Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hillside; and now 't is buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep?

Hampton.

John Keats.

HAMPTON.

THUS

HUS with imagined wing our swift scene flies,
In motion of no less celerity

Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed King at Hampton pier
Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning.
Play with your fancies; and in them behold,
Upon the hempen tackle, ship-boys climbing,
Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think,
You stand upon the rivage, and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing!
For so appears this fleet majestical
Holding due course to Harfleur.

William Shakespeare.

Harrow-on-the-Hill.

LINES

WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCHYARD OF HARROW.

SPOT

POT of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh, Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky; Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod; With those who, scattered far, perchance deplore, Like me, the happy scenes they knew before: O, as I trace again thy winding hill, Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still, Thou drooping elm! beneath whose boughs I lay, And frequent mused the twilight hours away; Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline, But ah! without the thoughts which then were mine: How do thy branches, moaning to the blast, Invite the bosom to recall the past,

And seem to whisper, as they gently swell, "Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"

When fate shall chill, at length, this fevered breast, And calm its cares and passions into rest, Oft have I thought, 't would soothe my dying hour, If aught may soothe when life resigns her power, To know some humble grave, some narrow cell, Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell. With this fond dream, methinks, 't were sweet to die

And here it lingered, here my heart might lie;
Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose;
Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;
Forever stretched beneath this mantling shade,
Pressed by the turf where once my childhood played,
Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved,
Mixed with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved:
Blest by the tongues that charmed my youthful ear,
Mourned by the few my soul acknowledged here;
Deplored by those in early days allied,

And unremembered by the world beside.

HARROW.

IF

some good fairy granted me to play A chosen portion of my life again,

Lord Byron.

I would not ask an Oxford hour. The vain
Attempt to ape the follies of the day,
How soon it palls; while ever fresh and gay
Riseth the vision of the school-boy train

Who shouted, thoughtless, on dear Harrow's plain,
And clomb the hill when eve was growing gray.
O for the careless days, the dreamless nights;
The broken bounds, the plunge into the pool;
The elastic feet that ne'er the leap refuse;
The summer games, the winter's mimicked fights:
O for the guileless friendships formed at school,
The first shy whispers of the natural muse!

John Bruce Norton.

Hartland.

THE CELL.

HOW wildly sweet, by Hartland Tower,

The thrilling voice of prayer; A seraph, from his cloudy bower, Might lean to listen there.

For time and place and storied days
To that gray fane have given
Hues that might win an angel's gaze,
Mid scenery of heaven.

Above, the ocean breezes sweep
With footsteps firm and free;
Around, the mountains guard the deep;
Beneath, the wide, wide sea.

Enter the arching roofs expand,
Like vessels on the shore,
Inverted, when the fisher-band

Might tread their planks no more.

But reared on high in that stern form,
Lest faithless hearts forget

The men that braved the ancient storm
And hauled the early net.

The tracery of a quaint old time
Still weaves the chancel screen;

And tombs, with many a broken rhyme,

Suit well this simple scene.

A Saxon font, with baptism bright,
The womb of mystic birth;
An altar where, in angels' sight,
Their Lord descends to earth.

Here glides the spirit of the psalm,

Here breathes the soul of prayer; The awful church, so hushed, so calm, Ah! surely God is there.

And lives no legend on the wall?
No theme of former men?
A shape to rise at fancy's call,
And sink in graves again?

Yes! there, through yonder portal stone,
With whispered words they tell,

How once the monk with name unknown
Prepared that silent cell.

He came with griefs that shunned the light,
With vows long breathed in vain:
Those arches heard, at dead of night,
The lash, the shriek, the pain,

The prayer that rose and fell in tears,
The sob, the bursting sigh:
Till woke with agony of years
The exceeding bitter cry.

This lasted long,

as life will wear, E'en though in anguish nursed,