WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

FROM MICHAEL ANGELO 1

ETERNAL Lord! eased of a cumbrous load,

And loosened from the world, I turn to Thee;
Shun, like a shattered bark, the storm, and flee
To thy protection for a safe abode.

The crown of thorns, hands pierced upon the tree,
The meek, benign, and lacerated face,
To a sincere repentance promise grace,
To the sad soul give hope of pardon free.
With justice mark not Thou, O Light divine,
My fault, nor hear it with thy sacred ear;
Neither put forth that way thy arm severe;
Wash with thy blood my sins; thereto incline
More readily the more my years require
Help, and forgiveness speedy and entire.

1 Rime, ed. Guasti, p. 241, Florence, 1863, 'Scarco d' un' importuna e grave salma'.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

(1772-1834)

LINES TO W. L., ESQ., WHILE HE SANG A SONG TO PURCELL'S MUSIC

WHILE my young cheek retains its healthful hues,
And I have many friends who hold me dear,
Linley! methinks I would not often hear
Such melodies as thine, lest I should lose
All memory of the wrongs and sore distress
For which my miserable brethren weep.
But should uncomforted misfortunes steep
My daily bread in tears and bitterness,
And if at death's dread moment I should lie
With no beloved face at my bedside
To fix the last glance of my closing eye,
Methinks, such strains, breathed by my angel guide,
Would make me pass the cup of anguish by,
Mix with the blest, nor know that I had died.1

1 As a strain of feeling, and for unity of effect, it is very happily done,' says Wordsworth of this sonnet, in a letter to Dyce (Prose Works, iii,, 336),

CHARLES LAMB

(1775-1834)

We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween,
And INNOCENCE her name. The time has been,
We two did love each other's company;
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart.
But when by show of seeming good beguiled,
I left the garb and manners of a child,
And my first love, for man's society,
Defiling with the world my virgin heart-

My loved companion dropped a tear, and fled,
And hid in deepest shades her awful head.
Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art—
In what delicious Eden to be found-

That I may seek thee the wide world around?

CHARLES LAMB

WORK

WHO first invented work, and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing spirit down

To the ever-haunting importunity

Of business in the green fields, and the townTo plough, loom, anvil, spade-and oh! most sad, To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad

Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,

That round and round incalculably reelFor wrath divine hath made him like a wheelIn that red realm from which are no returnings: Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day.

CHARLES LAMB

[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the Lives of the Saints, written, in Spanish, by the learned and reverend Father Alfonso Villegas, divine of the Order of St. Dominick, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno 1630,' bought at a Catholic bookshop in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted flower, seemingly coeval with the book itself; and did not for some time discover that it opened in the middle, and was the cover to a very humble draught of a Saint Anne, with the Virgin and Child; doubtless the performance of some poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it assisted.]

O LIFT with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower,
That shrines within her modest canopy
Memorials dear to Romish piety;

Dim specks, rude shapes of Saints: in fervent hour
The work perchance of some meek devotee,
Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth
The sanctities she worshipp'd to their worth,
In this imperfect tracery might see

Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal.
Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told
Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold,
That in their way approved the offerer's zeal.
True love shows costliest where the means are scant;
And, in her reckoning, they abound who want.