your joy,

ame),
?

n's brow

of snow,

nder, God!

It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs

Was green and woody, and refresh'd the eye. Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now,

its strings

It was a spot which you might aptly call Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes

The Valley of Seclusion! Once I saw Over delicious surges sink and rise,

(Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quietness) Such a soft floating witchery of sound

A wealthy son of commerce saunter by, As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve

Bristowa's citizen : methoughi, it calm d Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,

His thirst of idle gold, and made him muse Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers, With wiser feelings : for he paused, and look'd Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,

With a pleased sadness, and gazed all around, Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing! Then eyed our cottage, and gazed round agaio, O the one life within us and abroad,

And sigh’d, and said, it was a blessed place. Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,

And we were bless'd. Oft with patient car A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,

Long-listening to the view less sky-lark's note Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where (Viewless or haply for a moment seen Methinks, it should have been impossible

Gleaming on sunny wings), in whisper'd tones Not to love all things in a world so filld;

I've said to my beloved, « Such, sweet girl! Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air

The inobtrusive song of Happiness, Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

Unearthly ininstrelsy! then only heard

When the soul sceks to hear; when all is hush'd, And thus, my love! as on the midway slope

And the Heart listens ! »
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold

But the time, when first The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,

From that low dell, steep up the stony Mount And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;

I climb'd with perilous toil and reach'd the top, Full many a thought uncall d and undetain's,

Ol! what a goodly scene! Here the bleak Mount, And many idle flitting phantasies,

The bare bleak Mountain speckled thin with sheep; Traverse my indolent and passive brain,

Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields; As wild and various as the random gales

And River, now with bushy rocks o'erbrow'd, That swell and Mutter on this subject lute!

Now winding bright and full, with naked banks;

And Seats, and Lawns, the Abbey and the Wood, And what if all of animated nature

And Cois, and Hamlets, and faint City-spire; Be but organic harps diversely framed,

The Channel there, the Islands and white Sails, That tremble into thoughi, as o'er them sweups,

Dim Coasts, and cloud-like Hills, and shoreless OceanPlastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

It seem'd like Omnipresence! God, methoughi, At once the Soul of each, and God of All?

Vad built him there a Temple: the whole World

Seem'd imaged in its vast circumference, But thy more serious eye a mild reproof

No wish profaned my overwhelmed heart.
Darts, O beloved woman! nor such thoughts

Blest hour! It was a luxury,-lo be!
Dim and unhallow'd dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my

God.

Ah! quiet dell; dear cot, and mount sublime! Meek daughter in the family of Christ !

I was constrain'd to quit you. Was it right, Well hast thou said and holily dispraised

While my uppumber'd brethren toild and bled, These shapings of the unregenerate mind;

That I should dream away the entrusted hours Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break

On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart On vain Pluilosophy's aye-babbling spring.

With feelings all too delicate for use? For never guiltless may I speak of him,

Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye The Incomprehensible! save when with awe

Drops on the cheek of One he lifts from Earth: I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;

And ile that works me good with unmoved face, Who with his saving mercics healed me,

Does it but half: he chills me wliile he aids, A sinful and most miserable Man,

My Benefactor, not my Brother Man! Wilder'd and dark, and gave me to possess

Yet even this, this cold beneficence
Peace, and this Coi, and thee, hcart-honour'd Maid! Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st

The Sluggard Piry's vision-weaving tribe!
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,

Nursing in some delicious solitude
REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A PLACE OF Their slothful loves and dainty Sympathies !
RETIREMENT.

I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,

Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Sermoni propriora.--Hon.

Of Science, Freedom, and the Truth in Christ.

Low was our pretty Cot: our tallest rose
Peep'd at the chamber-window. We could lear
At silent noon, and eve, and early morn,
The Sea's faint murmur. In the open air
Our myrtles blossom'd; and across the Porch
Thick jasmins twined: the little landscape round

Yet oft, when after honourable toil
Rests the tired mind, and waking loves to dream,
My spirit shall revisit thee, dear Col!
Thy jasmin and thy window-peeping rose,
And myrtles fearless of the mild sca-air.
And I shall sigh fond wishes-sweet Abode!

Of fervid colloquy. Sickness, 't is true,

The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles Whole years

of

weary days, besieged him clos, Of purple shadow! Yes, they wander on Even to the gates and inlets of his life!

In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,

My gen:le-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined And with a natural gladness, he maintain 'd

And hunger'd after Nature, many a year, The citadel unconquer'd, and in joy

In the great city pent, winning thy way Was strong to follow the delightful Muse.

With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain For not a hidden Path, that to the Shades

And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads,

Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun! Luck'd undiscover'd by him; not a rill

Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, There issues from the fount of Hippocrene,

Ye purple beath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds ! But he had traced it upward to its source,

Live in the yellow liglie, ye distant groves! Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell, And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my Friend, knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and cull'd Struck with deep joy, may stand, as I have stood, Jts med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone,

Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round Piercing the long-neglected holy cave,

On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth secm The haunt obscure of old Philosoplıy,

Less gross than bodily; and of such lues He bade with lifted torch its starry walls

As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Sparkle as erst they sparkled to the Game

Spirits perceive his presence.
Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage.
O framed for calıner times and nobler learts!

A delight
O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!

Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad Philosophier! contemning wealth and death,

As I myself were there! Nor in this bower, Yet docile, childlike, full of life and love!

This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd

Much that has soothed me. Pale beneath the blaze Here, rather than on monumental stone, This record of thy worth thy Friend inscribes,

Dung ihe iransparent foliage; and I watch'd
Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.

Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above

Dappling its sunshine! And that Walnut-tree
THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON.

Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient Ivy, which usurps

Those fronting clms, and now, with blackest mass, In tbe June of 1797, some long-expected Friends paid a visit to the

Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter lue Author's Cottage ; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an acident, which disabled him from walking durin; the Through the late twilighit: and though now the Bat whole time of their stas. One Evening, wben they had left him Wheels silent by, and not a Swallow twitters, for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the Garden Yet still the solitary humble Dee Bower.

Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know

That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure : Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,

No plot so narrow, be but Nature there, This Lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost

No waste so vacant, but may well employ Beauties and feelings, such as would have been

Each faculty of sense,

and keep the heart Most sweet lo my remembrance, even when age llad dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,

Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes

"T is well to be bereft of promised good, Friends, whom I never more may meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,

That we may lift the soul, and contemplate Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,

With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

My gentle-hearted Charles ! when the last Rook To that still roaring dell, of which I told :

Beat its straight path along the dusky air The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,

Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing And only speckled by the mid-day sun;

(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) Where its slim trunk the Ash from rock to rock

Had cross'd the mighty Orly's dilated glory, Flings arching like a bridge;—that branchless Ash,

While thou stood'sı yazing; or when all was still, Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,

Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm

For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, lo whom
Faun'd by the water-fall! and there my friends

No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.
Behold the dark-green file of long lank weeds,'
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge

TO A FRIEND
Of the blue clay-stone.

WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION OF WRITING NO
Now, my

Friends
emerge

MORE POETRY.
Beneath the wide wide Heaven-and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent

Dear Charles! whilst vet thou wert a babe, I ween Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sca,

That Genius plunged thee in that wizard fount With some fair bark, perhaps, wliose sails light up

Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleasure The Asplenium Scolopendrium, called in some countries the to observe that Bartram had observed the same circumstance of the Adder's Tongue, in otbers ibe Hart's Tongue; but Withering gives Savanna Crane. - When these Birds move their wings in flight, the Adder's Topgue as the trivial name of the Ophioglossum only. ibeir strokes are slow, moderate and regular; and even when at a

1

Hight Castalie : and (surcties of thy faith)

And currents self-determined, as inight scem,
That Pity and Simplicity stood by,

Or by some inner Power; of moments awful,
And promised for thee, that thou shouldst renounce Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
The world's low cares and lying vanities,

When Power stream'd from thee, and thy soul received Stedfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse,

The light reflected, as a light bestow'd--
And wash'd and sanctified to Poesy.

Of Fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Yes-thou wert plunged, but with forgetful hand Hyhlean murmurs of poetic thouglit
Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior Son :

Industrious in its joy, in Vales and Glens
And with those recreant unbaptized heels

Native or outland, Lakes and famous Hills! Thou 'rt flying from thy bounden ministeries

Or on the lonely High-road, when the Stars
So sore it seems and burthensome a task

Were rising; or by secret Mountain-streams,
To wcave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed: The Guides and the Companions of thy way!
For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed Boy,
And I have arrows' mystically dipp'd,

Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead? Distending wide, and Man beloved as Man,
And shall he die unwept, and sink to Earth

Where France in all her towns lay vibrating • Without the meed of one melodious tear?,

Like some becalmed bark bencath the burst Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved Bard,

Of licaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud Who to the Illustrious ? of his native land

Is visible, or shadow on the Main. So properly did look for patronage.»

For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,

Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
Ghost of Mecenas! hide thy blusling face!
They snatch'd him from the Sickle and the Plough-

Amid a mighty nation jubilant,

When from the general lieart of human kind
To gauge Ale-firkins.

Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!
Oh! for shame return!

--Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,

So sumınon d homeward, thenceforth calm and sure, On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian Mount, There stands a lonc and melancholy tree,

From the dread watcl-tower of man's absolute Self,

With light upwaning on her eyes, to look Whose aged branches in the midnight blast

Far on-herself a glory to behold,
Make solemn m:sic : pluck its darkest bough,

The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled,
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's lomb.

Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Then in the outskirls, where pollutions grow,

Action and Joy!- An orphic song indeed,

A song divine of high and passionate thoughts,
Pick the rank henbane and the dusky flowers

To their own music chaunted!
Of night-shade, or its red and tempting fruit.
These with stopp'd nostril and glove-guarded hand

O great Bard!
Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine

Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air, The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility.

With stedfast eye I view'd thee in the choir 1796. Of ever-enduring men. The truly Great

Have all one age, and from one visible space

Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
TO A GENTLEMAN.

Are permanent, and Time is not with them,
COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A Save as it worketh for them, they in it.

Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old, POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND.

And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame Friend of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good!

Among the archives of mankind, thy work Into my heart have I received that lay

Makes audible a linked lay of Truth, More than historic, that prophetic lay,

Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay, Wherein (high theme by the first sung aright) Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes ! Of the foundations and the building up

Ah! as I listen'd with a heart forlorn, Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell

The pulses of my being beat anew : What may be cold, to the understanding mind

And even as life returns upon the drown'd, Revealable; and what within the mind,

Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of painsBy vital breathings secret as the soul

Keen Pangs of Love, awakening as a babe Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart

Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; Thoughts all too deep for words !

And Fears self-will'd, that shunn'd the eye

And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear;

Theme hard as bigh! Sense of past Youth, and Manhood come in vain, Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears

And Genius given, and knowledge won in vain; (The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth), And all which I had cull'd in wood-walks wild, Of tides obedient to external force,

And all which patient toil had rear'd, and all,

Commune with thee had opend out-but flowers considerable distance of high above us, we plainly hear the quill Strew'd on my corse, and borne upon my bier, feathers; their shafts and webs upon one another croak as the joints in the same coffin, for the self-same grave! or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea..

Vide Pind. Olymp. iii, I. 156.
: Verbatim from Burns's dedication of bis Poems to the Nobility who came a welcomer in herald's guise,

That way no more! and ill beseems it me, and Gentry of the Caledonian flant.

of Hope;