When gentle Spirits urged a sportive chace, Brushing with lucid wands the water's face; While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps, Charmed the tall circle of th' enchanted steeps. -The lights are vanished from the watry plains: No wreck of all the pageantry remains. Unheeded Night has overcome the vales: On the dark earth the baffled vision fails; The latest lingerer of the forest train, The lone black fir, forsakes the faded plain; Last evening sight, the cottage smoke no more, Lost in the thickened darkness, glimmers hoar; And, towering from the sullen dark-brown mere, Like a black wall, the mountain steeps appear. -Now o'er the soothed accordant heart we feel A sympathetic twilight slowly steal,

And ever, as we fondly muse, we find

The soft gloom deepening on the tranquil mind.
Stay! pensive, sadly-pleasing visions, stay!
Ah no! as fades the vale, they fade away.
Yet still the tender, vacant gloom remains;

Still the cold cheek its shuddering tear retains.

The bird, who ceased, with fading light, to thread Silent the hedge or steaming rivulet's bed,

From his grey re-appearing tower shall soon
Salute with boding note the rising moon,
Frosting with hoary light the pearly ground,
And pouring deeper blue to Æther's bound;
And pleased her solemn pomp of clouds to fold
In robes of azure, fleecy-white, and gold.

See, o'er the eastern hill, where Darkness broods
O'er all its vanished dells, and lawns, and woods;
Where but a mass of shade the sight can trace,
She lifts in silence up her lovely face;

Above the gloomy valley flings her light,

Far to the western slopes with hamlets white;
And gives, where woods the chequered upland strew,
To the green corn of summer autumn's hue.

Thus Hope, first pouring from her blessed horn Her dawn, far lovelier than the Moon's own morn; "Till higher mounted, strives in vain to cheer

The weary hills, impervious, blackening near;

-Yet does she still, undaunted, throw the while

On darling spots remote her tempting smile.
-Ev'n now she decks for me a distant scene,
(For dark and broad the gulph of time between)
Gilding that cottage with her fondest ray,
(Sole bourn, sole wish, sole object of my way;

How fair it's lawns and sheltering woods appear! How sweet it's streamlet murmurs in mine ear!) Where we, my friend, to happy days shall rise, 'Till our small share of hardly-paining sighs (For sighs will ever trouble human breath) Creep hushed into the tranquil breast of Death.

III.

EXTRACTS

FROM

DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES TAKEN DURING A PEDESTRIAN

TOUR IN THE ALPS.

(Published in 1793.)

PLEASURES OF THE PEDESTRIAN.

No sad vacuities his heart annoy ;

Blows not a Zephyr but it whispers joy;
For him lost flowers their idle sweets exhale;

He tastes the meanest note that swells the gale;
For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn,
And peeps the far-off spire, his evening bourn!
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head,

And dear the green-sward to his velvet tread;
Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
Upward he looks—" and calls it luxury;"
Kind Nature's charities his steps attend,

In every babbling brook he finds a friend,
While chast❜ning thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed
By Wisdom, moralize his pensive road.
Host of his welcome inn, the noon-tide bower,

To his spare meal he calls the passing poor;

He views the Sun uplift his golden fire,

Or sink, with heart alive like * Memnon's lyre;
Blesses the Moon that comes with kindest ray
To light him shaken by his viewless way.
With bashful fear no cottage children steal
From him, a brother at the cottage meal,
His humble looks no shy restraint impart,
Around him plays at will the virgin heart.
While unsuspended wheels the village dance,
The maidens eye him with inquiring glance,
Much wondering what sad stroke of crazing Care
Or desperate Love could lead a wanderer there,

I SIGH at hoary Chartreuse' doom.

Where now is fled that Power whose frown severe Tamed" sober Reason" till she crouched in fear? That breathed a death-like peace these woods around ;

The cloister startles at the gleam of arms,

And Blasphemy the shuddering fane alarms;

* The lyre of Memnon is reported to have emitted melancholy or cheerful tones, as it was touched by the sun's evening or morning rays.