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Born on the stage-through every shifting scene,
Obscure or bright, tempestuous or serene,
Still has your smile her trembling spirit fired!
And can she act, with thoughts like these inspired?
Thus from her mind all artifice she flings,
All skill, all practice, now unmeaning things!
To you, uncheck'd, each genuine feeling flows;
For all that life endears-to you she owes.

CAPTIVITY.

CAGED in old woods, whose reverend echoes wake
When the hern screams along the distant lake,
Her little heart oft flutters to be free,
Oft sighs to turn the unrelenting key. '
In vain! the nurse that rusted relic wears,
Nor moved by gold-nor to be moved by tears;
And terraced walls their black reflection throw
On the green mantled moat that sleeps below.

ON

ASLEEP.

SLEEP on, and dream of heaven a while.
Though shut so close thy laughing eyes,
Thy rosy lips still wear a smile,
And move, and breathe delicious sighs!—

Ah, now soft blushes tinge her cheeks,
And mantle o'er her neck of snow.
Ah, now she murmurs, now she speaks
What most I wish--and fear to know.

She starts, she trembles, and she weeps!
Her fair hands folded on her breast.
-And now, how like a saint she sleeps!
A seraph in the realms of rest!

Sleep on secure! Above control,
Thy thoughts belong to heaven and thee!
And may the secret of thy soul
Remain within its sanctuary!

ΤΟ

Go-you may call it madness, folly;
You shall not chase my gloom away.
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not, if I could, be gay.

O, if you knew the pensive pleasure
That fills my bosom when I sigh,
You would not rob me of a treasure
Monarchs are too poor to buy.

FROM EURIPIDES.

THERE is a streamlet issuing from a rock.
The village girls, singing wild madrigals,
Dip their white vestments in its waters clear,
And hang them to the sun.

her.

THE SAILOR.

THE sailor sighs as sinks his native shore,
As all its lessening turrets bluely fade;
He climbs the mast to feast his eye once more,
And busy fancy fondly lends her aid.

Ah! now each dear, domestic scene he knew
Recall'd and cherish'd in a foreign clime,
Charms with the magic of a moonlight view;
Its colours mellow'd, not impair'd, by time.
True as the needle, homeward points his heart,
Through all the horrors of the stormy main;
This, the last wish that would with life depart,
To see the smile of her he loves again.

When morn first faintly draws her silver line,
Or eve's gray cloud descends to drink the wave;
When sea and sky in midnight darkness join,
Still, still he views the parting look she gave.

Her gentle spirit, lightly hovering o'er,
Attends his little bark from pole to pole;
And when the beating billows round him roar,
Whispers sweet hope to soothe his troubled soul.
Carved is her name in many a spicy grove,
In many a plantain forest, waving wide;
Where dusky youths in painted plumage rove,
And giant palms o'erarch the golden tide.
But lo, at last he comes with crowded sail!
Lo, o'er the cliff what eager figures bend!
And hark, what mingled murmurs swell the gale
In each he hears the welcome of a friend.
-Tis she, 'tis she herself! she waves her hand!
Soon is the anchor cast, the canvass furl'd;
Soon through the whitening surge he springs to
land,

There first I saw And clasps the maid he singled from the world.

Her dark and eloquent eyes, mild, full of fire,
"Twas heaven to look upon; and her sweet voice,
As tunable as harp of many strings,

At once spoke joy and sadness to my soul!

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TO AN OLD OAK.

Immota manet; multosque nepotes,

Multir virum volvens durando sæcula, vincit.-Virg.

ROUND thee, alas, no shadows move!
From thee no sacred murmurs breathe!
Yet within thee, thyself a grove,
Once did the eagle scream above,
And the wolf howl beneath.

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There once the steel-clad knight reclined,
His sable plumage tempest toss'd;
And, as the death-bell smote the wind,
From towers long fled by human kind
His brow the hero cross'd!

Then culture came, and days serene;
And village sports, and garlands gay.
Full many a pathway cross'd the green;
And maids and shepherd youths were seen
To celebrate the May.

Father of many a forest deep,
Whence many a navy thunder fraught
Erst in thy acorn-cells asleep,
Soon destined o'er the world to sweep,
Opening new spheres of thought!
Wont in the night of woods to dwell,
The holy Druid saw thee rise;
And, planting there the guardian spell,
Sung forth, the dreadful pomp to swell
Of human sacrifice!

Thy singed top and branches bare
Now straggle in the evening sky;

And the wan moon wheels round to glare
On the long corse that shivers there
Of him who came to die!

TO TWO SISTERS.*

WELL may you sit within, and, fond of grief, Look in each other's face, and melt in tears. Well may you shun all counsel, all relief. 0, she was great in mind, though young in years! Changed is that lovely countenance, which shed Light when she spoke, and kindled sweet surprise, As o'er her frame each warm emotion spread, Play'd round her lips, and sparkled in her eyes. Those lips so pure, that moved but to persuade, Still to the last enliven'd and endear'd. Those eyes at once her secret soul convey'd, And ever beam'd delight when you appear'd. Yet has she fled the life of bliss below, That youthful hope in bright perspective drew? False were the tints! false as the feverish glow That o'er her burning cheek distemper threw ! And now in joy she dwells, in glory moves! (Glory and joy reserved for you to share.) Far, far more blest in blessing those she loves Than they, alas! unconscious of her care.

Sweet drop of pure and pearly light!
In thee the rays of virtue shine;
More calmly clear, more mildly bright,

Than any gem that gilds the mine.
Benign restorer of the soul!
Who ever fly'st to bring relief,
When first we feel the rude control
Of love or pity, joy or grief.

The sage's and the poet's theme,
In every clime, in every age;
Thou charm'st in fancy's idle dream,
In reason's philosophic page.

That very law which moulds a tear,
And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course.

TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST.t

Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor 1
Aëris et linguæ sum filia;

Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum.-Ausonius.

ONCE more, enchantress of the soul,
Once more we hail thy soft control.
-Yet whither, whither didst thou fly?
To what bright region of the sky?
Say, in what distant star to dwell?
(Of other worlds thou seem'st to tell)
Or trembling, fluttering here below,
Resolved and unresolved to go,
In secret didst thou still impart
Thy raptures to the pure in heart?
Perhaps to many a desert shore,
Thee, in his rage, the tempest bore;
Thy broken murmurs swept along,
'Mid echoes yet untuned by song;
Arrested in the realms of frost,
Or in the wilds of ether lost.

Far happier thou! 'twas thine to soar
Careering on the winged wind.
Thy triumphs who shall dare explore?
Suns and their systems left behind.
No tract of space, no distant star,
No shock of elements at war,
Did thee detain. Thy wing of fire
Bore thee amidst the cherub-choir;
And there a while to thee 'twas given
Once more that voice‡ beloved to join,
Which taught thee first a flight divine,
And nursed thy infant years with many a strain
from heaven!

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284

TO THE

FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES,

COMMONLY CALLED THE TORSO.

AND dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone,
(Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurl'd,)
Still sit as on the fragment of a world;
Surviving all, majestic and alone?

What though the spirits of the north, that swept
Rome from the earth, when in her pomp she slept,
Smote thee with fury, and thy headless trunk
Deep in the dust 'mid tower and temple sunk;
Soon to subdue mankind 'twas thine to rise,
Still, still unquell'd thy glorious energies!
Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught*
Bright revelations of the good they sought;
By thee that long-lost spellt in secret given,
To draw down gods, and lift the soul to heaven!

ΤΟ

AH! little thought she, when, with mild delight,
By many a torrent's shining track she flew,
When mountain-glens and caverns full of night
O'er her young mind divine enchantment threw,
That in her veins a secret horror slept,
That her light footsteps should be heard no more,
That she should die-nor watch'd, alas! nor wept
By thee, unconscious of the pangs she bore.
Yet round her couch indulgent fancy drew
The kindred forms her closing eye required.
There didst thou stand-there, with the smile she
knew,

She moved her lips to bless thee, and expired.
And now to thee she comes; still, still the same
As in the hours gone unregarded by !

To thee, how changed! comes as she ever came
Health on her cheek, and pleasure in her eye!
Nor less, less oft, as on that day, appears,
When lingering, as prophetic of the truth,
By the way-side she shed her parting tears-
For ever lovely in the light of youth!

WRITTEN IN A SICK CHAMBER.
THERE, in that bed so closely curtain'd round,
Worn to a shade, and wan with slow decay,
A father sleeps! O hush'd be every sound!
Soft may we breathe the midnight hours away!
He stirs yet still he sleeps. May heavenly dreams
Long o'er his smooth and settled pillow rise;
Till through the shutter'd pane the morning streams
And on the hearth the glimmering rushlight dies.

* In the gardens of the Vatican, where it was placed by Julius II., it was long the favourite study of those great men to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Carracci.

+ Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an ancient epigram on the Guidian Venus.-Analecta Vet. Poetarum, III. 200.

On the death of her sister.

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.*

"SAY, what remains when hope is filed ?>
She answer'd, "Endless weeping!"
For in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.

At Embsay rung the matin-bell,
The stag was roused on Barden fell;
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying,
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying;
When near the cabin in the wood,
In tartan clad and forest green,
With hound in leash and hawk in hood,
The Boy of Egremond was seen,
Blithe was his song, a song of yore;
But where the rock is rent in two,
And the river rushes through,
His voice was heard no more!
"Twas but a step! the gulf he pass'd
But that step-it was his last!
As through the mist he wing'd his way,
(A cloud that hovers night and day,)
The hound hung back, and back he drew
The master and his merlin too.
That narrow place of noise and strife
Received their little all of life!

There now the matin-bell is rung;
The "Miserere!" duly sung;
And holy men in cowl and hood
Are wandering up and down the wood.
But what avail they? Ruthless lord,
Thou didst not shudder when the sword
Here on the young its fury spent,
The helpless and the innocent.
Sit now and answer groan for groan,
The child before thee is thy own.
And she who wildly wanders there
The mother in her long despair,

Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping,
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping;
Of those who would not be consoled
When red with blood the river roll'd.

TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE. ON thee, blest youth, a father's hand confers The maid thy earliest, fondest wishes knew. Each soft enchantment of the soul is hers; Thine be the joys to firm attachment due. As on she moves with hesitating grace, She wins assurance from his soothing voice; And, with a look the pencil could not trace, Smiles through her blushes, and confirms the choice.

In the twelfth century William Fitz-Duncan laid waste the valleys of Craven with fire and sword; and was afterward established there by his uncle, David, King of Scotland.

He was the last of the race; his son, commonly called the Boy of Egremond, dying before him in the manner here related; when a priory was removed from Embsay to Bolton, that it might be as near as possible to the place where the accident happened. That place is still known by the name of the Strid; and the mother's answer, as given in the first stanza, is to this day often repeated in Wharfedale. See Whittaker's Hist. of Craven.

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Spare the fine tremors of her feeling frame!
To thee she turns-forgive a virgin's fears!
To thee she turns with surest, tenderest claim:
Weakness that charms, reluctance that endears!

At each response the sacred rite requires,
From her full bosom bursts th' unbidden sigh.
A strange, mysterious awe the scene inspires;
And on her lips the trembling accents die.

O'er her fair face what wild emotions play!
What lights and shades in sweet confusion blend!
Soon shall they fly, glad harbingers of day,
And settled sunshine on her soul descend!

Ah soon, thine own confest, ecstatic thought!
That hand shall strew thy summer path with flowers;
And those blue eyes, with mildest lustre fraught,
Gild the calm current of domestic hours!

TO THE

YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY ****,

Aн, why with tell-tale tongue reveal
What most her blushes would conceal?
Why lift that modest veil to trace
The seraph sweetness of her face?
Some fairer, better sport prefer;
And feel for us, if not for her.

For this presumption, soon or late,
Know thine shall be a kindred fate.
Another shall in vengeance rise-
Sing Harriet's cheeks, and Harriet's eyes;
And, echoing back her wood-notes wild,
-Trace all the mother in the child!

THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK. THE Sunbeams streak the azure skies, And line with light the mountain's brow: With hounds and horns the hunters rise, And chase the roe-buck through the snow. From rock to rock, with giant bound, High on their iron poles they pass; Mute, lest the air, convulsed by sound, Rend from above a frozen mass.*

The goats wind slow their wonted way,
Up craggy steeps and ridges rude;
Mark'd by the wild wolf for his prey,
From desert cave or hanging wood.

And while the torrent thunders loud,
And as the echoing cliffs reply,
The huts peep o'er the morning cloud,
Perch'd, like an eagle's nest, on high.

IMITATION OF AN ITALIAN SONNET.

LOVE, under friendship's vesture white, Laughs, his little limbs concealing; And oft in sport, and oft in spite, Like pity meets the dazzled sight, Smiles through his tears revealing.

But now as rage the god appears!

He frowns, and tempests shake his frame !Frowning, or smiling, or in tears, 'Tis love; and love is still the same.

AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST

TREAD lightly here; for here, 'tis said,
When piping winds are hush'd around,
A small note wakes from under ground,
Where now his tiny bones are laid.
No more in lone and leafless groves,
With ruffled wing and faded breast,
His friendless, homeless spirit roves;
-Gone to the world where birds are blest!
Where never cat glides o'er the green,
Or schoolboy's giant form is seen;
But love, and joy, and smiling spring,
Inspire their little souls to sing!

TO THE GNAT.

WHEN by the greenwood side, at summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy scenes, that fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest minstrelsy;
'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heaven away,
And all is solitude, and all is night!
-Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheathes its terrors in the sultry air;
No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,

Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear.
Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings,
Thy dragon scales still wet with human gore.
Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful larum flings!
-I wake in horror, and dare sleep no more!

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The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, a welcome guest.

Around my ivied porch shall spring
Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing
In russet gown and apron blue.

The village church, among the trees,
Where first our marriage vows were given,
With merry peals shall swell the breeze,
And point with taper spire to heaven.

WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT, 1786. WHILE through the broken pane the tempest sighs, And my step falters on the faithless floor, Shades of departed joys around me rise, With many a face that smiles on me no more; With many a voice that thrills of transport gave, Now silent as the grass that tufts their grave!

AN ITALIAN SONG.

DEAR is my little native vale,

The ring-dove builds and murmurs there; Close by my cot she tells her tale

To every passing villager.

The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty.

In orange groves and myrtle bowers,
That breathe a gale of fragrance round,
I charm the fairy-footed hours
With my loved lute's romantic sound;
Or crowns of living laurel weave,
For those that win the race at eve.
The shepherd's horn at break of day,
The ballet danced in twilight glade,
The canzonet and roundelay
Sung in the silent greenwood shade,
These simple joys, that never fail,
Shall bind me to my native vale.

AN INSCRIPTION.

SHEPHERD, or huntsman, or worn mariner,
Whate'er thou art, who wouldst allay thy thirst,
Drink and be glad. This cistern of white stone,
Arch'd, and o'erwrought with many a sacred verse,
This iron cup chain'd for the general use,
And these rude seats of earth within the grove,
Were given by Fatima. Borne hence a bride,
"Twas here she turn'd from her beloved sire,
To see his face no more.* O, if thou canst,
("Tis not far off,) visit his tomb with flowers;
And with a drop of this sweet water fill
The two small cells scoop'd in the marble there,

See an anecdote related by Pausanias, iii. 20.

That birds may come and drink upon his grave, Making it holy !*

WRITTEN IN THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOT
LAND, SEPTEMBER 2, 1812.

BLUE was the loch, the clouds were gone,
Ben Lomond in his glory shone,
When, Luss, I left thee; when the breeze
Bore me from thy silver sands,

Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees,
Where, gray with age, the dial stands ;
That dial so well known to me!
-Though many a shadow it had shed,
Beloved sister, since with thee
The legend on the stone was read.

The fairy isles fled far away;
That with its woods and uplands green,
Where shepherd huts are dimly seen,
And songs are heard at close of day;
That, too, the deer's wild covert, fled,
And that, th' asylum of the dead:
While, as the boat went merrily,
Much of Rob Royt the boatman told ;
His arm, that fell below his knee,
His cattle ford and mountain hold.
Tarbat, thy shore I climb'd at last,
And, thy shady region pass'd,
Upon another shore I stood,
And look'd upon another flood;§
Great ocean's self! ("Tis he who fills
That vast and awful depth of hills ;)
Where many an elf was playing round,
Who treads unshod his classic ground;
And speaks, his native rocks among,
As Fingal spoke, and Ossian sung.

Night fell; and dark and darker grew
That narrow sea, that narrow sky,
As o'er the glimmering waves we flew ;
The sea-bird rustling, wailing by.
And now the grampus, half descried,
Black and huge above the tide,
The cliffs and promontories there,
Front to front, and broad and bare;
Each beyond each, with giant feet
Advancing as in haste to meet;
The shatter'd fortress, whence the Dane
Blew his shrill blast, nor rush'd in vain,
Tyrant of the drear domain:
All into midnight shadow sweep,
When day springs upward from the deep!
Kindling the waters in its flight,
The prow wakes splendour; and the oar,
That rose and fell unseen before,
Flashes in a sea of light!

Glad sign, and sure! for now we hail
Thy flowers, Glenfinnart, in the gale;
And bright indeed the path should be
That leads to friendship and to thee!

A Turkish superstition.

† A famous outlaw.

Signifying, in the Erse language, an isthmus. § Loch Long.

A phenomenon described by many navigators.

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