ALEXANDER SELKIRK'S SOLILOQUY.1

I AM monarch2 of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O solitude! where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

I am out of humanity's3 reach,
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech-
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.

Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestowed upon man,
Oh! had I the wings of a dove,
How soon would I taste you again :
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth;
Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheered by the sallies of youth.

Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.

(1) Alexander Selkirk was a sailor, who having quarrelled with his captain, was set on shore by him, in the year 1704, on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, and remained there more than four years.

(2) Monarch, sovereign-The former word-from the Greek μóvos, alone, and ápxós, a governor-signifies one who has sole authority; sovereign-from the Latin supremus (through the old English, sovran), highest-one who has the highest authority. As there was no question of rank in Selkirk's case, the aptness of the word "monarch" is obvious.

(3) Humanity-human nature, mankind.

(4) Divinely-as the Latin divinitus, by divine providence, from heaven.

But the sound of the church-going bell1
These valleys and rocks never heard;
Never sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.
Ye winds! that have made me your sport,2
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report

Of a land I shall visit no more.
My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
Oh! tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-winged arrows of light
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But, alas! recollection at hand,

Soon hurries me back to despair.
But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair ;3
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.

THE HAPPY MAN.4

How happy is he born and taught5
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,6

And simple truth his highest skill;

Соорет.

(1) The church-going bell-This expression ought by analogy to mean the bell that goes to church, and is therefore censured by Wordsworth in the Appendix to his "Lyrical Ballads."

(2) Sport-This implies that the author supposed that Selkirk had been shipwrecked, which, as just explained, was not the fact.

(3) Lair-See note 1, p. 4.

(4) Sir Henry Wotton, the author of this quaint and excellent poem, was a friend and contemporary of Milton.

(5) Born and taught-i. e. both by birth and education.

(6) Honest thought--honesty of purpose.

Whose soul is still1 prepared for death;
Whose passions not his masters are;
Untied2 unto the world by care

Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given with praise ;8
Nor4 rules of state, but rules of good:
Who hath his life from rumours freed;"
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend:
This man is freed6 from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.

Sir H. Wotton.

ODE ON THE SPRING.7

Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,8
Fair Venus' train, appear,

(1) Still-always. (See note 2, p. 64.)

(2) Untied, &c.-not connected with the world by anxiety about either public or private applause.

(3) Praise-flattery.

(4) Nor, &c.-i. e. who never understood rules of policy, but rules of right. (5) Rumours freed-free from cares and anxieties. The remaining lines of this stanza are at once simple and vigorous.

(6) Freed, &c.-from the slavish bonds both of hope and fear, for hope is no less enthralling than fear.

(7) "The Ode on the Spring' is an epitome of everything beautiful upon this subject."-Gilbert Wakefield.

(8) Hours-These fair damsels are represented in Homer and Hesiod, with the epithets "golden-armed" and "fair-haired," as forming the train of Venus. Their office here-opening the flowers and waking the year, as messengers of the Queen of Beauty-is most tastefully conceived. "Rosy-bosomed," says Wakefield, means," with bosoms full of roses," perhaps rather, beautiful-bosomed.

Disclose the long-expecting1 flowers,
And wake the purple2 year!
The Attic warbler3 pours her throat
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony4 of spring;
While, whispering pleasures as they fly,
Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky
Their gathered fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade;
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the crowd,5
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent? the great!

Still is the toiling hand of care;
The pantings herds repose

(1) Expecting-In some editions "expected " is found; obviously a very inferior reading.

(2) Purple-Virgil uses the expression "ver purpureum," meaning nothing more than the "bright and beautiful spring," and this is probably the sense in which the word "purple " is often employed by poets of the 18th century.

(3) Attic warbler—the nightingale. We find in Milton (“Paradise Regained," iv. 245):

"The Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long."

it is called the "Attic bird" because Philomela, who was changed, as the fables say, into a nightingale, was an Athenian maiden.

(4) Harmony, melody-The difference between these words is that the latter denotes a succession, the former a combination, of musical notes.

(5) Ardour of the crowd-equivalent to the "madding crowd's ignoble strife." See the "Elegy," note 4, p. 63.

(6) How low, &c.-These lines appeared thus in the first edition:

"How low, how indigent the proud,
How little are the great!"

but were subsequently altered "to avoid the sort of pun upon 'little' and 'great."" (7) Indigent-because they lack the pure pleasures of nature.

(8) Panting-It may perhaps be objected to this epithet, and to parts of the last stanza, "at ease reclined," &c., that they are more suitable to summer than to spring.

Yet hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!1
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honeyed2 spring,
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim,
Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's3 sober eye,
Such is the race of man;

And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay

But flutter through life's little day,

In fortune's varying colours drest;
Brushed by the hand of rough mischance,
Or chilled by age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.
Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive kind4 reply ;-

"Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering females meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display;
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring7 is gone~
We frolic while 'tis May."

(1) Glows-a daring, not to say audacious, word;-a murmur glows!

Gray.

(2) Honeyed-Dr. Johnson has censured the use of adjectives of this class, which look like participles, but are really derived from nouns. Such forms are, however, congenial to the spirit of our language; thus we find "slippered pantaloon," "tapestried hall," "spiced cup," "daisied bank," &c.

(3) To Contemplation's, &c.—" This stanza furnishes the most curious specimen of a continued metaphor-the happiest intermixture of the simile and the subject -that the whole compass of poetry, ancient and modern, can produce."— Gilbert Wakefield.

(4) Sportive kind-i. e. the sportive insects; an awkward expression.

(5) Glittering female-In allusion, perhaps, to the glow-worm, the female of which is a wingless insect, and emits its light, it is thought, to attract the winged male.

(6) Painted-Phædrus has "picta plume"-painted feathers.

(7) Thy sun is set, thy spring, &c.—It is a very common metaphor to represent life as a day or a year. Thus we speak of the dawn, morning, noon, sunset