following fragment is here published at the request of a Lo! Phæbus the Glorious descends from his Throne! poet of great and deserved celebrity, and, as far as the Author's They advance, they float in, the Olympians all! own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, With Divinities fills my

than on the ground of any supposed poctic merits. Terrestrial Hall !

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-houge between Porlock and Linton,

on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In conHow shall I yield you

sequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been preDue entertainment,

scribed, from the effects of which be fell asleep in his chair at Celestial Quire ?

the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or

words of the same substance, in Purchas's “ Pilgrimage :". Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of up-" Here the Khan Kubla commanded a pulace to be built, and a buoyance

stately garden thereunto; and thus ten miles of fertile ground Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance, were inclosed with a wall.” The author continued for abou That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!

three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, Ha! we mount! on their pinions they wafi up my Soul! during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could

not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if

that indeed can be called composition in which all the images O give me the Nectar!

rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the O fill me the Bowl!

correspondent expressions, without any sensation, or conscious. Give him the Nectar!

ness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a

distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and Pour out for the Poet,

paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here Hebe! pour free!

preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above

an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small That Styx the detested no more he may view,

surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!

vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry!

yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and The Wine of the Immortals

images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the Forbids me to die!

surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas!
without the after restoration of the latter.

Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair

Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
ELEGY,

And each misshapes the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely darest lift up thine eyes-

The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
IMITATED FROM ONE OF AKENSIDE'S BLANK VERSE

The visions will return! And lo, he stays.
INSCRIPTIONS.

And soon the fragments dimn of lovely forins

Come trembling back, unite, and now once more NEAR the lone pile with ivy overspread,

The pool becomes a mirror. Fast by the rivulet's sleep-persuading sound,

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Autho Where "sleeps the moonlight" on yon verdant bed — has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been O humbly press.that consecrated ground! originally, as it were, given to him. Eapepov adıcv aow.

but the to-morrow is yet to come. For there does Edmund rest, the learned swain!

As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a

very different character, describing with equal fidelty the And there his spirit most delights to rove:

dream of pain and disease.--Note to the first Edition, 1916.) Young Edmund! famed for each harmonious strain, And the sore wounds of ill-requited love.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
Like some tall tree that spreads its branches wide, A stately pleasure-dome decree;

And loads the west-wind with its soft perfume, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
His manhood blossom'd: vill the faithless pride Through caverns measureless to man,
Of fair Matilda sank him to the tomb.

Down to a sunless sea.

Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Whore blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Infolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth-

ing,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles, meandering with a mazy motion,
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

But yester-night I pray'd aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorn'd, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still !
Desire with lothing strangely mix'd,
On wild or hateful objects fix’d.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know,
Whether I suffer'd, or I did :
For all seern'd guilt, remorse, or woe,
My own or others', still the same
Life-stifing fear, soul-stilling shame.

So two rights pass'd: the night's dismay
Sadden'd and stunnid the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seem'd to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child ;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest staind with sin •
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and lothe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His Nashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drank the milk of Paradise.

APPENDIX.

a

APOLOGETIC PREFACE

THE PAINS OF SLEEP.

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble Trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought express'd!
Only a sense of supplication,
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,

TO "FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER."

(See page 26) At the house of a gentleman, who by the principles

and corresponding virtues of a sincere Christian consecrates a cultivated genius and the favorable acci. dents of birth, opulence, and splendid connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in a dinner-party, with more men of celebrity in science or polite literature, than are commonly found collected round the same

table. In the course of conversation, one of the par. ty reminded an illustrious Poet, then present, of somo

verses which he had recited that morning, and which had appeared in a newspaper under the name of a War-Eclogue, in which Fire, Famine, and Slaughter were introduced as the speakers. The gentleman so addressed replied, that he was rather surprised that none of us should have noticed or heard of the poem, and strengthens it. But the more intense and insane as it had been, at the time, a good deal talked of in the passion is, the fewer and the more fixed are the Scotland. It may be easily supposed, that my feel-correspondent forms and notions. A rooled haired ings were at this moment not of the most comforta- an inveterate thirst of revenge, is a sort of madness, ble kind. Of all present, one only knew or suspect- and still eddies round its favorite object, and exered me to be the author : a man who would have cises as it were a perpetual tautology of mind in established himself in the first rank of England's thoughts and words, which admit of no adequate living Poets, if the Genius of our country had not substitutes. Like a fish in a globe of glass, it moves decreed that he should rather be the first in the first restlessly round and round the scanty circunference, rank of its Philosophers and scientific Benefactors. which it cannot leave without losing its vital ele. It appeared the general wish to hear the lines. As my ment. friend chose to remain silent, I chose to follow his There is a second character of such imaginary example, and Mr. ***** recited the Poem. This he representations as spring from a real and earnest decould do with the better grace, being known to have sire of evil to another, which we often see in real ever been not only a firm and active Anti-Jacobin and life, and might even anticipate from the nature of Anti-Gallican, but likewise a zealous admirer of Mr. the mind. The images, I mean, that a vindictive Pirl, both as a good man and a great Statesman. As man places before his imagination, will most often be a Poet exclusively, he had been amused with the taken from the realities of life: they will be images Eclogue; as a Poet, he recited it; and in a spirit, of pain and suffering which he has himself seen inwhich made it evident, that he would have read and flicted on other men, and which he can fancy hinrepeated it with the same pleasure, had his own self as inflicting on the object of his hatred. I will name been attached to the imaginary object or agent. suppose that we had heard at different times two

After the recitation, our amiable host observed, common sailors, each speaking of some one who had that in his opinion Mr. ***** had overrated the merits wronged or offended him: that the first with appaof the poetry; but had they been tenfold greater, rent violence had devoted every part of his adversathey could not have compensated for that malignity ry's body and soul to all the horrid phantoms and of heart, which could alone have prompted senti- fantastic places that ever Quevedo dreamt of, and ments so atrocious. I perceived that my illustrious this in a rapid flow of those outré and wildly-comfriend became greatly distressed on my account; but bined execrations, which 100 often with our lower fortunately I was able to preserve fortitude and pres- classes serve for escape-valves to carry off the excess ence of mind enough to take up the subject without of their passions, as so much superfluous steam that exciting even a suspicion how nearly and painfully would endanger the vessel if it were retained. The it interested me.

other, on the contrary, with that sort of calmness of What follows, is substantially the same as I then tone which is to the ear what the paleness of anger replied, but dilated and in language less colloquial. is to the eye, shall simply say, “If I chance to be It was not my intention, I said, to justify the publi- made boatswain, as I hope I soon shall, and can but cation, whatever its author's feelings might have once get that fellow under my hand (and I shall be been at the time of composing it. That they are upon the watch for him), I'll tickle his pretty skin! calculated to call forth so severe a reprobation from I wont hurt him! oh no! I'll only cut the a good man, is not the worst feature of such poems. the liver!" I dare appeal to all present, which of the Their moral deformity is aggravated in proportion to two they would regard as the least deceptive sympthe pleasure which ihey are capable of affording tom of deliberate malignity? nay, whether it would to vindictive, turbulent, and unprincipled readers. surprise them to see the first fellow, an hour or two Could it be supposed, though for a moment, that the afterward, cordially shaking hands with the yery author seriously wished what he had thus wildly im- man, the fractional parts of whose body and sout he agined, even the attempt to palliate an inhumanity so had been so charitably disposing of; or even perhaps monstrous would be an insult to the hearers. But it risking his life for him. What language Shakspeare seemed to me worthy of consideration, whether the considered characteristic of malignant disposition, we mood of mind, and the general state of sensations, see in the speech of the good-natured Gratiano, who in which a Poet produces such vivid and fantastic spoke “an infinite deal of nothing more than any images, is likely to coexist, or is even compatible, man in all Venice ;" with that gloomy and deliberate ferocity which a serious wish to realize them would presuppose. It

-Too wild, too rude and bold of voice! had been often observed, and all my experience the skipping spirit, whose thoughts and words recip tended to confirm the observation, that prospects of rocally ran away with each other; pain and evil to others, and, in general, all deep feelings of revenge, are commonly expressed in a few

O be thou damn'd, inexorable dog'

And for thy life let justice be accused! words, ironically tame, and mild. The mind under so direful and fiend-like an influence seems to take a and the wild fancies that follow, contrasted with Shy. morbid pleasure in contrasting the intensity of its lock's tranquil “ I stand here for law." wishes and feelings, with the slightness or levity of Or, to take a case more analogous to the present the expressions by which they are hinted; and in- subject, should we hold it either fair or charitable to deed feelings so intense and solitary, if they were believe it to have been Dante's serious wish, that all not precluded (as in almost all cases they would be) the persons mentioned by him, (many recently deby a constitutional activity of fancy and association, parted, and some even alive at the time), should ac and by the specific joyousness combined with it, tually suffer the fantastic and horrible punishments would assuredly themselves preclude such activity. to which he has sentenced them in his fell and Passion, in its own quality, is the antagonist of ac- Purgatory? Or what shall we say of the passages tion ; though in an ordinary and natural degree the in which Bishop Jeremy Taylor anticipates the slute former alternates with the latter, and thereby revives of those who, vicious themselves, have been the

to

cause of vice and misery to their fellow-creatures ?

l'in wae to think upon yon den, Could we endure for a moment to think that a spirit,

Ev'n for your sake! like Bishop Taylor's, burning with Christian love; I need not say that these thoughts, which are here that a mari constitutionally overflowing with plea- dilated, were in such a company only rapidly sugsurable kindliness ; who scarcely even in a casual gested. Our kind host smiled, and with a courteous illustration introduces the image of woman, child, or compliment observed, that the defence was too good bird, but he embalms the thought with so rich a for the cause. My voice faltered a little, for I was tenderness, as makes the very words seem beauties somewhat agitated; though not so much on my own and fragments of poetry from a Euripides or Simo- account as for the uneasiness that so kind and nides ;-can we endure to think, that a man 80 na- friendly a man would feel from the thought that he tured and so disciplined, did at the time of composing had been the occasion of distressing me. At length this horrible picture, attach a sober feeling of reality I brought out these words : “ I must now consess, to the phrases ? or that he would have described in Sir! that I am author of that Poem. It was written the same tone of justification, in the same luxuriant some years ago. I do not attempt to justify my past flow of phrases, the tortures about to be inflicted on self, young as I then was; but as little as I would a living individual by a verdict of the Star-Chamber? now write a similar poem, so far was I even then or the still more atrocious sentences executed on the from imagining, that the lines would be taken as Scotch anti-prelatists and schismatics, at the com- more or less than a sport of fancy. At all events, if mand, and in some instances under the very eye of I know my own heart, there was never a moment the Duke of Lauderdale, and of that wretched bigot in my existence in which I should have been more who afterwards dishonored and forfeited the throne ready, had Mr. Pitt's person heen in hazard, to interof Great Britain ? Or do we not rather feel and un- pose my own body, and defend his life at the risk of derstand, that these violent words were mere bubbles, my own.” flashes and electrical apparitions, from the magic I have prefaced the Poem with this anecdote, becaldron of a fervid and ebullient fancy, constantly cause to have printed it without any remark might fuelled by an unexampled opulence of language ? well have been understood as implying an uncondi.

Were I now to have read by myself for the first tional approbation on my part, and this after many time the Poem in question, my conclusion, I fully years' consideration. But if it be asked why I rebelieve, would be, that the writer must have been published it at all? I answer, that the Poem had some man of warm feelings and active fancy; that been attributed at different times to different other he had painted to himself the circumstances that ac- persons; and what I had dared beget, I thought it company war in so many vivid and yet fantastic neither manly nor honorable not io dare father. forms, as proved that neither the images nor the From the same motives I should have publisheel feelings were the result of observation, or in any perfect copies of two Poems, the one entitled The way derived from realities. I should judge, that they Devil's Thoughts, and the other The Tuo Round were the product of his own seething imagination, Spaces on the Tomb-Stone, but that the three first and therefore impregnated with that pleasurable ex- stanzas of the former, which were worth all the rest ultation which is experienced in all energetic exer- of the poem, and the best stanza of the remainder, tion of intellectual power ; that in the same mood were written by a friend of deserved celebrity; and he had generalized the causes of the war, and then because there are passages in both, which might personified the abstract, and christened it by the have given offence to the religious feelings of certain name which he had been accustomed to hear most readers. I myself indeed see no reason why vulgar oiten associated with its management and measures. superstitions, and absurd conceptions that deform the I should guess that the minister was in the author's pure faith of a Christian, should possess a greater mind at the moment of composition, as completely immunity from ridicule than stories of witches, or aralis, ávatosapkos, as Anacreon's grasshopper, and the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are that he had as little notion of a real person of flesh those who deem it profaneness and irreverence to and blood,

call an ape an ape, if it but wear a monk's cowl on Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,

its head; and I would rather reason with this weak.

ness than offend it. as Milton had in the grim and terrible phantoms (half The passage from Jeremy Taylor to which I reperson, half allegory) which he has placed at the ferred, is found in his second Sermon on Christ's gates of Hell. I concluded by observing, that the Advent to Judgment; which is likewise the second Poem was not calculated to excite passion in any in his year's course of sermons. Among many re mind, or to make any impression except on poetic markable passages of the same character in those readers; and that from the culpable levity, betrayed discourses, I have selected this as the most so.“ But at the close of the Eclogue by the grotesque union when this Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear, of epigrammatic wit with allegoric personification, then Justice shall strike and Mercy shall not hold in the allusion to the most fearful of įhoughts, 1 her hands; she shall strike sore strokes, and Pity should conjecture that the “ rantin' Bardie," instead shall not break the blow As there are treasures of of really believing, much less wishing, the fate spo- good things, so hath God a treasure of wrath and ken of in the last line, in application to any human fury, and scourges and scorpions; and then shall be individual, would shrink from passing the verdict produced the shame of Lust and the malice of Envy. even on the Devil himself, and exclaim with poor and the groans of the oppressed and the persecutions Burns,

of the saints, and the cares of Covetousness and the But fare yo weel, auld Nickie-ben!

troubles of Ambition, and the indolence of trailors Oh! wad ye tak a thought an' men'!

and the violences of rebels, and the rage of anger and Ye aiblins might-1 dinna ken

the uneasiness of impatience, and the restlessness of

Still hae a stake