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ON THE CHRISTENING OF A FRIEND'S

CHILD.

THIS day among the faithful placed,

And fed with fontal manna;

O with maternal title graced

Dear Anna's dearest Anna!

While others wish thee wise and fair,

A maid of spotless fame,

I'll breathe this more compendious prayerMayst thou deserve thy name!

Thy mother's name, a potent spell,

That bids the virtues hie From mystic grove and living cell Confest to fancy's eye;

Meek quietness, without offence;

Content, in homespun kirtle; True love; and true love's innocence, White blossom of the myrtle!

Associates of thy name, sweet child!
These virtues mayst thou win;
With face as eloquently mild
To say, they lodge within.

So when, her tale of days all flown,

Thy mother shall be miss'd here; When Heaven at length shall claim its own, And angels snatch their sister;

Some hoary-headed friend, perchance,

May gaze with stifled breath, And oft, in momentary trance, Forget the waste of death.

E'en thus a lovely rose I view'd

In summer-swelling pride;

Nor mark'd the bud, that green and rude Peep'd at the rose's side,

It chanced, I pass'd again that way

In autumn's latest hour,

And wondering saw the selfsame spray Rich with the selfsame flower,

Ah fond deceit! the rude green bud
Alike in shape, place, name,

Had bloom'd, where bloom'd its parent stud,
Another and the same!

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT.

Its balmy lips the infant blest Relaxing from its mother's breast, How sweet it heaves the happy sigh Of innocent satiety !

And such my infant's latest sigh! O tell, rude stone! the passer by, That here the pretty babe doth lie, Death sang to sleep with lullaby. 70

MELANCHOLY.

A FRAGMENT.

STRETCH'D on a moulder'd abbey's broadest wall,
Where running ivies propp'd the ruins steep-
Her folded arms wrapping her tatter'd pall,
Had melancholy mused herself to sleep.
The fern was press'd beneath her hair,

The dark green adder's tongue* was there;
And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak,
The long lank leaf bow'd fluttering o'er her cheek.

That pallid cheek was flush'd: her eager look
Beam'd eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought,
Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,

And her bent forehead work'd with troubled thought.

Strange was the dream

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

THE shepherds went their hasty way,
And found the lowly stable-shed
Where the virgin mother lay:

And now they check'd their eager tread,
For to the babe, that at her bosom clung,
A mother's song the virgin-mother sung.

They told her how a glorious light,
Streaming from a heavenly throng,
Around them shone, suspending night!

While, sweeter than a mother's song,
Blest angels heralded the Saviour's birth,
Glory to God on high! and peace on earth.

She listen'd to the tale divine,

And closer still the babe she press'd; And while she cried, the babe is mine! The milk rush'd faster to her breast: Joy rose within her, like a summer morn; Peace, peace on earth! the Prince of peace is born. Thou mother of the Prince of peace, Poor, simple, and of low estate ! That strife should vanish, battle cease,

O why should this thy soul elate?

Sweet music's loudest note, the poet's story,Didst thou ne'er love to hear of fame and glory?

And is not war a youthful king,

A stately hero clad in mail?
Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;

Him earth's majestic monarchs hail

Their friend, their playmate! and his bold bright eye Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh.

"Tell this in some more courtly scene, To maids and youths in robes of state! I am a woman poor and mean,

And therefore is my soul elate.

War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled,
That from the aged father tears his child!

A botanical mistake. The plant which the poet here describes is called the hart's tongue, ЗА

"A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,

He kills the sire and starves the son; The husband kills, and from her board Steals all his widow's toil had won; Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.

"Then wisely is my soul elate,

That strife should vanish, battle cease:
I'm poor and of a low estate,

The mother of the Prince of peace.
Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn:
Peace, peace on earth! the Prince of peace is born!"

TELL'S BIRTHPLACE.

IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

MARK this holy chapel well!
The birthplace, this, of William Tell.
Here, where stands God's altar dread,
Stood his parents' marriage bed.

Here first, an infant to her breast,
Him his loving mother prest;
And kiss'd the babe, and bless'd the day,
And pray'd as mothers used to pray:
"Vouchsafe him health, O God, and give
The child, thy servant, still to live!"
But God has destined to do more
Through him, than through an armed power.

God gave him reverence of laws,
Yet stirring blood in freedom's cause-
A spirit to his rocks akin,

The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein !

To nature and to holy writ
Alone did God the boy commit:
Where flash'd and roar'd the torrent, oft
His soul found wings, and soar'd aloft!

The straining oar and chamois chase
Had form'd his limbs to strength and grace:
On wave and wind the boy would toss,
Was great, nor knew how great he was!
He knew not that his chosen hand,
Made strong by God, his native land
Would rescue from the shameful yoke
Of slavery-the which he broke !

HUMAN LIFE.

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY.

Ir dead, we cease to be; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath

Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If e'en a soul like Milton's can know death,

O man! thou vessel, purposeless, unmeant, Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes! Surplus of nature's dread activity,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

She form'd with restless hands unconsciously! Blank accident! nothing's anomaly !

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves, each fittest to create, And to repay the other! Why rejoices

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold!
Yet what and whence thy gain if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none:
Thy being's being is a contradiction.

ELEGY,

IMITATED FROM ONE OF AKENSIDE'S BLANK VERSE

INSCRIPTIONS.

NEAR the lone pile with ivy overspread,

Fast by the rivulet's sleep-persuading sound, Where "sleeps the moonlight" on yon verdant bed

O humbly press that consecrated ground!

For there does Edmund rest, the learned swain!
And there his spirit most delights to rove:
Young Edmund! famed for each harmonious strain,
And the sore wounds of ill-requited love.

Like some tall tree that spreads its branches wide,
And loads the west wind with its soft perfume,
His manhood blossom'd: till the faithless pride
Of fair Matilda sank him to the tomb.

But soon did righteous Heaven her guilt pursue! Where'er with wilder'd steps she wander'd pale, Still Edmund's image rose to blast her view,

Still Edmund's voice accused her in each gale.

With keen regret, and conscious guilt's alarms,
Amid the pomp of affluence she pined:
Nor all that lured her faith from Edmund's arms
Could lull the wakeful horror of her mind.

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 truth.

THE VISIT OF THE GODS.

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER.

NEVER, believe me,
Appear the immortals,

Never alone:

Scarce had I welcomed the sorrow-beguiler, Iacchus! but in came boy Cupid the smiler;

Lo! Phœbus the glorious descends from his throne!
They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!
With divinities fills my
Terrestrial hall!

How shall I yield you

Due entertainment,
Celestial choir ?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance

Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joy-
ance,

That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!
Ha! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my
soul!

O give me the nectar!
O fill me the bowl!
Give him the nectar!
Pour out for the poet,

Hebe pour free!

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io pean, I cry!

The wine of th' immortals

Forbids me to die!

KUBLA KHAN;

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

[THE following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and, as far as the author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.

return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the 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,
And each misshapes the other. Stay a while,
Poor youth! who scarcely darest lift up thine eyes-
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.

Yet, from the still surviving recollections in his
mind, the author has frequently purposed to finish
for himself what had been originally, as it were,
given to him. Lapepov adiov aow: but the to-mor-
row is yet to come.

As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease. -Note to the first edition, 1816.]

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

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

In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then
in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house
between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor con-
fiues of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence
of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been pre-
scribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in
his chair at the moment that he was reading the
following sentence, or words of the same substance,
in Purchas's "Pilgrimage:"-" Here the Khan
Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately
garden thereunto; and thus ten miles of fertile
ground were enclosed with a wall." The author
continued for about three hours in a profound sleep,
at least of the external senses, during which time
he bas the most vivid confidence that he could not
have composed less than from two to three hun-
dred lines; if that indeed can be called composition
in which all the images rose up before him as things
with a parallel production of the correspondent
expressions, without any sensation, or conscious-
ness of effort. On awaking he appeared to him-
self to have a distinct recollection of the whole,
and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and
eagerly wrote down the lines that are here pre-
served. At this moment he was unfortunately
called out by a person on business from Porlock, It was a miracle of rare device,

But O 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!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

and detained by him above an hour, and on his 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 'twould 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 flashing 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.

Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stain'd with sin:
For aye entempesting anew
Th' unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,

To know and loath, 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 RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.

IN SEVEN PARTS.

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

But yesternight 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 loathing 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 seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo,
My own or others', still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights pass'd: the night's dismay
Sadden'd and stunn'd 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,

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discri mina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt ? quæ loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.-T. BURNET: Archaol. Phil. p. 68.

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In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perch'd for vespers nine:

The mariner tells The sun came up upon the left,

how the ship sail. ed southward

Out of the sea came he!

with a good wind And he shone bright, and on the right Whiles all the night, through fog

and fair weather, Went down into the sea.

till it reached the line.

The wedding.

guest heareth the

bridal music; but

the mariner con

tinueth his tale.

The ship drawn

by a storm toward

the south pole.

Higher and higher every day,

Till over the mast at noon

smoke white,
Glimmer'd the white moonshine.

"God save thee, ancient mariner !

The wedding-guest here beat his From the fiends that plague thee thus!

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And thus spake on that ancient man, And the good south wind still blew
The bright-eyed mariner:-

And now the STORM-BLAST came, and

he

Was tyrannous and strong;

behind,

But no sweet bird did follow,

Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariner's hollo!

He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And I had done an hellish thing,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dripping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,

And it would work 'em wo:
For all averr'd, I had kill'd the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!

The ancient mari. ner inhospitably

killeth the pious bird of good

omen.

His shipmates cry out against the ancient mariner,

for killing the bird of good-luck.

The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, But when the fog

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And now there came both mist and That brought the fog and mist.

snow,

And it grew wondrous cold;

'Twas right, said they, such birds to crime.

slay

And ice, mast-high, came floating by, That bring the fog and mist.
As green as emerald.

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'Twas sad as sad could be ;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink:
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

been suddenly becalmed.

And the albatross begins to be avenged.

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