She wept with pity and delight,
She blush'd with love, and virgin-shame;

And like the murmur of a dream,

I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved she stepp'd aside,
As conscious of my look she stepp'd-
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms, She press'd me with a meek embrace; And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face.

'T was partly Love, and partly Fear, And partly 't was a bashful art, That I might rather feel, than see, The swelling of her heart.

I calm'd her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride; And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous Bride.

DUTY SURVIVING SELF-LOVE,

THE ONLY SURE FRIEND OF DECLINING LIFE.
A SOLILOQUY.

UNCHANGED within to see all changed without,
Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.
Yet why at others' wanings shouldst thou fret?
Then only mightst thou feel a just regret,
Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light
In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.
O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,,
While, and on whom, thou mayst-shine on! nor heed
Whether the object by reflected light
Return thy radiance or absorb it quite:

And though thou notest from thy safe recess
Old Friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air,
Love them for what they are: nor love them less,
Because to thee they are not what they were.

PHANTOM OR FACT?

A DIALOGUE IN VERSE.

AUTHOR.

A LOVELY form there sate beside my bed,
And such a feeding calm its presence shed,
A tender love so pure from earthly leaven
That I unnethe the fancy might control,
'T was my own spirit newly come from heaven
Wooing its gentle way into my soul!

But ah! the change-It had not stirr'd, and yet-
Alas! that change how fain would I forget?
That shrinking back, like one that had mistook!
That weary, wandering, disavowing Look!
'T was all another, feature, look, and frame,
And still, methought, I knew it was the same!

FRIEND.

This riddling tale, to what does it belong? Is 't history? vision? or an idle song?

Or rather say at once, within what space
Of time this wild disastrous change took place?.

AUTHOR.

Call it a moment's work (and such it seems), This tale 's a fragment from the life of dreams; But say, that years matured the silent strife, And 't is a record from the dream of life.

WORK WITHOUT HOPE.

LINES COMPOSED 21ST FEBRUARY, 1827.

ALL Nature seems at work. Stags leave their lair-
The bees are stirring-birds are on the wing-
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

YOUTH AND AGE.

VERSE, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee-
Both were mine! Life went a maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young?-Ah, woful when!*
Ah for the change 'twixt now and then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands,
How lightly then it flash'd along :-
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!
Nought cared this body for wind or weather,
When Youth and I lived in 't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O the joys, that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'T is known, that thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit-
It cannot be, that thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:-
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this alter'd size:

But springtide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!

Life is but thought: so think I will

That youth and I are house-mates still.

A DAY DREAM.

My eyes make pictures, when they are shut :

I see a fountain, large and fair,

A willow and a ruin'd hut,

And thee, and me, and Mary there.

O Mary! make thy gentle lap our pillow!

What outward form and feature are

He guesseth but in part;

But what within is good and fair
He seeth with the heart.

LINES SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF

BERENGARIUS.

OB. ANNO DOM. 1088.

O ever-ever be thou blest!

For dearly, Asra! love I thee!

This brooding warmth across my breast,
This depth of tranquil bliss-ah me!

Fount, tree and shed are gone, I know not whither,
But in one quiet room we three are still together.

The shadows dance upon the wall,

By the still dancing fire-flames made;

And now they slumber, moveless all!

And now they melt to one deep shade!

But not from me shall this mild darkness steal thee:

REFLECTION ON THE ABOVE.

Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed,
Be of good cheer, meek soul! I would have said:
I see a hope spring from that humble fear.
All are not strong alike through storms to steer
Right onward. What though dread of threaten'd

death

And dungeon torture made thy hand and breath
Inconstant to the truth within thy heart?

That truth, from which, through fear, thou twice didst

start,

Fear haply told thee, was a learned strife,
Or not so vital as to claim thy life:

And myriads had reach'd Heaven, who never knew
Where lay the difference 'twixt the false and true!

Ye, who secure 'mid trophies not your own,
Judge him who won them when he stood alone,
And proudly talk of recreant BERENGARE-
O first the age, and then the man compare!
That age how dark! congenial minds how rare!
No host of friends with kindred zeal did burn!
No throbbing hearts awaited his return!
Prostrate alike when prince and peasant fell,
He only disenchanted from the spell,
Like the weak worm that gems the starless night,
Moved in the scanty circlet of his light:

thee!

Thine eyelash on my cheek doth play-
'T is Mary's hand upon my brow!

But let me check this tender lay,

Which none may hear but she and thon! Like the still hive at quiet midnight humming, Murmur it to yourselves, ye two beloved women!

TO A LADY,

OFFENDED BY A SPORTIVE OBSERVATION THAT WOMEN

HAVE NO SOULS.

NAY, dearest Anna! why so grave?

I said, you had no soul, 't is true!

For what you are you cannot have:

'T is I, that have one since I first had you!

L

I HAVE heard of reasons manifold

Why Love must needs be blind,

But this the best of all I hold-
His eyes are in his mind.

That did but guide the night-birds to their prey?
The ascending Day-star with a bolder eye
Hath lit each dew-drop on our trimmer lawn!
Yet not for this, if wise, will we decry
The spots and struggles of the timid DAWN!
Lest so we tempt th' approaching Noon to scorn
The mists and painted vapours of our MORN.

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS.

FROM his brimstone bed at break of day

A walking the DEVIL is gone,

To visit his little snug farm of the earth,

And see how his stock went on.

Over the hill and over the dale,

And he went over the plain,

And backwards and forwards he swish'd his long tail

As a gentleman swishes his cane.

And how then was the Devil drest?

Oh! he was in his Sunday's best :

His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,

And there was a hole where the tail came through.

So clomb this first grand thief

Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life

Sat like a cormorant.-PAR. LOST, IV.

The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for «LIFE» Cod. quid habent, TRADE. Though indeed THE TRADE, i. e, the bibliopolic, so called κάτ' εξόχην, may be regarded as LIFE sensu eminentiori; a suggestion, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, country houses, etc. of the trade, exclaimed, Ay! that 's what I call LIFE now!This Life, our Death, is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of Authorship. Sic nos non nobis melliticamus Apes.

Of this poem, with which the Fire, Famine and Slaughter first appeared in the Morning Post, the three first stan as, which are worth all the rest, and the ninth, were dictated by Mr Southey. Between the ninth and the concluding stanza, two or three are omitted as grounded on subjects that have lost their interest-and for better reasons.

If any one should ask, who General meant, the Author begs leave to inform him, that he did once see a red-faced person in a dream whom by the dress he took for a General; but he might have

CONSTANCY TO AN IDEAL OBЈЕСТ.

SINCE all, that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish, why shouldst thou remain
The only constant in a world of change-
O yearning THOUGHT, that livest but in the brain?
Call to the HOURS, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day--
Fond THOUGHT! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,

Still, still as though some dear embodied good,
Some living love before my eyes there stood,
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say- Ah! loveliest friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might be,
To have a home, an English home and thee!
Vain repetition! Home and thou are one.
The peacefull'st cot the moon shall shine upon,
Lull'd by the thrush and waken'd by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalmed Bark,
Whose helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.

And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman, winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
The enamour'd rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows, he makes the shadow he pursues!

THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT.

ERE the birth of my life, if I wish'd it or no
No question was ask'd me-it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try,
And to live on be YES; what can No be? to die.

NATURE'S ANSWER.

Is 't return'd as 't was sent? Is 't no worse for the wear?
Think first, what you ARE! Call to mind what you WERE!
I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,

Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope.
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the Invent'ry; inspect, compare!
Then die-if die you dare!

been mistaken, and most certainly he did not hear any names men. tioned. In simple verity, the Author never meant any one, or indeed any thing but to put a concluding stanza to his doggerek.

This phenomenon, which the Author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passage of the Aids to Reflection:

Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music, on different characters, holds equally true of Genius: as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own Being, that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre. Aids to Reflection, p. 220.

TREE.

A LAMENT.

I SEEM to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew Writers, an Apologue or Rabbinical Tradition to the following purpose:

While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so! for the Man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise. And the word of the Most High answered Satan: • The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Friend! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to have the heart of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should have been inflicted on thyself.

[The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact mentioned by Linnæus, of a Date-tree in a nobleman's garden, which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, but never produced fruit, till a branch from a Date-tree had been conveyed

from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the MS. from which the poem has been transcribed, and which contained the two or three introductory stanzas, is wanting: and the author has in vain taxed his memory to repair the loss. But a rude draught of the poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and the reader is requested to receive it as the substitute. It is not impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed those of the author, at the time the poem was written, may find a pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integrity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite Metre.-S. T. C.

1.

BENEATH the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own.>> The presence of a ONE,

The best beloved, who loveth me the best,

is for the heart, what the supporting air from within is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen, and crushes it into flatness.

2.

The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them?

3.

Imagination; honourable Aims;

Free Commune with the choir that cannot die;
Science and Song; Delight in little things,
The buoyant child surviving in the man;
Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,
With all their voices-O dare I accuse
My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,

Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!

4.

For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,
But tim'rously beginning to rejoice

Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start
In lonesome tent, Ilisten for thy voice.
Beloved! 't is not thine; thou art not there!
Then melts the bubble into idle air,
And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.

5.

The mother with anticipated glee
Smiles o'er the child, that standing by her chair, !
And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare

To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight
She hears her own voice with a new delight;

And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes aright,

6.

Then is she tenfold gladder than before!
But should disease or chance the darling take,
What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore
Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake?
Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee
Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee :
Why was I made for love, and love denied to me?

FANCY IN NUBIBUS,

OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS.

O! IT is pleasant, with a heart at ease,

Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,

Or let the easily persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold

'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go. From mount to mount through CLOUDLAND, gorgeous

land!

Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight, Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand

By those deep sounds possess'd, with inward light Beheld the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

THE TWO FOUNTS.

STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER RECOVERY
WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS, FROM A SEVERE ATTACK
OF PAIN.

'T WAS my last waking thought, how it could be,
That thou, sweet friend, such angnish shouldst endure:
When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he
Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure.

Methought he fronted me, with peering look Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game The loves and griefs therein, as from a book: And utter'd praise like one who wish'd to blame.