Round thee, alas, no shadows move!

From thee no sacred murmurs breathe!
Yet within thee, thyself a grove,

Once did the eagle scream above,
And the wolf howl beneath.

There once the red-cross knight reclined
His resting place, a house of prayer;
And, when the death-bell smote the wind
From towers long fled by human kind,
He knelt and worshipped there !

1 Radice in Tartara tendit.-VIRGIL.

Then Culture came, and days serene;
And village-sports, and garlands gay.
Full many a pathway crossed the green;
And maids and shepherd-youths were seen
To celebrate the May.

Father of many a forest deep,

Whence many a navy thunder-fraught!
Erst in thy acorn-cells asleep,
Soon destined o'er the world to sweep
Opening new spheres of thought!

Wont in the night of woods to dwell,
The holy Druid saw thee rise;
And, planting there the guardian-spell,
Sung forth, the dreadful pomp to swell
Of human sacrifice!

Thy singed top and branches bare

Now straggle in the evening sky;

And the wan moon wheels round to glare

On the long corse that shivers there

Of him who came to die!

202

TO THE GNAT.

WHEN by the greenwood side, at summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy scenes, that Fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest minstrelsy;
'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heaven away,
And all is Solitude, and all is Night!
-Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air!

No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,

Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear.
Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings,
Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore.
Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful larum flings!
-I wake in horror, and dare sleep no more!

TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY ***.1

1800.

AH! why with tell-tale tongue reveal2
What most her blushes would conceal?
Why lift that modest veil to trace
The seraph sweetness of her face?
Some fairer, better sport prefer ;
And feel for us, if not for her.

For this presumption, soon or late,
Know thine shall be a kindred fate.
Another shall in vengeance rise-

Sing Harriet's cheeks, and Harriet's eyes;
And, echoing back her wood-notes wild,
-Trace all the mother in the child!

1 [To Lady Harriet Villiers, daughter of Lady Jersey, and afterwards wife of

Dr. Bagot, Bishop of Bath and Wells.—ED.]

2 Alluding to some verses which she had written on an elder sister.

Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum."-AUSONIUS.

ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul,
Once more we hail thy soft control.
-Yet whither, whither didst thou fly?
To what bright region of the sky?
Say, in what distant star to dwell?
(Of other worlds thou seem'st to tell ;)
Or, trembling, fluttering here below,
Resolved and unresolved to go,
In secret didst thou still impart
Thy raptures to the pure in heart?

1 In the winter of 1805.