All, as they frownea, unwritten records bore But, as a landscape meets the eye of day,
Of gallant feats and festivals of yore.

At once presented to their glad survey!!
But why the tale prolong ?–His only child, Each scene of bliss revealed, since chaos fled,
His darling Julia on the stranger smiled.

And dawning light its dazzling glories spread; Her little arts a fretful sire to please,

Each chain of wonders that sublimely glowed, Her gentle gaiety, and native ease

Since first Creation's choral anthem flowed; Had won his soul; and rapturous Fancy shed Each ready flight, at Mercy's call divine, Her golden lights, and tints of rosy red.

To distant worlds that undiscovered shine; But ah! few days had passed, ere the bright vision Full on her tablet flings its living rays, fled!

And all, combined, with blest effulgence blaze. When evening tinged the lake's ethereal blue, There thy bright train, immortal Friendshir,soar; And her deep shades irregularly threw;

No more to part, to mingle tears no more! Their shifting sail dropt gently from the cove, . And, as the softening hand of Time endears Down by St. Herbert's consecrated grove , ; The joys and sorrows of our infant-years, Whence erst the chanted hymn, the tapered rite So there the soul, released from human strife, Amused the fisher's solitary night;

Smiles at the little cares and ills of life;. And still the mitred window, richly wreathed, Its lights and shades, its sunshine and its showers; A sacred calm thro' the brown foliage breathed. As at a dream that charmed her vacant hours !

The wild deer, starting thro’ the silent glade, Oft may the spirits of the dead descend . With fearful gaze their various course surveyed. To watch the silent slumbers of a friend; High hung in air the hoary goat reclined,

To hover round his evening-walk unseen, His streaming beard the sport of every wind;

And hold sweet converse on the dusky green; And, while the coot her jet-wing loved to lave, To hail the spot where first their friendship grew, Rocked on the bosom of the sleepless wave; And heaven and nature opened to their view! The eagle rushed from Skiddaw's purple crest, Oft, when he trims his cheerful hearth, and sees A cloud still brooding o'er her giant-nest.

A smiling circle emulous to please; And now the moon had dimmed with dewy There may these gentle guests delight to dwell, ray

And bless the scene they loved in life so well! The few fine flushes of departing day.

Oh thou! with whom my heart was wont to O’er the wide water's deep serene she hung,

share And her broad lights on every mountain flung;

From Reason's dawn each pleasure and each care; When lo ! a sudden blast the vessel blew,

With whom, alas ! I fondly hoped to know And to the surge consigned the little crew.

The humble walks of happiness below; All, all escaped—but ere the lover bore

If thy blest nature now unites above
His faint and faded Julia to the shore,

An angel's pity with a brother's love,
Her sense had fled !-Exhausted by the storm, Still o'er my life preserve thy mild controul,
A fatal trance hung o'er her pallid form;

Correct my views, and elevate my soul;
Her closing eye a trembling lustre fired;

Grant me thy peace and purity of mind, 'Twas life's last spark-it fluttered and expired! Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned;

The father strewed his white hairs in the wind, Grant me, like thee, whose heart knew no disguise, Calied on his child—nor lingered long behind: Whose blameless wishes never aimed to rise, And Florio lived to see the willow wave,

To meet the changes Time and Chance present, With many an evening-whisper, o'er their grave. With modest dignity and calm content. Yes, Florio lived—and, still of each possessed, When thy last breath, ere Nature sunk to rest, The father cherished, and the maid caressed ! Thy meek submission to thy God expressed ;

For ever would the fond enthusiast rove, When thy last look, ere thought and feeling fled, With Julia's spirit, thro’ the shadowy grove; A mingled gleam of hope and triumph shed; Gaze with delight on every scene she planned,

What to thy soul its glad assurance gave, Kiss every floweret planted by her hand.

Its hope in death, its triumph o’er the grave? Ah! still he traced her steps along the glade, The sweet Remembrance of unblemished youth, When hazy hues and glimmering lights betrayed The still inspiring voice of Innocence and Truth! Half-viewless forms; still listened as the breeze Hail, MEMORY, hail! in thy exhaustless mine Heaved its deep sobs among the aged trees ; From age to age unnumbered treasures shine! And at each pause her melting accents caught, Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, In sweet delirium of romantic thought!

And Place and Time are subject to thy sway! Dear was the grot that shunned the blaze of day; Thy pleasuręs most we feel, when most alone; She gave its spars to shoot a trembling ray. The only pleasures we can call our own. The spring, that bubbled from its inmost cell, Lighter than air, Hope's summer-visions die, Murmured of Julia's virtues as it fell;

If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky; And o'er the dripping moss, the fretted stone,

If but a beam of sober Reason play, In Florio's ear breathed language not its own. Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away! Her charm around the enchantress MEMORY But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power, threw,

Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour? A charm that soothes the mind, and sweetens too! These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight, But is Her Magic only felt below?

Pour round her path a stream of living light; Say, thro’ what brighter realms she bids it flow; And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, To what pure beings, in a nobler sphere,

Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest! She yields delight but faintly imaged here: All that till now their rapt researches knew, Not called in slow succession to review;

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Page 5, col. 2, line 1.

« This pillar was erected in the year 1656, by Ann, Yet still how sweet the soothings of his art !

Countess Dowager of Pembroke, &c. for a memorial of her

last parting, in this place, with her good and pious mother, The astronomer chalking his figures on the wall, in

Margaret, Countess Dowager of Cumberland, on the 2nd Hogarth's view of Bedlam, is an admirable exemplifica- of April, 1616; in memory whereof she hath left an tion of this idea.-See the RAKE'S PROGRESS, plate 8.

annuity of 41. to be distributed to the poor of the parish Page 5, col. 2, line 21.

of Brougham, every 2nd day of April for ever, upon the

stone-table placed hard by. Laus Deo!' Turns but to start, and gazes but to sigh !

The Eden is the principal river of Cumberland, and The following stanzas are said to have been written on a rises in the wildest part of Westmoreland. blank leaf of this Poem. They present so affecting a reverse of the picture, that I cannot resist the opportunity of intro

Page 6, col. 1, line 2. ducing them here.

O'er his dead son the gallant ORMOND sighed. Pleasures of Memory !--oh! supremely blest,

“I would not exchange my dead son,” said he,“ for any And justly proud beyond a Poet's praise ;

living son in Christendom.”—HUME. If the pure confines of thy tranquil breast

The same sentiment is inscribed on an urn at the Contain, indeed, the subject of thy lays !

Leasowes. “ Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis ver-
By me how envied !—for to me,

sari, quam tui meminisse!”
The herald still of misery,
Memory makes her influence known

Page 7, col. 1, line 9.
By sighs, and tears, and grief alone:

Down by St. Herbert's consecrated grove
I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong
The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funeral song.

A small island covered with trees, among which were

formerly the ruins of a religious house. She tells of time mispent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone for ever by ;

Page 7, col. 1, line 26.
Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed,

When lo! a sudden blast the vessel blew,
Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die;
For what, except the instinctive fear

In a mountain-lake the agitations are often violent and
Lest she survive, detains me here,

momentary. The winds blow in gusts and eddies; and the

; When “all the life of life" is filed ?

water no sooner swells, than it subsides.-See BOURN's Hist. What, but the deep inherent dread,

of Westmoreland. Lest she beyond the grave resume her reign,

Page 7, col. 1, line 60.
And realise the hell that priests and beldams feign?

To what pure beings, in a nobler sphere,
Page 5, col. 2, line 60.

The several degrees of angels may probably have larger Hast thou thro' Eden's wild-wood vales pursued

views, and some of them be endowed with capacities able On the road-side between Penrith and Appleby there to retain together, and constantly set before them as in stands a small pillar with this inscription :

one picture, all their past knowledge at once.-LOCKE.

HUMAN LIFE.

ARGUMENT.

And soon again shall music swell the breeze; Introduction. — Ringing of Bells in a neighbouring Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees Village on the Birth of an Heir. - General Reflections Vestures of nuptial white ; and hymns be sung, on Human Life.--The Subject proposed.--Childhood.- And violets scattered round; and old and young, Youth. -- Manhood.-Love. — Marriage.-Domestic Happi

In every cottage-porch with garlands green, ness and Affliction.-War.-- Peace. — Civil Dissension - Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene ; Retirement from active Life. — Old Age and its Enjoy- While, her dark eyes declining, by his side ments.-Conclusion,

Moves in her virgin-veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas, nor in a distant hour, The lark has sung his carol in the sky;

Another voice shall come from yonder tower ; The bees have hummed their noon-tide harmony. / When in dim chambers long black weeds are Still in the vale the village-bells ring round,

seen, Still in Llewellyn-hall the jests resound:

And weepings heard where only joy has been: For now the caudle-cup is circling there,

When by his children borne, and from his door Now,glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer, Slowly departing to return no more, And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire

He rests in holy earth with them that went before. The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

And such is Human Life ; so gliding on, A few short years—and then these sounds shall It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone! The day again, and gladness fill the vale; [hail Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange, So soon the child a youth, the youth a man, As full, methinks, of wild and wondrous change, Eager to run the race his fathers ran.

As any that the wandering tribes require, Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sir-loin; Stretched in the desert round their eveningThe ale, now brewed, in floods of amber shine: And, basking in the chimney's ample blaze, As any sung of old in hall or bower 'Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,

To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour! The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,

Born in a trance, we wake, observe, inquire ; “ 'Twas on these knees he sate so oft and smiled.” | And the green earth, the azure sky admire.

fire ;

Of Elfin-size-for ever as we run,

Now in Thermopylæ remain to share
We cast a longer shadow in the sun !

Death—nor look back, nor turn a footstep there,
And now a charm, and now a grace is won ! Leaving his story to the birds of air ;
We grow in stature, and in wisdom too!

And now like Pylades (in Heaven they write
And, as new scenes, new objects rise to view, Names such as his in characters of light)
Think nothing done while aught remains to do. Long with his friend in generous enmity,

Yet, all forgot, how oft the eye-lids close, Pleading, insisting in his place to die !
And from the slack hand drops the gathered rose ! Do what he will, he cannot realize
How oft, as dead, on the warm turf we lie, Half he conceives—the glorious vision flies.
While many an emmet comes with curious eye; Go where he may, he cannot hope to find
And on her nest the watchful wren sits by ! The truth, the beauty pictured in his mind.
Nor do we speak or move, or hear or see ; But if by chance an object strike the sense,
So like what once we were, and once again shall be ! The faintest shadow of that Excellence,

And say, how soon, where, blithe as innocent, Passions, that slept, are stirring in his frame ;
The boy at sun-rise carolled as he went,

Thoughts undefined, feelings without a name !
An aged pilgrim on his staff shall lean,

And some, not here called forth, may slumber on
Tracing in vain the footsteps o'er the green ; Till this vain pageant of a world is gone ;
The man himself how altered, not the scene! Lying too deep for things that perish here,
Now journeying home with nothing but the name; Waiting for life—but in a nobler sphere !
Way-worn and spent, another and the same! Look where he comes ! Rejoicing in his birth,

No eye observes the growth or the decay. Awhile he moves as in a heaven on earth !
To-day we look as we did yesterday ;

Sun, moon, and stars—the land, the sea, the sky
And we shall look to-morrow as to-day.

To him shine out as in a galaxy !
Yet while the loveliest smiles, her locks grow grey! But soon 'tis past—the light has died away!
And in her glass could she but see the face With him it came (it was not of the day)
She'll see so soon amid another race,

And he himself diffused it, like the stone
How would she shrink !—Returning from afar,

That sheds awhile a lustre all its own,
After some years of travel, some of war,

Making night beautiful. 'Tis past, 'tis gone,
Within his gate Ulysses stood unknown

And in his darkness as he journeys on,
Before a wife, a father, and a son!

Nothing revives him but the blessed ray
And such is Human Life, the general theme. That now breaks in, nor ever knows decay,
Ah, what at best, what but a longer dream ? Sent from a better world to light him on his way.
Though with such wild romantic wanderings How great the Mystery! Let others sing
fraught,

The 'circling Year, the promise of the Spring,
Such forms in Fancy's richest colouring wrought, The Summer's glory, and the rich repose
That, like the visions of a love-sick brain,

Of Autumn, and the Winter's silvery snows.
Who would not sleep and dream them o'er again? Man through the changing scene let me pursue,
Our pathway leads but to a precipice ;

Himself how wondrous in his changes too !
And all must follow, fearful as it is!

Not Man, the sullen savage in his den ;
From the first step 'tis known ; but—No delay! But Man called forth in fellowship with men;
On, 'tis decreed. We tremble and obey.

Schooled and trained up to Wisdom from his birth;
A thousand ills beset us as we go.

God's noblest work—His image upon earth ! “Still, could I shun the fatal gulf”—Ah, no, 'Tis all in vain—the inexorable Law !

The day arrives, the moment wished and feared;
Nearer and nearer to the brink we draw.

The child is born, by many a pang endeared.
Verdure springs up; and fruits and flowers invite, And now the mother's ear has caught his cry ;
And groves and fountains—all things that delight. Oh grant the cherub to her asking eye !
“ Oh, I would stop, and linger if I might!” He comes—she clasps him. To her bosom pressed,
We fly; no resting for the foot we find ;

He drinks the balm of life, and drops to rest.
All dark before, all desolate behind !

Her by her smile how soon the Stranger knows;
At length the brink appears—but one step more ! How soon by his the glad discovery shows !
We faint-On, on !we falter—and 'tis o'er! As to her lips she lifts the lovely boy,

Yet here high passions, high desires unfold, What answering looks of sympathy and joy!
Prompting to noblest deeds ; here links of gold He walks, he speaks. In many a broken word
Bind soul to soul ; and thoughts divine inspire His wants, his wishes, and his griefs are heard.
A thirst unquenchable, a holy fire

And ever, ever to her lap he flies,
That will not, cannot but with life expire !

When rosy Sleep comes on with sweet surprise.
Now, seraph-winged, among the stars we soar; Locked in her arms, his arms across her flung,
Now distant ages, like a day, explore,

(That name most dear for ever on his tongue)
And judge the act, the actor now no more ; As with soft accents round her neck he clings,
Or, in a thankless hour condemned to live, And, cheek to cheek, her lulling song she sings,
From others claim what these refuse to give, How blest to feel the beatings of his heart,
And dart, like Milton, an unerring eye

Breathe his sweet breath, and kiss for kiss impart;
Through the dim curtains of Futurity.

Watch o'er his slumbers like the brooding dove, Wealth, Pleasure, Ease, all thought of self And, if she can, exhaust a mother's love! resigned,

But soon a nobler task demands her care.
What will not Man encounter for Mankind ? Apart she joins his little hands in prayer,
Behold him now unbar the prison-door,

Telling of Him who sees in secret there !
And, lifting Guilt, Contagion from the floor, And now the volume on her knee has caught
To Peace and Health, and Light and Life restore; His wandering eye—now many a written thought

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