Then, little Bird, this boon confer,
Come, and my requiem sing,
Nor fail to be the harbinger
Of everlasting Spring.

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS 1842 (?). 1842

I

I was impelled to write this Sonnet by the disgusting frequency with which the word artistical, imported with other impertinences from the Germans, is employed by writers of the present day for artistical let them substitute artificial, and the poetry written on this system, both at home and abroad, will be for the most part much better characterised.

A POET!-He hath put his heart to school, Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff Which Art hath lodged within his hand must laugh

By precept only, and shed tears by rule. Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff, And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool, In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool

Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph.

How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?

Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold;

And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree Comes not by casting in a formal mould, ut from its own divine vitality.

II

Hundreds of times have I seen, hanging about I above the vale of Rydal, clouds that might 'e given birth to this Sonnet, which was own off on the impulse of the moment one ning when I was returning home from the ourite walk of ours, along the Rotha, under ighrigg.

E most alluring clouds that mount the sky

e to a troubled element their forms,

ir hues to sunset. If with raptured eye watch their splendour, shall we covet storms,

1 wish the Lord of day his slow decline

Works not the righteousness of God? Oh bend,

Bend, ye Perverse! to judgments from on
High,

Laws that lay under Heaven's perpetual ban,
All principles of action that transcend
The sacred limits of humanity.

V

CONTINUED

WHO ponders National events shall find
An awful balancing of loss and gain,
Joy based on sorrow, good with ill com-
bined,

And proud deliverance issuing out of pain
And direful throes; as if the All-ruling Mind,
With whose perfection it consists to ordain
Volcanic burst, earthquake, and hurricane,
Dealt in like sort with feeble human kind
By laws immutable. But woe for him
Who thus deceived shall lend an eager hand
To social havoc. Is not Conscience ours,
And Truth, whose eye guilt only can make
dim;

And Will, whose office, by divine command, Is to control and check disordered Powers ?

VI

CONCLUDED

LONG-FAVOURED England! be not thou misled

By monstrous theories of alien growth, Lest alien frenzy seize thee, waxing wroth, Self-smitten till thy garments reek dyed red With thy own blood, which tears in torrents shed

Fail to wash out, tears flowing ere thy troth Be plighted, not to ease but sullen sloth, Or wan despair-the ghost of false hope fled Into a shameful grave. Among thy youth, My Country! if such warning be held dear, Then shall a Veteran's heart be thrilled

THE NORMAN BOY
1842. 1842

The subject of this poem was sent me by Mrs. Ogle, to whom I was personally unknown, with a hope on her part that I might be induced to relate the incident in verse; and I do not regret that I took the trouble; for not improbably the fact is illustrative of the boy's early piety, and may concur with my other little pieces on children to produce profitable reflection among my youthful readers. This is said however with an absolute conviction that children will derive most benefit from books which are not unworthy the perusal of persons of any age. I

protest with my whole heart against those productions, so abundant in the present day, in which the doings of children are dwelt upon as if they were incapable of being interested in anything else. On this subject I have dwelt at length in the poem on the growth of my own mind.

HIGH on a broad unfertile tract of forestskirted Down,

Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man his own,

From home and company remote and every playful joy,

Served, tending a few sheep and goats, a

ragged Norman Boy.

There was he, where of branches rent and

withered and decayed,

For covert from the keen north wind, his hands a hut had made.

A tiny tenement, forsooth, and frail, as needs must be

A thing of such materials framed, by a builder such as he.

The hut stood finished by his pains, nor

seemingly lacked aught

That skill or means of his could add, but the architect had wrought Some limber twigs into a Cross, well-shaped with fingers nice,

To be engrafted on the top of his small edifice.

20

That Cross he now was fastening there, as the surest power and best

For supplying all deficiencies, all wants of the rude nest

In which, from burning heat, or tempest driving far and wide,

The innocent Boy, else shelterless, his lonely head must hide.