THE HOLLY TREE.

423 tacle. Southey shipwrecked his poetry on his scholarship: he used too much the "spectacles of books;" the gilding and regilding of his eloquence fatigues with its splendour: his greater poems have no relief; his words frequently serve rather as a splendid case for a small thought, than as a crystal lantern to transmit the intellectual light in the tempered harmony of its outline. His eloquence lies too often in the rhetoric of the words merely. His characters have not sufficiently distinctive features. In "Madoc," except by names, the hearer could not distinguish Welshmen from Americans; or, in "Roderick," Moors from Spaniards. Notwithstanding these defects, the intellectual wealth of Southey's mind, his graceful skill in gorgeous ornament, the purity of his English style, and his sympathy with all that is noble and virtuous in history and humanity, render him a poet of great practical use to the student. His aims were too wide, and his grasp of subject too universal: his idea, for instance, of a series of poems illustrative of the superstitions of all nations, of which Thalaba and Kehama are examples, was evidently, for perfection of poetic result, beyond the faculty of any one mind. His smaller pieces -as, "Mary the Maid of the Inn," "The Holly Tree," etc.-display all the graces of simple and genuine poetry. Their popularity should have taught the author a lesson in his art: it is only among those whose attainments enable them to appreciate him, that Southey, so far as regards the mass of his poetry, will ever be read.

Southey's more important works are, "Thalaba," a tale of Arabian demonology; "Madoc," an epic founded on a tradition of the discovery of America by a Welsh prince; "The Curse of Kehama," a tale of Indian superstition, adorned with incalculable gorgeousness of imagery and learning; a multitude of ballads, sonnets, odes, etc. His prose works are esteemed for beauty of style and picturesqueness of narrative. They consist of histories, biographies, translations, etc. He was an indefatigable student and writer, and is said to have destroyed more than he ever published.

THE HOLLY TREE.

OH Reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly Tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves,

Order'd by an Intelligence so wise,

As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But, as they grow where nothing is to fear,

Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.

1 After the loss of his first wife (Edith), Southey married, in 1839, Miss Caroline Bowles, a kindred spirit in poetry. He left four children, and a fortune of £12,000. The poet's eminence, industry, and loyalty were rewarded in 1813 with the laureateship. His Jacobinism and Socinianism were, like the similar principles of Coleridge, thrown aside with his youth. He received his doctor's degree from Oxford University in 1821. He judiciously refused the offer of a baronetcy.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,

And moralize;

And in this wisdom of the Holly Tree

Can emblems see,

Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after-time.

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere ;

To those, who on my leisure would intrude,

Reserved and rude ;

Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be,
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, Some harshness show,

All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And as when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,

The Holly leaves a sober hue display

Less bright than they;

But when the bare and wintery woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?

So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng;

So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they;

That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree.

FROM THE ECLOGUE, THE ALDERMAN'S FUNERAL.

This man of half a million

Had all these public virtues which you praise:
But the poor man rung never at his door;
And the old beggar, at the public gate,

Who, all the summer long, stands hat in hand,
He knew how vain it was to lift an eye

To that hard face. Yet he was always found
Among your ten and twenty pound subscribers,
Your benefactors in the newspapers.

His alms were money put to interest

In the other world,—donations to keep open
A running charity account with Heaven,-

FROM MADOC.

Retaining fees against the Last Assizes,
When, for the trusted talents, strict account

Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-Lawyer
Plead his own cause as plaintiff.

*

*

*

*

Who should lament for him, Sir, in whose heart
Love had no place, nor natural charity?

The parlour spaniel, when she heard his step,
Rose slowly from the hearth, and stole aside
With creeping pace; she never raised her eyes
To woo kind words from him, nor laid her head
Upraised upon his knee, with fondling whine.
How could it be but thus? Arithmetic
Was the sole science he was ever taught;
The multiplication-table was his Creed,
His Pater-noster, and his Decalogue.

When yet he was a boy, and should have breathed
The open air and sunshine of the fields,

To give his blood its natural spring and play,
He, in a close and dusky counting-house,

Smoke-dried, and sear'd, and shrivell'd up his heart.
So, from the way in which he was train'd up,

His feet departed not; he toil'd and moil'd,

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Poor muckworm! through his three-score years and ten;
And when the earth shall now be shovell'd on him,

If that which served him for a soul were still

Within its husk, 't would still be dirt to dirt.

FROM MADOC IN WALES.-BOOK V.

THE LAND AND OCEAN SCENERY OF AMERICA.

Thy summer woods

Are lovely, O my mother Isle ! the birch
Light bending on thy banks, thy elmy vales,
Thy venerable oaks! But there, what forms
Of beauty clothed the inlands and the shore !
All these in stateliest growth, and mixt with these
Dark spreading cedar, and the cypress tall,
Its pointed summit waving to the wind
Like a long beacon flame; and loveliest
Amid a thousand strange and lovely shapes,

The lofty palm, that with its nuts supplied

Beverage and food; they edged the shore, and crown'd

The far off highland summits, their straight stems
Bare without leaf or bough, erect and smooth,
Their tresses nodding like a crested helm,
The plumage of the grove.

Will ye believe

The wonders of the ocean? how its shoals

Sprung from the wave, like flashing light, took wing,
And, twinkling with a silver glitterance,
Flew through the air and sunshine?

Yet were these

To sight less wondrous than the tribe who swam,
Following, like fowlers with uplifted eye,
Their falling quarry: language cannot paint
Their splendid tints; though in blue ocean seen,
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,

In all its rich variety of shades,

Suffused with glowing gold.

Heaven, too, had there

Its wonders from a deep black heavy cloud,
What shall I say? A shoot, a trunk, an arm,
Came down : yea! like a demon's arm, it seized
The waters, Ocean smoked beneath its touch,

And rose like dust before the whirlwind's force.
But we sail'd onward over tranquil seas,
Wafted by airs so exquisitely mild,

That even to breathe became an act of will,
And sense, and pleasure. Not a cloud by day
With purple islanded the dark-blue deep;
By night the quiet billows heaved and glanced
Under the moon, that heavenly moon! so bright,
That many a midnight have I paced the deck,
Forgetful of the hours of due repose;

Yea, till the sun in his full majesty

Went forth, like God beholding his own works.

FROM THALABA THE DESTROYER.

NIGHT IN THE DESERT.

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:

In full orb'd glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths:
Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

FROM THE CURSE OF KEHAMA.

FROM THE CURSE OF KEHAMA.

THE SOURCE OF THE GANGES.

None hath seen its secret fountain;
But on the top of Merû mountain,
Which rises o'er the hills of earth,
In light and clouds, it hath its mortal birth.
Earth seems that pinnacle to rear
Sublime above this worldly sphere,
Its cradle, and its altar, and its throne;
And there the new-born river lies
Outspread beneath its native skies,
As if it there would love to dwell
Alone and unapproachable.

Soon flowing forward, and resigned
To the will of the Creating Mind,
It springs at once, with sudden leap,
Down from the immeasurable steep;

From rock to rock, with shivering force rebounding,
The mighty cataract rushes: heaven around,
Like thunder, with the incessant roar resounding,
And Merû's summit shaking with the sound.
Wide spreads the snowy foam, the sparkling spray
Dances aloft; and ever there at morning
The earliest sunbeams haste to wing their way,
With rainbow wreaths the holy stream adorning :
And duly the adoring moon at night
Sheds her white glory there,
And in the watery air

Suspends her halo-crowns of silver light.

LOVE.

They sin who tell us Love can die.
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.

In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell;
Earthly, these passions are of earth,
They perish where they have their birth:
But Love is indestructible.

Its holy flame for ever burneth ;

From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth;
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times opprest,
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in Heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of Love is there.

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