cave

In which, through many seasons, from the Blank ocean and mere sky, support that world

mood Removed, and the affections of the world, which with the lofty sanctifies the low: He dwelt in solitude.-But he had left Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, A Fellow - labourer, whom the good Man

we know, loved

Are a substantial world, both pure and good : As his own soul. And, when within his Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh

and blood, Alone he knelt before the Crucifix

Our pastime and our happiness will grow. While o'er the Lake the cataract of Lodore There do I find a never-failing store Pealed to his orisons, and when he paced Of personal themes, and such as I love best; Along the beach of his small isle and thought Maiter wherein right voluble I am: of his Companion, he would pray that both Two will I mention, dearer than the rest : (Now that their earthly duties were fulfill'd) The gentle Lady, married to the Moor; Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain And heavenly Una with her milk - white So prayed be:-as our Chronicles report,

Lamb. Though here the Hermit numbered his last

day, Far from St. Cuthbert his beloved Friend, Nor can I not believe but that hereby Those holy Men both died in the same hour. Great gains are mine: for thus I live

remote From evil-speaking; rancour, never sought, Comes to me not; malignant truth, or lie.

Hence have I genial seasons, hence have I THE POET'S LIFE.

Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and I ay not One who much or oft delight

joyous thought: To season my fireside with personal talk,- And thus from day to day my little Boat of Friends, who live' within an easy walk, Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably. Or Neighbours, daily, weekly, iņ my sight: Blessings be with them—and eternal praise, And, for my chance - acquaintance, Ladies Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares,

bright,

The Poets, who on earth have made us Heirs Sons, Mothers, Maidens withering on the of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!

stalk,

Oh! might my name be numbered among These all wear out of me, like Forms, with

theirs, chalk

Then gladly would I end my mortal days. Painted on rich men's floors, for one feast

night.
Better than such discourse doth silence long,
Long, barren silence, square with my desire;
To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,

THE FORCE OF PRAYER;
In the lov'd presence of my cottage-fire,

OP BOLTON-PRIORY. And listen to the flapping of the flame, Or kettle, whispering its faint undersong. “Yet life,” you say, "is life; we have seen with these dark words begins my Tale;

“What is good for a bootless bene?”

and see, And with a living pleasure we describe;

And their meaning is : whence can comfort

spring And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe The languid mind into activity.

When Prayer is of no avail ? Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and

glee, Are fostered by the comment and the gibe!" What is good for a bootless bene?” Even be it so: yet still among your tribe. And she made answer: “ Endless Sorrow!" Our daily world's true Worldlings, rank

not me!

For she knew that her Son was dead. Children are blest, and powerful; their world

lies More justly balanced; partly at their feet, She knew it by the Falconer's words, And part far from them:-sweetest melodies And from the look of the Falconer's eye, Are those that are by distance made more and from the love which was in her soul

For her youthful Romilly.

sweet; Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes He is a Slave; the meanest we can meet! - Young Romilly through Barden Woods

Is ranging high and low;
Wings have we,--and as far as we can go And holds a Greyhound in a leash,
We may find pleasure: wilderness and wood, | To let slip upon buck or doe.

OR THE

FOUNDING

And the Pair have reached that fearful chasm, | And the Lady prayed in heaviness
How tempting to bestride!

That looked not for relief;
For lordly Wharf is there pent in

But slowly did her succour come, With rocks on either side.

And a patience to her grief.

This Striding-place is called The STRID,
A naine which it took of yore:
A thousand years hath it borne that name
And shall, a thousand more.

Oh! there is never sorrow of heart
That shall lack a timely end,
If but to God we turn, and ask
Of Him to be our Friend!

And hither is young Romilly come,
And what may now forbid
That he, perhaps for the hundredth time,

INTIMATIONS
Shall bound across The Strip ?

OF IMMORTALITY FROY RECOLLECTIONS OF BARLY

CHILDHOOD. He sprang in glee,- for what cared he That the River was strong and the rocks THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and were steep?

stream, -But the Greyhound in the leash hung back, The earth, and every common sight, And checked him in his leap.

To me did seem

Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it has been of yore;The Boy is in the arms of Wharf,

Turn wheresoe'er I may,
And strangled by a merciless force ;
For never more was young Romilly seen

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can Till he rose a lifeless Corse!

see no more.

Now there is stillness in the Vale,
And long unspeaking sorrow :--
Wharf shall be to pitying hearts
A name more sad than Yarrow.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,-

The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are

bare:
Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from

the earth.

If for a Lover the Lady wept,
A solace she might borrow
From death, and from the passion of death;-
Old Wharf might heal her sorrow.

She weeps not for the wedding-day
Which was to be to-morrow :
Her hope was a farther-looking hope,
And hers in a Mother's Sorrow.

He was a Tree that stood alone,
And proudly did its branches wave;
And the Root of this delightful Tree
Was in her Husband's grave!

Now, while the Birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I again am strong,
The Cataracts blow their trumpets from the

steep,-
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains

throng, The winds come to me from the fields of

sleep,-
And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday ;

Thou Child of Joy
Shout roand me, let me hear thy shoats,

thou happy Shepherd-Boy!

Long, long in darkness did she sit,
And her first words were: “Let there be
In Bolton, on the field of Wharf,
A stately Priory!”

The stately Priory was reared ;
And Wharf, as he moved along,
To Matins joined a mournful voice,
Nor failed at Even-song.

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call

And this hath now his heart, Ye to each other make; I sec

And unto this he frames his song: The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

Then will he fit his tongue My heart is at your festival,

To dialogues of business, love, or strife; My head hath it's coronal,

But it will not be long
The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel it all.

Ere this be thrown aside,
Oh evil day! if I were sullen

And with new joy and pride
While the Earth herself is adorning, The little Actor cons another part,

This sweet May-morning, Filling from time to time his humorous stage
And the Children are pulling, With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
On every side,

That Life brings with her in her Equipage;
In a thousand vallies far and wide,

As if his whole vocation
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines

Were endless imitation.
warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his mother's arm :-

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
But there's a Tree, of many one,

Thy Soul's immensity;
A single Field which I have look'd upon, Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Both of them speak of something that is gone: Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
The Pansy at my feet

That, deaf and silent, readst the eternal deep, Doth the same tale repeat: Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, A Presence which is not to be put by;
Hath had elsewhere it's setting,

To whom the grave
And cometh from afar:

Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Not in entire forgetfulness,

Of day or the warm light, And not in utter nakedness, A place of thought where we in waiting lie; But trailing clouds of glory do we come Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

From God, who is our home: of heaven-born freedom, on thy Being's Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

height, Shades of the prison-house begin to close Why with such earnest pains dost thou Upon the growing Boy,

provoke Bat He beholds the light, and whence it flows, The Years to bring the inevitable yoke, He sees it in his joy;

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? The Youth, who daily farther from the East Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

freight, And by the vision splendid And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Is on his way attended ;

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

O joy! that in our cmbers

Is something that doth live, Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

That nature yet remembers Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

What was so fugitive! And, even with something of a Mother's mind, The thought of our past years in me doth And no unworthy aim,

breed The homely Nurse doth all she can Perpetual benedictions: not indeed To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, For that which is most worthy to be blest;

Forget the glories he hath known, Delight and liberty, the simple creed And that imperial palace whence he came. Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his

breast:Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

Not for these I raise A four years' Darling of a pigmy size!

The song of thanks and praise ;
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, But for those obstinate questionings
Fretted by sallies of his Mother's kisses, Of sense and outward things,
With light upon him from his Father's eyes! Fallings from us, vanishings;
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Blank misgivings of a Creature
Some fragment from his dream of human life, Moving about in worlds not realiz’d,
Shap'd by himself with newly-learned art;' High instincts, before which our mortal
A wedding or a festival,

Nature
A mourning or a funeral; Did tremble like a guilty Thing surpriz'd!

ܕ

FOR A

THE MORNINQ OF THE DAY APPOINTED

GENERAL THANKSGIVING.

But for those first affections,

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Those shadowy recollections,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, Which, be they what they may,

To me the meanest flower that blows can Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

give Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. Uphold us—cherish, and have power to

make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never ;

0 D E Which neither listlessness, nor mad endea

vour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy !

JANUARY 18, 1816.
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,

Hail, universal Source of pure delight! Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Thou that canst shed the bliss of gratitude

Which brought us hither; On hearts howe'er insensible or rude,

Can in a moment travel thither, - Whether thy orient visitations smite And see the Children sport upon the shore, The haughty towers where monarchs dwell; And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. Or thou, impartial Sun, with presence bright

Cheerst the low threshold of the peasant's

cell ! Then, sing ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous In naked splendour, clear from mist or baze,

-Not unrejoiced I see thee climb the sky song!

Or cloud approaching to divert the rays, And let the young Lambs bound

Which even in deepest winter testify
As to the tabor's sound !
We in thought will join your throng, Dazzling the vision that presumes to gaze.

Thy power and majesty,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Well does thine aspect usher in this Day;
Ye that through your hearts to-day

As aptly suits therewith that timid pace, Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once That bind thee to the path which God ordains

Framed in subjection to the chains so bright

That thou shalt trace, Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Till, with the heavens and earth, thou pass Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the Nor less the stillness of these frosty plains,

away! flower;

Their utter stillness,—and the silent grace
We will grieve not, rather find

Of yon etherial summits white with snow,
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy

Whose tranquil pomp, and spotless purity,

Report of storms gone by
Which having been must ever be,

To us who tread below,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,

Do with the service of this Day accord.
In the faith that looks through death, of mortal man is suffered to behold;

- Divinest object, which the uplifted eye In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Thou, who upon yon snow-clad heights hast

Meek splendour, nor forgetst' the humble And oh ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and

vale, Groves,

Thou who dost warm Earth's universal Think not of any severing of our loves!

mould, Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; And for thy bounty wert not unadored I only have relinquished one delight

By pious men of old; To live beneath your more habitual sway. Once more, heart-cheering Sun, I bid thec I love the Brooks which down their channels

hail; fret,

Bright be thy course to-day, let not this Even more than when I tripped lightly as

promise fail! they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet;

'Mid the deep quiet of this morning-hour The Clouds that gather round the setting sun All nature seems to hear me while I speak, Do take a sober colouring from an eye By feelings urged, that do not vainly seek That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Apt language, ready as the tuneful notes Another race hath been, and other palms That stream in blithe succession from the

poured

loose,

or birds in leafy bower,

How dreadful the dominion of the Impure ! Warbling a farewell to å vernal shower. Why should the song be tardy to proclaim There is a radiant but a short-lived flame That less than power unbounded could not That burns for Poets in the dawning East;

tame And oft my soul hath kindled at the same, That Soul of Evil – which, from Hell let When the captivity of sleep had ceased ; But he who fixed immovably the frame Had filled the astonished world with such Of the round world, and built, by laws as

abuse,
strong,

As boundless patience only could endure?
A solid refuge for distress, -Wide-wasted regions – cities wrapped in
The towers of righteousness;

flame-
He knows that from a holier altar came Who sees and feels, may lift a streaming eye
The quickening spark of this day's sacrifice; To Heaven,—who never saw may heave a
Knows that the source is nobler whence doth

sigh; rise

But the foundation of our nature shakes, The current of this matin-song; And with an infinite pain the spirit aches, That deeper far it lies

When desolated countries, towns on fire, Than aught dependant on the fickle skies.

Are but the avowed attire
Of warfare waged with desperate mind

Against the life of virtue in mankind;
Have we not conquered ?-By the vengeful

Assaulting without ruth

The citadels of truth;
sword?

While the old forest of civility
Ah no, by dint of Magnanimity;
That curbed the baser passions, and left

Is doomed to perish, to the last fair tree.

free A loyal band to follow their liege Lord, A crouching purpose—a distracted will — Clear-sighted Honour—and his staid Com- Opposed to hopes that battened upon scorn,

peers,

And to desires whose ever-waxing horn Along a track of most unnatural years,

Not all the light of earthly power could fill; In execution of heroic deeds ;

Opposed to dark, deep plots of patient skill, Whose memory, spotless as the crystal beads And the celerities of lawless force of morning-dew upon the untrodden meads, Which, spurning God, had flung away Shall live enrolled above the starry spheres. Who to the murmur of an earthly string What could they gain but shadows of redress?

of Britain's acts would sing, -So bad proceeded propagating worse;

He with enraptured voice will tell And discipline was passion's dire excess. of One whose spirit no reverse could quell; Widens the fatal web-its lines extend, or One that 'mid the failing never failed : And deadlier poisons in the chalice blendWho paints how Britain struggled and pre- When will your trials teach you to be wise?

vailed,

-O prostrate Lands, consult your agonies ! Shall represent her labouring with an eye

Of circamspect humanity;
Shall shew her clothed with strength No more-the guilt is banished,
and skill,

And with the Guilt the Shame is fled,
All martial duties to fulfil;

And with the Guilt and Shame the Woe Firm as a rock in stationary fight;

hath vanished, In motion rapid as the lightning's gleam; Shaking the dust and ashes from her head ! Fierce as a flood-gate bursting in the night -No more, these lingerings of distress To rouse the wicked from their giddy Sully the Jimpid stream of thankfulness.

dreamWoe, woe to all that face her in the field ! Appalled she may not be, and cannot yield. What robe can gratitude employ

So seemly as the radiant vest of Joy?

What steps so suitable as those that move And thus is missed the sole true glory In prompt obedience to spontaneous mea

sures
That can belong to human story!

of glory--and felicity-and love,
At which they only shall arrive
Who through the abyss of weakness

Surrendering the whole heart to sacred plea

sures ? dive: The very humblest are too proud of heart: And one brief day is rightly set apart Land of our fathers! precious unto me To Him who lifieth up and layeth low; Since the first joys of thinking infancy; por that Almighty God to whom we owe, When of thy gallant chivalry I read, Say not that we have vanquished-but that And hugged the volume on my sleepless we survive.

remorse