And send it in a torrent down the vale.
Exposed, and naked, to its utmost rage,
Through all the sea of harvest rolling round,
The billowy plain floats wide; nor can evade,
Though pliant to the blast, its seizing force-
Or whirled in air, or into vacant chaff
Shook waste.

And sometimes too a burst of rain,
Swept from the black horizon, broad, descends
In one continuous flood. Still over head
The mingling tempest weaves its gloom, and still
The deluge deepens; till the fields around
Lie sunk, and flatted, in the sordid wave.
Sudden, the ditches swell; the meadows swim.
Red, from the hills, innumerable streams
Tumultuous roar; and high above its bank
The river lift; before whose rushing tide,
Herds, flocks, and harvests, cottages, and swains,
Roll mingled down: all that the winds had spared,

In one
wild moment ruined; the big hopes,
And well-earned treasures, of the painful year.
Fled to some eminence, the husbandman,
Helpless, beholds the miserable wreck
Driving along; his drowning ox at once
Descending, with his labours scattered round,

He

sees; and instant o'er his shivering thought Comes Winter unprovided, and a train

clamant children dear. Ye masters, then, mindful of the rough laborious hand That sinks you soft in elegance and ease; Be mindful of those limbs, in russet clad,

Of Be

Whose toil to yours is warmth and graceful pride;

And, oh, be mindful of that sparing board

Which

covers yours with luxury profuse,

Makes your glass sparkle, and your sense rejoice!

N

or cruelly demand what the deep rains And all-involving winds have swept away.

TO HER I LOVE.

Tell me, thou soul of her I love,

Ah! tell me, whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?

Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam

And sometimes share thy lover's woe;
Where, void of thee, his cheerless home
Can now, alas! no comfort know?

.

Oh! if thou hoverest round my walk,
While, under every well-known tree,
1 to thy fancied shadow talk,

And every tear is full of thee;

Should then the weary eye of grief,

Beside some sympathetic stream,
In slumber find a short relief,

Oh! visit thou my soothing dream!

FROM 'THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE'

BOOK I.

In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,

Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.

It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;

And there a season atween June and May,

Half prankt with spring, with summer half imbrowned, A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,

No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play.

Was nought around but images of rest :
Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ;
And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kest,
From poppies breathed, and beds of pleasant green,
Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
Meantime, unnumbered glittering streamlets played,
And hurled everywhere their waters sheen;
That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,
Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

Joined to the prattle of the purling rills
Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale;
And, now and then, sweet Philomel would wail,
Or stockdoves plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds yblent inclinèd all to sleep.

Full in the passage of the vale, above,

A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,

Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move,
As Idless fancied in her dreaming mood;
And up the hills, on either side, a wood

Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,

Sent forth

sleepy horror through the blood;

And where this valley winded out, below,

The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.

a

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;

And of

castles in the clouds that pass,

For ever flushing round a summer-sky :

There

eke the soft delights, that witchingly

Instil

a wanton sweetness through the breast;

And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh; But whate'er smacked of noyance or unrest, Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest.

gay

*

Straight of these endless numbers, swarming round,
As thick as idle motes in sunny ray,

Not one eftsoons in view was to be found,
But every man strolled off his own glad way;
Wide o'er this ample court's blank area,
With all the lodges that thereto pertained,
No living creature could be seen to stray;
While solitude, and perfect silence reigned;
So that to think you dreamt you almost was constrained.

As when a shepherd of the Hebrid-Isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main,
(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles;
Or that aërial beings sometimes deign
To stand, embodied, to our senses plain)
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in Ocean Phoebus dips his wain
A vast assembly moving to and fro,
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.

*

*

*

Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran
Soft tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell,
And sobbing breezes sighed, and oft began
(So worked the wizard) wintry storms to swell,
As heaven and earth they would together mell;
At doors and windows threatening seemed to call
The demons of the tempest, growling fell,

*

*

Yet the least entrance found they none at all: Whence sweeter grew our sleep secure in massy hall.

And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams,
Raising a world of gayer tinct and grace;
O'er which were shadowy cast elysian gleams,
That played, in waving lights, from place to place;
And shed a roseate smile on nature's face.

Not Titian's pencil e'er could so array,

So fleece with clouds the pure ethereal space; Ne could it e'er such melting forms display, As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay.

No, fair illusions! artful phantoms, no! My muse will not attempt your fairy land: She has no colours that like you can glow: To catch your vivid scenes too gross her hand. But sure it is, was ne'er a subtler band Than these same guileful angel-seeming sprights, Who thus in dreams voluptuous, soft, and bland, Poured all the Arabian heaven upon our nights, And blest them oft besides with more refined delights.

To number up the thousands dwelling here, An useless were, and eke an endless task; From kings, and those who at the helm appear, To gipsies brown in summer-glades who bask. Yea many a man, perdie, I could unmask, Whose desk and table make a solemn show, With tape-ty'd trash, and suits of fools that ask For place or pension laid in decent row; But these I passen by, with nameless numbers moe.

Of all the gentle tenants of the place,

There

was a man of special grave remark1;

A certain tender gloom o'erspread his face,
Pensive, not sad; in thought involv'd, not dark;
As soot this man could sing as morning lark,
And teach the noblest morals of the heart;

Of the fine stores he nothing would impart, Which or boon Nature gave, or nature-painting Art. To noontide shades incontinent he ran, Where purls the brook with sleep-inviting sound, Or when Dan Sol to slope his wheels began, Amid the broom he bask'd him on the ground, Where the wild thyme and camomile are found; There would he linger, till the latest ray Of light fate trembling on the welkin's bound, Then homeward thro' the twilight shadows stray, Sauntering and slow: so had he passed many a day.

' William Paterson, Thomson's amanuensis.