"I was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of Milton's hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is -as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery Book.' Jan. 1818.

HIEF of organic numbers!

Old Scholar of the the Spheres!

Thy spirit never slumbers,

But rolls about our ears

For ever and for ever!

O what a mad endeavour

Worketh He,

Who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse
Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse
And melody.

How heavenward thou soundest !

Live Temple of sweet noise,
And Discord unconfoundest,
Giving Delight new joys,
And Pleasure nobler pinions:
O where are thy dominions?

222 ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR.

Lend thine ear

To a young Delian oath-ay, by thy soul, By all that from thy mortal lips did roll, And by the kernel of thy earthly love, Beauty in things on earth and things above, I swear!

When every childish fashion
Has vanished from my rhyme,
Will I, grey gone in passion,
Leave to an after-time

Hymning and Harmony

Of thee and of thy works, and of thy life; But vain is now the burning and the strife; Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife With old Philosophy,

And mad with glimpses of futurity.

For many years my offerings must be hush'd;
When I do speak, I'll think upon this hour,
Because I feel my forehead hot and flushed,
Even at the simplest vassal of thy power,
A lock of thy bright hair,-

Sudden it came,

And I was startled when I caught thy name Coupled so unaware;

Yet at the moment temperate was my bloodI thought I had beheld it from the flood!

TO THE NILE.

"The Wednesday before last, Shelley, Hunt, and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river Nile: some day you shall read them all." Febru ary, 1818.

S

ON of the old Moon-mountains African!

Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile! We call thee fruitful, and that very while A desert fills our seeing's inward span: Nurse of swart nations since the world began, Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile Those men to honour thee, who, worn with toil, Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan ? O may dark fancies err! They surely do; 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, And to the sea as happily dost haste.

J. K.

THE NILE.

I

T flows through old hush'd Egypt and its
sands,

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream;
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,—
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roam'd through the young earth, the glory

extreme

Of high Sesostris; and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us: and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

L. H.

TO THE NILE.'

ONTH after month the gather'd rains descend,

Drenching yon secret Ethiopian dells,

And from the Desert's ice-girt pinnacles,

Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.
Girt there with blasts and meteors, Tempest dwells
By Nile's aërial urn, with rapid spells
Urging its waters to their mighty end.

O'er Egypt's land of memory floods are level,
And they are thine, O Nile! and well thou knowest
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil,
And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.
Beware, O man! for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

Up to the discovery of this sonnet among Shelley's MSS., in the possession of Mr. Townshend Major, the

66

P. B. S.

sonnet entitled Ozymandias" was believed to be that written in competition with Keats.

TEIGNMOUTH.

"In hopes of cheering you through a minute or two, I was determined, will he nill he, to send you some lines, so you will excuse the unconnected subject and careless verse. You know, I am sure, Claude's Enchanted Castle,' and I wish you may be pleased with my remembrance of it." March, 1818.

D

EAR Reynolds! as last night I lay in bed,
There came before my eyes that wonted
thread

Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances,
That every other minute vex and please:
Things all disjointed come from north and south,—
Two Witch's eyes above a Cherub's mouth,
Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon,
And Alexander with his nightcap on;

Old Socrates a-tying his cravat,

And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth's cat;
And Junius Brutus, pretty well, so so,
Making the best of's way towards Soho.

Few are there who escape these visitings,Perhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings, And thro' whose curtains peeps no hellish nose, No wild-boar tushes, and no Mermaid's toes; But flowers bursting out with lusty pride, And young Æolian harps personified; Some Titian colours touch'd into real life,The sacrifice goes on; the pontiff knife

Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows, The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows: