For could I view nor them nor thee,
What sight worth seeing could I see?
The sun would rise in vain for me,
My Mary!

Partakers of thy sad decline,

Thy hands their little force resign;
Yet, gently pressed, press gently mine,
My Mary!

And then I feel that still I hold
A richer store ten thousandfold
Than misers fancy in their gold,
My Mary!

Such feebleness of limbs thou prov'st
That now at every step thou mov'st
Upheld by two; yet still thou lov'st,
My Mary!

And still to love, though pressed with ill,
In wintry age to feel no chill,
With me is to be lovely still,
My Mary!

But oh! by constant heed I know
How oft the sadness that I show
Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe,
My Mary!

And should my future lot be cast
With much resemblance of the past,
Thy worn-out heart will break at last,

My Mary!

W. COWPER.

268. A SYMPATHY WITH SOUNDS

THERE is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And, as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!

W. COWPER (The Task, Bk. vi).

269. ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE

She sprang no fatal leak,
She ran upon no rock;

His sword was in the sheath, His fingers held the pen,

When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.

Weigh the vessel up,
Once dreaded by our foes,

And mingle with your cup
The tears that England owes ;
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,

Full charged with England's
thunder,

And plough the distant main;
But Kempenfelt is gone,

His victories are o'er;

And he and his Eight hundred Must plough the wave no more. W. COWPER.

270. FROM CHARITY

WHEN one, that holds communion with the skies,
Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'Tis even as if an angel shook his wings;
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
That tells us whence his treasures are supplied.
So, when a ship well-freighted with the stores
The sun matures on India's spicy shores,
Has dropped her anchor and her canvas furled
In some safe haven of our western world,
'Twere vain inquiry to what port she went ;
The gale informs us, laden with the scent.

Some seek, when queasy conscience has its qualms,
To lull the painful malady with alms;

But charity, not feigned, intends alone

Another's good-theirs centres in their own;
And, too short-lived to reach the realms of peace,
Must cease for ever when the poor shall cease.
Flavia, most tender of her own good name,

Is rather careless of her sister's fame:

Her superfluity the poor supplies,
But, if she touch a character, it dies.

The seeming virtue weighed against the vice,
She deems all safe, for she has paid the price :
No charity but alms aught values she,
Except in porcelain on her mantel-tree.

How many deeds, with which the world has rung,
From pride, in league with ignorance, have sprung!
But God o'errules all human follies still,

And bends the tough materials to His will.
A conflagration or a wintry flood

Has left some hundreds without home or food;
Extravagance and avarice shall subscribe,

While fame and self-complacence are the bribe.
The brief proclaimed, it visits every pew,
But first the squire's-a compliment but due.
With slow deliberation he unties

His glittering purse-that envy of all eyes!
And, while the clerk just puzzles out the psalm,
Slides guinea behind guinea in his palm;
Till, finding (what he might have found before)
A smaller piece amidst the precious store,
Pinched close between his finger and his thumb,
He half exhibits, and then drops the sum.
Gold, to be sure !—Throughout the town 'tis told
How the good squire gives never less than gold.
From motives such as his, though not the best,
Springs in due time supply for the distressed ;
Not less effectual than what love bestows-
Except that office clips it as it goes.

W. COWPER.

6

Then the progeny that springs

From the forests of our land,
Armed with thunder, clad with wings,
Shall a wider world command.

'Regions Caesar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway,
Where his eagles never flew,
None invincible as they.'
Such the bard's prophetic words,
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending, as he swept the chords
Of his sweet but awful lyre.

She, with all a monarch's pride,
Felt them in her bosom glow;
Rushed to battle, fought, and died;
Dying, hurled them at the foe.

'Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

Heaven awards the vengeance due;

Empire is on us bestowed,

Shame and ruin wait for you.'

W. COWPER.

272. ALDBOROUGH

HERE, wandering long, amid these frowning fields,
I sought the simple life that Nature yields;
Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurped her place,
And a bold, artful, surly, savage race;
Who, only skilled to take the finny tribe,
The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,

Wait on the shore, and, as the waves run high,
On the tossed vessel bend their eager eye,
Which to their coast directs its venturous way,
Theirs or the ocean's, miserable prey.

As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand,
And wait for favouring winds to leave the land;
While still for flight the ready wing is spread :
So waited I the favouring hour, and fled;

Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign,
And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain ;
Who still remain to hear the ocean roar,

Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore;
Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway,
Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away.

G. CRABBE (The Village).

273. HIS MOTHER'S WEDDING-RING

THE ring so worn, as you behold,
So thin, so pale, is yet of gold:
The passion such it was to prove;
Worn with life's cares, love yet was love.

274. BOOKS

THEY give

New views to life, and teach us how to live;

G. CRABBE.

They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone :
Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to subjects what they show to kings.

:

Now bid thy soul man's busy scenes exclude,
And view composed this silent multitude :-
Silent they are, but, though deprived of sound,
Here all the living languages abound;
Here all that live no more; preserved they lie,
In tombs that open to the curious eye.

Blessed be the gracious Power, who taught mankind
To stamp a lasting image of the mind!

f

G. CRABBE (The Library).

275. LATE WISDOM

WE'VE trod the maze of error round,
Long wandering in the winding glade;
And now the torch of truth is found,

It only shows us where we strayed:
Light for ourselves, what is it worth,
When we no more our way can choose?
For others when we hold it forth,

They, in their pride, the boon refuse.