Ye living flowers that skirt she eternal frost !

My native land! Yo wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!

Filld with the thought of thee this heart was proud, Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!

Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the view
Ye lightvings, the dread arrows of the clouds!

From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills,
Ye signs and wonders of the element!

Floated away, like a departing dream,
Utter forth God, and fill the bills with praise !

Feeble and dim! Stranger, these impulses

Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,

With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
Oft from whose feet the Avalanche, unheard,

That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene

That God is everywhere! the God who framed
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-

Mankind to be one mighty Family,
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou

Himself our Father, and the World our Home.
That as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim cyes suffused with tears,

ON OBSERVING BLOSSOM ON THE FIRST
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,

OF FEBRUARY, 1796.
To risc before me-Rise, O ever rise,

Sweet Flower! that peeping from thy russet stem
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth!

Unfoldest timidly (for in strange sort
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hi'ls,

This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering monika
Thou dread Ambassador from Earth to leaven,

Hath borrowd Zeplıyr's voice, and gazed upon thec
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the Stars, and tell yon rising sun,

With blue voluptuous eye), alas, poor Flower!

These are but flatteries of the faithless year.
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Perchauce, escaped its unknown polar cave,
E'en now the keen North-East is on its way.

Flower that musi perish! shall I liken thee
LINES

To some sweet girl of too too rapid growth,

Nipp'd by Consumption 'mid untimely charms?
WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM AT ELBINGERODE, IN THE

Or to Bristowa's Bard,' the wondrous boy!
HARTZ FOREST.

An Amaranth, which carth scarce seem'd to nun,
I stood on Brocken's 'sovran height, and saw

Till Disappointment came, and pelting wrong
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills,

Peat it to earth? or with indignant grief
A surging scene, and only limited

Shall I compare thee to poor Poland's Hope,
By the blue distance. leavily my way

Bright flower of llope kill'd in the opening bud ?
Downward I dragc'd through fir-groves evermore,

Farewell, sweet blossom! better fate be thine,
Where bright green moss licaves in sepulchral forms And mock my boding! Dim similitudes
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,

Weaving in moral strains, I've stolen one hour
The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound;

From anxious Self, Life's cruel Task-Master!
And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly,

And the warm wooings of this sunny day
Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct

Tremble along my frame and harmonize
From many a note of many a waterfall,

The attemper'd organ, that even saddest thoughts
And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose islet stones Mix with some sweet sensations, like harsh tunes
The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell

Play'd deftly on a soft-toned instrument.
Leap'd frolicsome, or old romantic goai
Sat, bis white beard slow waving. I moved on
In low and languid mood: ' for I had found

THE EOLIAN HARP.
That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive

COMPOSED AT CLEVEDON, SOMERSETSHIRE.
Their finer influence from the Life within :
Fair ciphers else : fair, but of import vague

My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Or unconcerning, where the leart not finds

Thus on minc arm, most soothing sweet it is
History or prophecy of Friend, or Child,

To sit beside our cot, our col o'ergrown
Or gentle Maid, our first and early love,

With white-tlower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leaved Myrile,
Or Father, or the venerable name

(Meet emblems they of Jonocence and Love!) Of our adored Country! O thou Queen,

And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light, Thou delegated Deity of Earth,

Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
O dear, dear England! how my longing eye

Serenely brilliant (such should wisdom be)
Turn'd westward, shaping in the steady clouds

Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
Thy sands and high white cliffs !

Snatch'd frorn yon bean-field! and the world so hush'd !

The stilly murmur of the distant Sea 1 The highest mountain in the Hartz, and indeed in North liere | Tells us of Silence.

many.

fect:

2

ns

When I have gazed
From some high eminence on goodly vales,
And cots and villages embower'd below,
The thought would rise that all to me was strange
Amid the scenes so fair, nor one small spot
Where my tired mind might rest, and call it home.

SOUTHEY's Hymn to the Penates.

And that simplest Lute,
Placed length-ways in the clasping cascment, hark !
How by the desultory breeze caress’d,
Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,

le voice! ke sounds!

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: methought, 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 again, 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 ear A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,

Long-listening to the viewless 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 fill'd;

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

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

Unearthly minstrelsy! then only heard

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

And the Heart listens !»
Of yonder bill 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 reaci'd the top, Full many a thought uncalld and undetain'd,

Oh! what a goodly scene! Here the bleak Mount, And many idle fitting phantasies,

The bare bleak Mountain speckled uliin 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 flutter 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

Aud Cois, and Hamlets, and fiint City-spire; Be but organic harps diversely framed,

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

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

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

Uad 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 constraind to quit you. Was it right, Well hast thou said and holily dispraised

While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd 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 Philosophy'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 while he aids, A sinful and most miserable Man,

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

Yet even this, this cold beneficence

possess Peace, and this Cor, and thee, heart-honour's Maid! Praisc, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st

The Sluggard Pity'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 Cot!
| Thy jasmin and thy window-peeping rose,
And myrtles fearless of the mild sea-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 gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined And with a natural gladness, he maintaind

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,

Beliind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun! Lurk'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 beach-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds! But he had traced it upward to its source,

Live in the yellow light, 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 seem The haunt obscure of old Philosopliy,

Less gross than hodily; and of such hues He bade with lifted torch its starry walls

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

Spirits perceive his

presence. Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage. O framed for calıner times aud nobler liearts!

A delight O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!

Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad Philosopher! 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 the transparent 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, whicli usurps
Those fronting elms, and now,

with blackest mass, In the June of 1997, some long-expected Friends paid a visit to

Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter luc Auibor's Cottage ; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an acident, which disabled him from walking durin; the Through the late twilight: and though now the Bat whole time of their stay. One Evening, wben they had left him Wheels silent by, and not a Swallow twitters, for a few hours, be composed the following lines in the Garden

Yet still the solitary humble Cee 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 Limc-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 bill-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, To that still roaring dell, of which I told :

My gentle-hearted Charles ! when the last Rook The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,

Beat its straight path along the dusky air

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 Orb's dilated glory,
Flings arching like a bridge;—that branchless Ash,

While thou stood'st gazing; 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, to 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
Of the blue clay-stone.

TO A FRIEND

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

yet

thou wert a babe, I ween Of billy fields and meadows, and the sca,

Thai 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 pleasuro 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 Tongue as the trivial name of the Ophioglossuin only. ibeir strokes are slow, moderate and regular; and even when at a

Hight Castalic : and (suretics of thy faith)

And currents self-determined, as might 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 thought
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 weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed : The Guides and the Companions of thy way!
For tlıou 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,

Where France in all her towns iay vibrating
And shall hie die unwept, and sink to Earth
. Without the meed of one melodious tear?,

Like some becalmned bark beneath 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 blushing face!

Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
They snatch'd him from the Sickle and the Plough-
To gauge Ale-Firkins.

When from the general lieart of human kind

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

--Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,
On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian Mount,

So summond homeward, thenceforth calm and sure,

From the dread watch-lower of man's absolute Self,
There stands a lone and melancholy tree,

With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
Whose aged branches in the midnight blast
Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,

Far on-herself a glory to behold,

The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled,

Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's tomb.
Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,

Action and Joy !-An orphic song indeed,
Pick the rank henbane and the dusky flowers

A song divine of high and passionate thoughts,

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 sted fast 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 listend with a heart forlorn,
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell

The pulses of my being beat anew :
What may be told, 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 pains-
By 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 of Hope;

And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear;

Theme hard as high! 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 call'd in wood-walks wild, Of tides obedient to external force,

And all which patient toil had reard, and all,

Commune with thee had opend out-but flowers
considerable distance of high above us, we plainly hear the quillo Strew'd on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
feathers; their sbafts 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, 1. 156.
: Verbatim from Burns's dedication of bis Poems to the Nobility

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

Who came a welcomer in herald's guise,

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