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It seemed like Omnipresence! God, methought,
Had built him there a Temple: the whole World
Seemed imaged in its vast circumference.
No wish profaned my overwhelmed Heart.
Blest hour! It was a Luxury,-to be!

Ah! quiet dell! dear cot, and mount sublime! I was constrained to quit you. Was it right, While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, That I should dream away the entrusted hours On rose-leaf Beds, pampering the coward Heart With feelings all too delicate for use ? Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye Drops on the cheek of One he lifts from Earth: And He that works me good with unmoved face, Does it but half he chills me while he aids, My Benefactor, not my Brother Man!

Yet even this, this cold Beneficence

Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving Tribe!

Who sigh for Wretchedness, yet shun the wretched, Nursing in some delicious solitude

Their slothful loves and dainty Sympathies!

I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,

Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of Science, Freedom, and the Truth in Christ.

Yet oft when after honourable toil

Rests the tired mind, and waking loves to dream,
My spirit shall revisit thee, dear Cot!
Thy Jasmin and thy window-peeping Rose,
And Myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air.
And I shall sigh fond wishes-sweet Abode!
Ah!-had none greater! And that all had such!
It might be so-but the time is not yet.
Speed it, O Father! Let thy Kingdom come!

TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE OF

OTTERY ST. MARY, DEVON.

WITH SOME POEMS.

Notus in fratres animi paterni.

HOR. Carm. lib. 1. 2.

A BLESSED lot hath he, who having passed
His youth and early manhood in the stir
And turmoil of the world, retreats at length,
With cares that move, not agitate the Heart,
To the same Dwelling where his Father dwelt ;
And haply views his tottering little ones

Embrace those aged knees and climb that lap,
On which first kneeling his own Infancy

Lisped its brief prayer. Such, O my earliest Friend! 'Thy lot, and such thy brothers too enjoy.

At distance did ye climb Life's upland road,

Yet cheered and cheering: now fraternal Love
Hath drawn you to one centre. Be your days
Holy, and blest and blessing may ye live!

To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed A different fortune and more different mind— Me from the spot where first I sprang to light Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fixed Its first domestic loves; and hence through Life Chasing chance-started Friendships. A brief while Some have preserved me from Life's pelting ills; But, like a Tree with leaves of feeble stem, If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once Dropped the collected shower; and some most false, False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel,

Have tempted me to slumber in their shade

E'en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps,
Mixed their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poisoned! But, all praise to Him
Who gives us all things, more have yielded me
Permanent shelter; and beside one Friend,
Beneath the impervious covert of one Oak,
I've raised a lowly shed, and know the names
Of Husband and of Father; nor unhearing
Of that divine and nightly-whispering Voice,

Which from

my

childhood to maturer years

Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,

Bright with no fading colours!

Yet at times

My soul is sad, that I have roamed through life
Still most a Stranger, most with naked heart
At mine own home and birth-place: chiefly then,
When I remember thee, my earliest Friend!
Thee, who didst watch my boyhood and my youth;
Didst trace my wanderings with a Father's eye;
And boding evil yet still hoping good

Rebuked each fault, and over all my woes
Sorrowed in Silence! He who counts alone
The beatings of the solitary heart,

That Being knows, how I have loved thee ever,
Loved as a brother, as a Son revered thee!
Oh! 'tis to me an ever new delight,

To talk of thee and thine: or when the blast
Of the shrill winter, rattling our rude sash,
Endears the cleanly hearth and social bowl;
Or when as now, on some delicious eve,
We in our sweet sequestered Orchard-Plot
Sit on the Tree crooked earth-ward; whose old boughs,

That hang above us in an arborous roof,

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