I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,

A fresh-blown musk-rose; 't was the first that threw

Its sweets upon the summer : graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,

I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd;
But when, o Wells! thy roses came to me

My sense with their deliciousness was spelld: Soft voices had they, that with tender plea Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and friendliness un

quell'd.

Keen fitful gusts are whispering here and there

Among the bushes, half leafless and dry;

The stars look very cold about the sky, And I have many miles on foot to fare. Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,

Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,

Or of those silver lamps that burn on high, Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair: For I am brimfull of the friendliness

That in a little cottage I have found; Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress,

And all his love for gentle Lycid' drown'd; Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,

And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd.

TO G. A. W.

Nympa of the downward smile, and sidelong glance !

In what diviner moments of the day

Art thou most lovely? when gone far astray
Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance?
Or when serenely wand'ring in a trance

Of sober thought? Or when starting away,

With careless robe to meet the morning ray,
Thou sparest the flowers in thy mazy dance?
Haply 't is when thy ruby lips part sweetly,

And so remain, because thou listenest :
But thou to please wert nurtured so completely

That I can never tell what mood is best,
I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly

Trips it before Apollo than the rest.

To one who has been long in city pent,

'T is very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven, -to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with beart's content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear

Catching the notes of Philomel, -an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,

He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E’en like the passage of an angel's tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,

Let it not be among the jumbled heap

Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,-
Nature's observatory-whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,

May seem a spau; let me thy vigils keep

'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap, Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.

But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,

Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refined,

Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure musi be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,

When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER. Mucu have I travellid in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific-and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surinisc

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

TO MY BROTHERS.

ON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS AT AN EARLY HOUR.

Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,

And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep

Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles,

Your eyes are fix'd, as in poetic sleep,

Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birth-day, Tom, and I rejoice

That thus it passes smoothly, quietly,
Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise

May we together pass, and calmly try What are this world's true joys,-ere the great Voice, From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly.

November 18, 1816.

Give me a golden pen, and let me lean

On heap'd up flowers, in regions clear, and far;

Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when 't is seen
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:

And let there glide by many a pearly car,

Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar, And half-discover'd wings, and glances keen. The while let music wander round my ears,

And as it reaches each delicious ending,

Let me write down a line of glorious tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:

For what a height my spirit is contending!
'T is not content so soon to be alone.

ADDRESSED TO HAYDON.

It tells me too, that on a happy day,

When some good spirit walks upon the earth,

Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore, Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away

To where the great God lives for evermore.

HIGH-MINDEDNESS, a jealousy for good,

A loving-kindness for the great man's fame,

Dwells here and there with people of no name, Jo noisome alley, and in pathless wood: And where we think the truth least understood.

Oft may be found a « singleness of aim,"

That ought to frighten into hooded shame
A money-mong'ring, pitiable brood.
How glorious this affection for the cause

Of sted fast genius, toiling gallantly!
What wben a stout unbending champion awes

Envy, and malice to their native sty? Unnumber'd souls breathe out a still applause,

Proud to behold him in his country's eye.

Happy is England! I could be content

I
To see no other verdure than its own ;

To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent : Yet do I sometimes fell a languishment

For skies Italian, and an inward groan

To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;

Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging :
Yet do I often warmly burn to see

Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters.

ADDRESSED TO THE SAME.

THE HUMAN SEASONS.

Geeat spirits now on earth are sojourning :

He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,

Who on llelvellyn's summit, wide awake, Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing: He of the rose, the violet, the spring,

The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake:

And lo! whose stedfastness would never take A meaner sound than Raphael's wliispering. And other spirits there are standing apart

Upon the forehead of the age to come; These, these will give the world another heart,

And other pulses. Hear ye not the bum Of mighty workings?

Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span :
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
Is nearest unto heaven : quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-lo let fair things
Pass hy unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

The poetry of earth is never dead :

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's - he takes the lead

In summer luxury,- he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
De rests at case beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, wlien the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warınth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

December 30, 1816.

ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER. Come hither al sweet maidens soberly, Down-looking aye, and with a chasten'd light, Hid in the fringes of your eye-lids white, And meekly let your fair hands joined be, As if so gentle that ye could not see, Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright, Sinking away to his young spirit's night, Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea: 'T is young Leander toiling to his death; Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile. O horrid dream! see how his body dips Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile : He's gone; up bubbles all bis amorous breath!

TO KOSCIUSKO.

TO AJLSA ROCK.

Goop Kosciusko! thy great name alone

Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;

It comes upon us like the glorious pealing
Of the wide spheres-an everlasting tone.
And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,

The names of beroes, burst from clouds concealing,

And changed to harmonies, for ever stealing Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.

HEARKEN, thou cragey ocean pyramid !
Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowl's screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in buge streams?
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?

How long is 't since the mighty power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sun-beams,
Or when grey clouds are thy cold cover-lid ?
Thou answer'st not, for thou art dead asleep!
Thy life is but two dead eternities-
The last in air, the former in the deep;
First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies-
Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,
Another cannot wake thy giant size.

Where on one side are covert branches hung,
'Mong which the nightingales have always sung
Ju leafy quiet ; where to pry, aloof
Atween the pillars of the sylvan roof,
Would be to find where violet beds were nestling,
And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling.
There must be too a ruin dark, and gloomy,
To say "joy not too much in all that 's bloomy.»

EPISTLES.

Among the rest a shepherd (though but young
Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill
His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill,

Britannia's Pastorals.-BROWNE.

TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW.

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song;
Nor can remembrance, Mathew! bring to view
A fate more pleasing, a delight more true
Than that in which the brother poets joy'd,
Who, with combined powers, their wit employ'd
To raise a trophy to the drama's muses.
The thought of this great partnership diffuses
Over the genius-loving heart, a feeling
Of all that's high, and great, and good, and healing.
Too partial friend! fain would I follow thee
Past each horizon of fine poesy;
Fain would I echo back each pleasant note
As o'er Sicilian seas, clear anthems float
'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted,
Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted :
But 't is impossible; far different cares
Beckon me steroly from soft «Lydian airs,"
And hold my faculties so long in thrall,
That I am oft in doubt whether at all
I shall again see Phæbus in the morning :
Or flush'd Aurora in the roscate dawning!
Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream;
Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam;
Or again witness what with thee I 've seen,
The dew by fairy feet swept from the green,
After a night of some quaint jubilee
Which every elf and fay had come to see :
When bright processions took their airy march
Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch.

Yet this is vain-O Mathew! lend thy aid
To find a place where I may greet the maid-
Where we may soft humanity put on,
And sit, and rhyme, and think on Chatterton ;
And that warm-hearted Shakespeare sent to meet him
Four laurell’d spirits, heavenward to entreat him.
With reverence would we speak of all the sages
Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages :
And thou shouldst moralize on Milton's blindness,
And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness
To those who strove with the bright golden wing
Of genius, to flap away each sting
Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell
Of those who in the cause of freedom fell;
Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell;
Of him whose name to every heart 's a solace,
High-minded and unbending William Wallace.
While to the rugged north our musing turns
We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns.
Felton! without incitements such as these,
How vain for me the niggard Muse to tease!
For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace,
And make • a sun-shine in a shady place:»
For thou wast once a flowret blooming wild,
Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefiled,
Whence gush the streams of song: in happy hour
Came chaste Diana from her shady bower,
Just as the sun was from the east uprising;
And, as for him some gift she was devising,
Beheld thee, pluck'd thee, cast thee in the stream
To meet her glorious brother's greeting beam.
I marvel much that thou hast never told
How, from a flower, into a fish of gold
Apollo changed thee: how thou next didst seem
A black-eyed swan upon the widening stream;
And when thou first didst in that mirror trace
The placid features of a human face:
That thou hast never told thy travels strange,
And all the wonders of the mazy range
O'er pebbly chrystal, and o'er golden sands;
Kissing thy daily food from Naiad's pearly hands.

November, 1815.

TO MY BROTHER CEORGE.

But might I now each passing moment give
To the coy muse, with me she would not live
In this dark city, nor would condescend
'Mid contradictions her delights to lend.
Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind,
Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find
Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic,
That often must have seen a poet frantic;
Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing,
And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing;
Where the dark-leaved laburnum's drooping clusters
Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres,
And intertwined the cassia's arms unite,
With its own drooping buds, but very

Full many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No sphery strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:
That I should never hear Apollo's song,
Though feathery clouds were floating all along