Inviolate the spirit whence it sprung!

Even as a harp, when some wild plaintive strain Goes with the hand that touched it, still retains The soul of music sleeping in its strings.

THE EVENING ELOUD.

A CLOUD lay cradled near the setting sun,
A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow:
Long had I watched the glory moving on

O'er the still radiance of the lake below.
Tranquil its spirit seemed, and floated slow!
Even in its very motion there was rest:
While every breath of eve that chanced to blow
Wafted the traveller to the beauteous West.

Emblem, methought of the departed soul!

To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given;

And by the breath of mercy made to roll

Right onwards to the golden gates of Heaven, Where, to the eye of faith, it peaceful lies,

And tells to man his glorious destinies.

How sweet and solemn, all alone,
With reverend steps, from stone to stone
In a small village churchyard lying,
O'er intervening flowers to move!
And as we read the names unknown
Of old and young to judgment gone,
And hear in the calm air above
Time onwards softly flying,

To meditate, in Christian love,
Upon the dead and dying!

Across the silence seem to go

With dream-like motion, wavering, slow,

And shrouded in their folds of snow,
The friends we loved long long ago.
Gliding across the sad retreat,

How beautiful their phantom feet!
What tenderness is in their eyes,
Turned where the poor survivor lies
'Mid monitory sanctities!

What years of vanished joy are fanned
From one uplifting of that hand

In its white stillness! when the Shade
Doth glimmeringly in sunshine fade
From our embrace, how dim appears
This world's life through a mist of tears!
Vain hopes! blind sorrows! needless fears!

Such is the scene around me now:

A little Churchyard on the brow

Of a green pastoral hill;

Its sylvan village sleeps below,

And faintly here is heard the flow

Of Woodburn's summer rill;

A place where all things mournful meet, And yet the sweetest of the sweet,

The stillest of the still!

With what a pensive beauty fall

Across the mossy mouldering wall

That rose-tree's clustered arches! See
The robin-redbreas warily,

Bright through the blossoms, leaves his nest:

Sweet ingrate! through the winter blest
At the firesides of men-but shy

Through all the sunny summer hours
He hides himself among the flowers
In his own wild festivity.

What lulling sound, and shadow cool

Hangs half the darkened Churchyard o'er,
From thy green depths so beautiful
Thou gorgeous sycamore!

Oft hath the holy wine and bread

Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent,
Where many a bright and hoary head
Bowed at that awful sacrament.

Now all beneath the turf are laid

On which they sat, and sang, and prayed.

Above that consecrated tree

Ascends the tapering spire that seems

To lift the soul up silently

To heaven with all its dreams,

While in the belfry, deep and low,
From his heaved bosom's purple gleams
The dove's continuous murmurs flow,
A dirge-like song, half-bliss, half-woe,
The voice so lonely seems!

LIVES

WRITTEN AT A LITTLE WELL BY THE ROADSIDE, LANGDALE.

THOU lonely spring of waters undefiled!
Silently slumbering in thy mossy cell,

Yea, moveless as the hillock's verdant side
From which thou hadst thy birth, I bless thy gleam
Of clearest coldness, with as deep-felt joy

As pilgrim kneeling at his far-sought shrine;
And as I bow to bathe my freshen'd heart
In thy restoring radiance from my lips
A breathing prayer sheds o'er thy glassy sleep
A gentle tremor !

Nor must I forget

A benison for the departed soul

Of him, who, many a year ago, first shaped
This little Font,-imprisoning the spring

Not wishing to be free, with smooth slate-stone,
Now in the beauteous coloring of age

Scarcely distinguished from the natural rock.

In blessed hour the solitary man