Perhaps to many a desert shore,
Thee, in his rage, the Tempest bore;
Thy broken murmurs swept along,
Mid Echoes yet untuned by song;
Arrested in the realms of Frost,
Or in the wilds of Ether lost.

Far happier thou! 'twas thine to soar,
Careering on the winged wind.

Thy triumphs who shall dare explore?
Suns and their systems left behind.
No tract of space, no distant star,
No shock of elements at war,
Did thee detain. Thy wing of fire
Bore thee amid the Cherub-choir;
And there awhile to thee 'twas given

Once more that Voice1 beloved to join,
Which taught thee first a flight divine,

And nursed thy infant years with many a strain from heaven!

TO THE BUTTERFLY.

CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light;
And, where the flowers of Paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!
-Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man; soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day!

1 Mrs. Sheridan's.

ΤΟ

AH! little thought she, when, with wild delight,
By many a torrent's shining track she flew,
When mountain glens and caverns full of night
O'er her young mind divine enchantment threw,

That in her veins a secret horror slept,

That her light footsteps should be heard no more,
That she should die-nor watched, alas, nor wept
By thee, unconscious of the pangs she bore.

Yet round her couch indulgent Fancy drew
The kindred forms her closing eye required.

There didst thou stand-there, with the smile she knew;
She moved her lips to bless thee, and expired.

And now to thee she comes; still, still the same
As in the hours gone unregarded by !

To thee, how changed, comes as she ever came ;
Health on her cheek, and pleasure in her eye!

Nor less, less oft, as on that day, appears,
When lingering, as prophetic of the truth,
By the wayside she shed her parting tears—
For ever lovely in the light of Youth!

TO THE FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES, COMMONLY CALLED THE TORSO.

AND dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone
(Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurled),
Still sit as on the fragment of a world;

Surviving all, majestic and alone?

On the death of her sister in 1805.

AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN REDBREAST.

What tho' the Spirits of the North, that swept
Rome from the earth when in her pomp she slept,
Smote thee with fury, and thy headless trunk
Deep in the dust mid tower and temple sunk;
Soon to subdue mankind 'twas thine to rise,
Still, still unquelled thy glorious energies!
Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught
Bright revelations of the Good they sought ;1
By thee that long-lost spell in secret given,

To draw down Gods, and lift the soul to Heaven !2

207

AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN REDBREAST.3

TREAD lightly here, for here, 'tis said,
When piping winds are hushed around,
A small note wakes from underground,
Where now his tiny bones are laid.
No more in lone and leafless groves,
With ruffled wing and faded breast,
His friendless, homeless spirit roves;
-Gone to the world where birds are blest!
Where never cat glides o'er the green,

Or schoolboy's giant form is seen;

But Love, and Joy, and smiling Spring
Inspire their little souls to sing!

1 In the gardens of the Vatican, where it was placed by Julius II., it was long the favourite study of those great men to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Caracci.

2 Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an ancient epigram on the Gnidian Venus. (Analecta Vet. Poetarum, iii. 200.)

3 Inscribed on an urn in the flower-garden at Hafod.

"SAY, what remains when Hope is fled?"
She answered, "Endless weeping!"
For in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.

At Embsay rung the matin-bell,

The stag was roused on Barden-fell;
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying,
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying;

When near the cabin in the wood,

In tartan clad and forest-green,

With hound in leash and hawk in hood,

The Boy of Egremond was seen.1

Blithe was his song, a song of yore;

But where the rock is rent in two,
And the river rushes through,

His voice was heard no more!

'Twas but a step! the gulf he passed;
But that step-it was his last!

As through the mist he winged his way,
(A cloud that hovers night and day,)
The hound hung back, and back he drew
The Master and his merlin too.

That narrow place of noise and strife
Received their little all of Life!

There now the matin-bell is rung;

The "Miserere!" duly sung;

And holy men in cowl and hood
Are wandering up and down the wood.
But what avail they? Ruthless Lord,
Thou didst not shudder when the sword
Here on the young its fury spent,
The helpless and the innocent.
Sit now and answer, groan for groan.
The child before thee is thy own.

And she who wildly wanders there,

1 In the twelfth century William Fitz-Duncan laid waste the valleys of Craven with fire and sword; and was afterwards established there by his uncle, David king of Scotland.

He was the last of the race; his son, commonly called the Boy of Egremond, dying before him in the manner here related; when a Priory was removed from Embsay to Bolton, that it might be as near as possible to the place where the accident happened. That place is still known by the name of the Strid: and the mother's answer, as given in the first stanza, is to this day often repcated in Wharfedale. (See Whitaker's Hist. of Craven.)

E E