From hill to dale, still more and more astray, Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul! What black despair, what horror, fills his heart, When for the dusky spot which fancy feigned, His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track and blest abode of man; While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild! Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost ; Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge
Smoothed up with snow; and what is land unknown, What water of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man, His wife, his children, and his friends, unseen. In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm: In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife nor children more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense, And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse, Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love. Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; And every sense and every heart is joy. Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months, With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year: And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks, And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, By brooks and groves in hollow-whispering gales. Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined, And spreads a common feast for all that lives. In Winter awful Thou! with clouds and storms Around Thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled, Majestic darkness! On the whirlwind's wing Riding sublime, Thou bidst the world adore, And humblest nature with Thy northern blast. Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine, Deep-felt, in these appear! a simple train, Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art, Such beauty and beneficence combined; Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade; And all so forming a harmonious whole, That, as they still succeed, they ravish still. But wandering oft, with rude unconscious gaze, Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ; Works in the secret deep; shoots steaming thence The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring; Flings from the sun direct the flaming day; Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth,
And as on earth this grateful change revolves, With transport touches all the springs of life. Nature, attend! join every living soul Beneath the spacious temple of the sky, In adoration join; and ardent raise
One general song! To Him, ye vocal gales, Breath soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes, Oh talk of Him in solitary glooms,
Where o'er the rock the scarcely waving pine Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.
And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar, Who shake the astonished world, lift high to heaven The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage. His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills; And let me catch it as I muse along.
Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound; Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself,
Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall. Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers, In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts, Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints. Ye forests, bend, ye harvests, wave to Him; Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart, As home he goes beneath the joyous moon. Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams; Ye constellations, while your angels strike, Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre. Great source of day! blest image here below Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide, From world to world, the vital ocean round, On nature write with every beam His praise. The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world, While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn. Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound; the broad responsive low, Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns, And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come. Ye woodlands, all awake; a boundless song Burst from the groves; and when the restless day, Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charm The listening shades, and teach the night His praise. Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles; At once the head, the heart, the tongue of all, Crown the great hymn! In swarming cities vast, Assembled men to the deep organ join The long resounding voice, oft breaking clear, At solemn pauses, through the swelling bass; And, as each mingling flame increases each, In one united ardour rise to heaven. Or if you rather choose the rural shade, And find a fane in every sacred grove, There let the shepherd's lute, the virgin's lay, The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre, Still sing the God of seasons as they roll. For me, when I forget the darling theme, Whether the blossom blows, the Summer ray Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams, Or Winter rises in the blackening east- Be my tongue mute, my fancy paint no more, And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat.
Should fate command me to the furthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, Rivers unknown to song; where first the sun Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles, 'tis nought to me; Since God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste as in the city full; And where He vital breathes, there must be joy. When even at last the solemn hour shall come, And wing my mystic flight to future worlds, I cheerful will obey; there with new powers, Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go
Where universal love not smiles around, Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns ; From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still, In infinite progression. But I lose Myself in Him, in light ineffable!
Come, then, expressive silence, muse His praise.
The Caravan of Mecca.
Breathed hot
From all the boundless furnace of the sky, And the wide glittering waste of burning sand, A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, Son of the desert! e'en the camel feels, Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast. Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad, Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands Commoved around, in gathering eddies play; Nearer and nearer still they darkening come, Till with the general all-involving storm Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise; And by their noonday fount dejected thrown, Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, Beneath descending hills, the caravan Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
Pestilence at Carthagena.
Wasteful, forth
Walks the dire power of pestilent disease. A thousand hideous fiends her course attend, Sick nature blasting, and to heartless woe And feeble desolation casting down The towering hopes and all the pride of man. Such as of late at Carthagena quenched The British fire. You, gallant Vernon, saw The miserable scene; you, pitying, saw To infant weakness sunk the warrior's arm; Saw the deep racking pang, the ghastly form, The lip pale quivering, and the beamless eye No more with ardour bright; you heard the groans Of agonising ships, from shore to shore; Heard, nightly plunged amid the sullen waves, The frequent corse; while on each other fixed In sad presage, the blank assistants seemed Silent to ask whom Fate would next demand.
From the 'Castle of Indolence.
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 pranked with spring, with summer half im- browned,
A listless climate made, where, sooth to say, No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.
Was nought around but images of rest : Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ; And flowery beds that slumb'rous 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 prattling 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 stock-doves '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 inclined 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 Idlesse fancied in her dreaming mood: And up the hills, on either side, a wood Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro, Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood; And where this valley winded out below, The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.
A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye : And of gay 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.
The landskip such, inspiring perfect ease, Where Indolence-for so the wizard hight- Close hid his castle 'mid embowering trees, That half shut out the beams of Phoebus bright, And made a kind of checkered day and night. Meanwhile, unceasing at the massy gate, Beneath a spacious palm, the wicked wight Was placed; and to his lute, of cruel fate, And labour harsh, complained, lamenting man's
Thither continual pilgrims crowded still, From all the roads of earth that pass there by ; For, as they chanced to breathe on neighbouring hill, The freshness of this valley smote their eye, And drew them ever and anon more nigh;
Till clustering round the enchanter false they hung, Ymolten with his syren melody;
While o'er the enfeebling lute his hand he flung, And to the trembling chords these tempting verses sung:
'Behold! ye pilgrims of this earth, behold! See all but man with unearned pleasure gay: See her bright robes the butterfly unfold, Broke from her wintry tomb in prime of May! What youthful bride can equal her array? Who can with her for easy pleasure vie? From mead to mead with gentle wing to stray, From flower to flower on balmy gales to fly, Is all she has to do beneath the radiant sky.
'Behold the merry minstrels of the morn, The swarming songsters of the careless grove, Ten thousand throats! that from the flowering thorn
Hymn their good God, and carol sweet of love, Such grateful kindly raptures them emove: They neither plough, nor sow; ne, fit for flail, E'er to the barn the nodding sheaves they drove ; Yet theirs each harvest dancing in the gale, Whatever crowns the hill, or smiles along the vale.
'Outcast of nature, man! the wretched thrall Of bitter dropping sweat, of sweltry pain, Of cares that eat away thy heart with gall, And of the vices, an inhuman train,
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....
The doors, that knew no shrill alarming bell, Ne cursed knocker plied by villain's hand, Self-opened into halls, where, who can tell What elegance and grandeur wide expand, The pride of Turkey and of Persia land? Soft quilts on quilts, on carpets carpets spread, And couches stretched around in seemly band; And endless pillows rise to prop the head;
So that each spacious room was one full-swelling bed.
And everywhere huge covered tables stood, With wines high flavoured and rich viands crowned; Whatever sprightly juice or tasteful food
On the green bosom of this earth are found, And all old ocean genders in his round; Some hand unseen these silently displayed, Even undemanded by a sign or sound; You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed, Fair ranged the dishes rose, and thick the glasses played.
The rooms with costly tapestry were hung, Where was inwoven many a gentle tale; Such as of old the rural poets sung,
Or of Arcadian or Sicilian vale: Reclining lovers, in the lonely dale,
Poured forth at large the sweetly-tortured heart; Or, sighing tender passion, swelled the gale, And taught charmed echo to resound their smart ; While flocks, woods, streams, around, repose and peace impart.
Those pleased the most, where, by a cunning hand Depainted was the patriarchal age;
What time Dan Abraham left the Chaldee land, And pastured on from verdant stage to stage, Where fields and fountains fresh could best engage. Toil was not then. Of nothing took they heed, But with wild beasts the sylvan war to wage, And o'er vast plains their herds and flocks to feed; Blest sons of nature they! true golden age indeed!
Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls, Bade the gay bloom of vernal landscapes rise, Or autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls; Now the black tempest strikes the astonished eyes, Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies; The trembling sun now plays o'er ocean blue, And now rude mountains frown amid the skies; Whate'er Lorraine light-touched with softening hue, Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew....
A certain music, never known before, Here lulled the pensive melancholy mind, Full easily obtained. Behoves no more, But sidelong, to the gently waving wind,
To lay the well-tuned instrument reclined; From which with airy flying fingers light, Beyond each mortal touch the most refined, The god of winds drew sounds of deep delight; Whence, with just cause, the harp of Æolus it hight.
Ah me! what hand can touch the string so fine? Who up the lofty diapason roll
Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine, Then let them down again into the soul? Now rising love they fanned; now pleasing dole They breathed, in tender musings, through the heart;
And now a graver sacred strain they stole, As when seraphic hands a hymn impart : Wild warbling nature all, above the reach of art!
Such the gay splendour, the luxurious state Of Caliphs old, who on the Tigris' shore, In mighty Bagdad, populous and great, Held their bright court, where was of ladies store; And verse, love, music, still the garland wore ; When sleep was coy, the bard in waiting there Cheered the lone midnight with the muse's lore; Composing music bade his dreams be fair, And music lent new gladness to the morning air.
Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran Soft tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell, And sobbing breezes sighed, and oft beganSo 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 fierce 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 sprites, Who thus in dreams voluptuous, soft, and bland, Poured all the Arabian heaven upon our nights, And blessed them oft besides with more refined delights.
They were, in sooth, a most enchanting train, Even feigning virtue; skilful to unite With evil good, and strew with pleasure pain. But for those fiends whom blood and broils delight, Who hurl the wretch, as if to hell outright, Down, down black gulfs, where sullen waters sleep; Or hold him clambering all the fearful night On beetling cliffs, or pent in ruins deep; They, till due time should serve, were bid far hence to keep.
Ye guardian spirits, to whom man is dear, From these foul demons shield the midnight gloom; Angels of fancy and of love be near, And o'er the blank of sleep diffuse a bloom; Evoke the sacred shades of Greece and Rome, And let them virtue with a look impart : But chief, awhile, O lend us from the tomb Those long-lost friends for whom in love we smart, And fill with pious awe and joy-mixt woe the heart.
Rule Britannia-' An Ode,' from 'Alfred, a Masque
When Britain first, at Heaven's command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sang this strain: Rule, Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves!
The nations not so blest as thee, Must in their turns to tyrants fall, Whilst thou shalt flourish great and free, The dread and envy of them all. Rule, Britannia, &c.
Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies, Serves but to root thy native oak. Rule, Britannia, &c.
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; All their attempts to bend thee down Will but arouse thy generous flame, But work their woe and thy renown. Rule, Britannia, &c.
To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles thine. Rule, Britannia, &c.
The Muses, still with freedom found, Shall to thy happy coast repair; Blest isle, with matchless beauty crowned, And manly hearts to guard the fair! Rule, Britannia, &c.
Mr Southey has incautiously ventured a statement in his Life of Cowper, that Blair's Grave is the only poem he could call to mind which has been composed in imitation of the Night Thoughts. The Grave was written prior to the publication of the Night Thoughts, and has no other resemblance to the work of Young, than that it is of a serious devout cast, and is in blank verse. The author was an accomplished and exemplary Scottish clergyman, who enjoyed some private fortune, independent of his profession, and was thus enabled to live in a superior style, and cultivate the acquaintance of the neighbouring gentry. As a poet of pleasing and elegant manners, a botanist and florist, as well as a man of scientific and general knowledge, his society was much courted, and he enjoyed the correspondence of Dr Isaac Watts and Dr Doddridge. was born in Edinburgh in 1699, his father being minister of the Old Church there. In 1731 he was appointed to the living of Athelstaneford, a parish in East Lothian. Previous to his ordination, he had written The Grave, and submitted the manuscript to Watts and Doddridge. It was published in 1743. Blair died at the age of fortyseven, in February 1746. By his marriage with a daughter of Mr Law, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh (to whose memory he dedicated a poem), he left a numerous family; and his fourth son, a distinguished lawyer, rose to be Lord President of the Court of Session.
An obelisk was in 1857 erected to the memory the poet at Athelstaneford.
The Grave is a complete and powerful poem, of limited design, but masterly execution. The subject precluded much originality of conception, but, at the same time, is recommended by its awful importance and its universal application. The style seems to be formed upon that of the old sacred and puritanical poets, elevated by the author's admiration of Milton and Shakspeare. There is a Scottish Presbyterian character about the whole, relieved by occasional flashes and outbreaks of true genius. These coruscations sometimes subside into low and vulgar images or expressions, as towards the close of the following noble passage:
Where are the mighty thunderbolts of war? The Roman Cæsars and the Grecian chiefs, The boast of story? Where the hot-brained youth, Who the tiara at his pleasure tore
From kings of all the then discovered globe;
And cried, forsooth, because his arm was hampered, And had not room enough to do its work? Alas, how slim-dishonourably slim ! And crammed into a space we blush to name! Proud royalty! How altered in thy looks! How blank thy features, and how wan thy hue! Son of the morning! whither art thou gone? Where hast thou hid thy many-spangled head, And the majestic menace of thine eyes Felt from afar? Pliant and powerless now: Like new-born infant wound up in his swathes, Or victim tumbled flat upon his back, That throbs beneath his sacrificer's knife; Mute must thou bear the strife of little tongues, And coward insults of the base-born crowd, That grudge a privilege thou never hadst, But only hoped for in the peaceful grave— Of being unmolested and alone! Arabia's gums and odoriferous drugs, And honours by the heralds duly paid In mode and form, e'en to a very scruple
(O cruel irony!); these come too late,
And only mock whom they were meant to honour!
The death of the strong man is forcibly depicted:
Strength, too! thou surly and less gentle boast Of those that laugh loud at the village ring! A fit of common sickness pulls thee down With greater ease than e'er thou didst the stripling That rashly dared thee to the unequal fight. What groan was that I heard? Deep groan, indeed, With anguish heavy laden! let me trace it: From yonder bed it comes, where the strong man, By stronger arm belaboured, gasps for breath Like a hard-hunted beast. How his great heart Beats thick! his roomy chest by far too scant To give the lungs full play! What now avail The strong-built sinewy limbs and well spread shoulders?
See how he tugs for life, and lays about him, Mad with his pain! Eager he catches hold Of what comes next to hand, and grasps it hard, Just like a creature drowning. Hideous sight! O how his eyes stand out, and stare full ghastly! While the distemper's rank and deadly venom Shoots like a burning arrow 'cross his bowels, And drinks his marrow up. Heard you that groan? It was his last. See how the great Goliah, Just like a child that brawled itself to rest,
And flee before a feeble thing like man : That, knowing well the slackness of his arm, Trusts only in the well-invented knife?
In our extracts from Congreve, we have quoted a passage, much admired by Johnson, descriptive of the awe and fear inspired by a cathedral scene at midnight, 'where all is hushed and still as death.' Blair has ventured on a similar description, and has imparted to it a terrible and gloomy power:
See yonder hallowed fane! the pious work Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot, And buried midst the wreck of things which were: There lie interred the more illustrious dead. The wind is up: hark! how it howls! methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary! Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rocked in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles, Black-plastered, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons,
And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults,
The mansions of the dead. Roused from their slumbers,
In grim array the grisly spectres rise, Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen,
Pass and repass, hushed as the foot of night. Again the screech-owl shrieks-ungracious sound! I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill.
Some of his images are characterised by a Shakspearian force and picturesque fancy. Men see their friends
Drop off like leaves in autumn; yet launch out Into fantastic schemes, which the long livers In the world's hale and undegenerate days Would scarce have leisure for.
The divisions of churchmen are for ever closed:
The lawn-robed prelate and plain presbyter, Erewhile that stood aloof, as shy to meet, Familiar mingle here, like sister-streams That some rude interposing rock has split.
Man, sick of bliss, tried evil; and, as a result, The good he scorned
Stalked off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost, Not to return; or, if it did, in visits,
Like those of angels, short and far between.
The latter simile has been appropriated by Campbell in his Pleasures of Hope, with one slight verbal alteration, which cannot be called an improvement :
What though my winged hours of bliss have been, Like angel visits, few and far between.
The original comparison seems to belong to Norris of Bemerton (see ante, page 564).
ISAAC WATTS-a name never to be pronounced without reverence by any lover of pure Christianity, or by any well-wisher of mankind-was born at Southampton, July 17, 1674. His parents were remarkable for piety. Means would have been
Lies still. What mean'st thou then, O mighty provided for placing him at the university, but he boaster,
To vaunt of nerves of thine? What means the bull, Unconscious of his strength, to play the coward,
early inclined to the Dissenters, and he was educated at one of their establishments, taught by the Rev. Thomas Rowe. He was afterwards four
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