ON A TEAR.

OH! that the Chemist's magic art
Could crystallize this sacred treasure!
Long should it glitter near my heart,
A secret source of pensive pleasure.
The little brilliant, ere it fell,

Its lustre caught from CHLOE's eye;
Then, trembling, left its coral cell
The spring of Sensibility!

Sweet drop of pure and pearly light!
In thee the rays of Virtue shine;
More calmly clear, more mildly bright,
Than any gem that gilds the mine.
Benign restorer of the soul !
Who ever fly'st to bring relief,

When first we feel the rude controul
Of Love or Pity, Joy or Grief.

The sage's and the poet's theme,
In every clime, in every age;
Thou charm'st in Fancy's idle dream,
In Reason's philosophic page.

That very law' which moulds a tear,
And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course.

TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST.2 Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor? Aĕris et linguæ sum filia;

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

ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul,
Once more we hail thy soft controul.
-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?

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 Voice3 beloved to join,
Which taught thee first a flight divine,
And nursed thy infant years with many a strain
from Heaven!

1 The law of gravitation.

2 In the winter of 1805.

3 Mrs. Sheridan's.

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.

"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.'
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,
The mother in her long despair,
Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping,
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping;

Of those who would not be consoled
When red with blood the river rolled.

4 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 repeated in Wharfedale.-See WHITAKER's Hist. of Craven.

ΤΟ

An! 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 way-side she shed her parting tears-
For ever lovely in the light of Youth!

TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE.

1798.

On thee, blest youth, a father's hand confers
The maid thy earliest, fondest wishes knew.
Each soft enchantment of the soul is hers;
Thine be the joys to firm attachment due.
As on she moves with hesitating grace,
She wins assurance from his soothing voice;
And, with a look the pencil could not trace,
Smiles thro' her blushes, and confirms the choice.
Spare the fine tremors of her feeling frame !
To thee she turns-forgive a virgin's fears!
To thee she turns with surest, tenderest claim;
Weakness that charms, reluctance that endears;

At each response the sacred rite requires,
From her full bosom bursts the unbidden sigh.
A strange mysterious awe the scene inspires;
And on her lips the trembling accents die.

O'er her fair face what wild emotions play!
What lights and shades in sweet confusion blend!
Soon shall they fly, glad harbingers of day,
And settled sunshine on her soul descend!

Ah soon, thine own confest, ecstatic thought!
That hand shall strew thy summer-path with flowers;
And those blue eyes, with mildest lustre fraught,
Gild the calm current of domestic hours!

TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY * *.

AH! why with tell-tale tongue reveal
What most her blushes would conceal?
Why lift that modest veil to trace
The seraph-sweetness of her face?

1 On the death of her sister.

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

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!

THE ALPS AT DAY-BREAK.
THE sun-beams streak the azure skies,
And line with light the mountain's brow :
With hounds and horns the hunters rise,
And chase the roebuck thro' the snow.
From rock to rock, with giant-bound,
High on their iron poles they pass;
Mute, lest the air, convulsed by sound,
Rend from above a frozen mass.

The goats wind slow their wonted way,
Up craggy steeps and ridges rude;
Marked by the wild wolf for his prey,
From desert cave or hanging wood.
And while the torrent thunders loud,
And as the echoing cliffs reply,
The huts peep o'er the morning-cloud,
Perched, like an eagle's nest, on high.

ΤΟ

Go-you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away! There's such a charm in melancholy, I would not, if I could, be gay.

Oh, if you knew the pensive pleasure That fills my bosom when I sigh, You would not rob me of a treasure Monarchs are too poor to buy.

ΤΟ

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?

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, caughts
Bright revelations of the Good they sought;
By thee that long-lost spell in secret given,
To draw down Gods, and lift the soul to Heaven!

3 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.

4 Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an ancient epigram on the Gnidian Venus.-Analecta Vet. Poetarum, III. 200.

A WISH.

MINE be a cot beside the hill;

A bee-hive's hum shall sooth my ear;
A willowy brook, that turns a mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.

The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch,
Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;
Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,
And share my meal, a welcome guest.

Around my ivy'd porch shall spring
Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing
In russet gown and apron blue.

The village-church, among the trees,
Where first our marriage-vows were given,
With merry peals shall swell the breeze,
And point with taper spire to heaven.

TO THE GNAT.

WHEN by the green-wood 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!

AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST,1

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 school-boy's giant form is seen;
But Love, and Joy, and smiling Spring
Inspire their little souls to sing!

AN ITALIAN SONG.

DEAR is my little native vale,

The ring-dove builds and murmurs there; Close by my cot she tells her tale

To every passing villager.

The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty.

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

THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND,
SEPTEMBER 2, 1812.

BLUE was the loch, the clouds were gone,
Ben-Lomond in his glory shone,
When, Luss, I left thee; when the breeze
Bore me from thy silver sands,
Thy kirk-yard wall among the trees,
Where, grey with age, the dial stands ;
That dial so well-known to me!
-Tho' many a shadow it had shed,
Beloved Sister, since with thee
The legend on the stone was read.

The fairy-isles fled far away;
That with its woods and uplands green,
Where shepherd-huts are dimly seen,
And songs are heard at close of day;
That too, the deer's wild covert, fled,
And that, the asylum of the dead :
While, as the boat went merrily,
Much of ROB Roy the boat-man told;
His arm that fell below his knee,
His cattle-ford and mountain-hold.
Tarbat, thy shore I climbed at last;
And, thy shady region passed,
Upon another shore I stood,
And looked upon another flood ;s
Great Ocean's self! ('Tis He who fills
That vast and awful depth of hills ;)
Where many an elf was playing round,
Who treads unshod his classic ground;
And speaks, his native rocks among,
AS FINGAL spoke, and OSSIAN sung.

2

Night fell; and dark and darker grew That narrow sea, that narrow sky, As o'er the glimmering waves we flew ; The sea-bird rustling, wailing by.

2 Signifying in the Gaelic language an Isthmus. 3 Loch-long.

D

And now the grampus, half-descried,
Black and huge above the tide ;
The cliffs and promontories there,
Front to front, and broad and bare;
Each beyond each, with giant-feet
Advancing as in haste to meet ;

The shattered fortress, whence the Dane
Blew his shrill blast, nor rushed in vain,
Tyrant of the drear domain ;
All into midnight-shadow sweep
When day springs upward from the deep! 1
Kindling the waters in its flight,

The prow wakes splendour; and the oar,
That rose and fell unseen before,
Flashes in a sea of light!

Glad sign, and sure! for now we hail
Thy flowers, Glenfinnart, in the gale;
And bright indeed the path should be,
That leads to Friendship and to Thee!
Oh blest retreat and sacred too!
Sacred as when the bell of prayer,
Tolled duly on the desert air,

And crosses decked thy summits blue.
Oft, like some loved romantic tale,
Oft shall my weary mind recall,
Amid the hum and stir of men,
Thy beechen grove and waterfall,
Thy ferry with its gliding sail,
And Her-the Lady of the Glen!

1 A phenomenon described by many navigators. 2 There is a beautiful story, delivered down to us from antiquity, which will here perhaps occur to the reader. Icarius, when he gave Penelope in marriage to Ulysses, endeavoured to persuade him to dwell in Lacedæmon; and, when all he urged was to no purpose, he entreated his daughter to remain with him. When Ulysses set out with his bride for Ithaca, the old man followed the chariot, till, overcome by his importunity, Ulysses consented that it should be left with Penelope to decide whether she would proceed with him or return with her father. It is related, says Pausanias, that she made no reply, but that she covered herself with her veil; and that Icarius, perceiving at once by it that she inclined to Ulysses, suffered her to depart with him.

A statue was afterwards placed by her father as a memorial in that part of the road where she had covered herself with her veil. It was still standing there in the days of Pausanias, and was called the statue of Modesty. 3 A Turkish superstition.

AN INSCRIPTION

FOR A TEMPLE DEDICATED TO THE GRACES.4

APPROACH with reverence. There are those within, Whose dwelling place is Heaven. Daughters of Jove, From them flow all the decencies of Life ; Without them nothing pleases, Virtue's self Admired not loved: and those on whom They smile, Great though they be, and wise, and beautiful, Shine forth with double lustre.

WRITTEN IN 1834.

WELL, when her day is over, be it said
That, though a speck on the terrestrial globe,
Found with long search and in a moment lost,
She made herself a name-a name to live
While science, eloquence, and song divine,
And wisdom, in self-government displayed,
And valour, such as only in the Free,
Shall among men be honoured.

Every sea
Was covered with her sails; in every port
Her language spoken; and, where'er you went,
Exploring, to the east or to the west,
Even to the rising or the setting day,

Her arts and laws and institutes were there,
Moving with silent and majestic march,
Onward and onward, where no pathway was;
There her adventurous sons, like those of old,
Founding vast empires 5-empires in their turn
Destined to shine thro' many a distant age
With sun-like splendour.

Wondrous was her wealth,
The world itself her willing tributary;
Yet, to accomplish what her soul desired,
All was as nothing; and the mightiest kings,
Each in his hour of strife exhausted, fallen,
Drew strength from Her, their coffers from her own
Filled to o'erflowing. When her fleets of war
Had swept the main ; when not an adverse prow,
From pole to pole, far as the sea-bird flies,
Ruffled the tide ; and they themselves were gone,
Gone from the eyes and from the minds of men,
Their dreadful errands so entirely done-
Up rose her armies; on the land they stood,
Fearless, erect; and in an instant smote
Him with his legions."

Yet ere long 'twas hers, Great as her triumphs, to eclipse them all, To do what none had done, none had conceived, An act how glorious, making joy in Heaven! When, such her prodigality, condemned

4 At Woburn-Abbey.

5 North America speaks for itself; and so indeed may we say of India, when such a territory is ours in a region so remote-" a territory larger and more populous than Great Britain and France and Spain, and Germany and Italy together;" when a company of merchants, from such small beginnings, have established a dominion so absolute," where Trajan never penetrated and where the phalanx of Alexander refused to proceed "-a dominion over a people for ages civilized and cultivated, while we were yet in the woods. 6 Alluding to the battle of Waterloo. The illustrious Man who commanded there on our side, and who, in his anxiety to do justice to others, never fails to forget himself, said many years afterwards to the Author with some agitation, when relating an occurrence of that day, "It was a battle of giants!"

To toil and toil, alas, how hopelessly,
Herself in bonds, for ages unredeemed-
As with a god-like energy she sprung,
All else forgot, and, burdened as she was,
Ransomed the African.

AN INSCRIPTION. 18**.

THESE are the groves a grateful people gave
For noblest service; and from age to age,
May they, to such as come with listening ear,
Relate the story! Sacred is their shade;
Sacred the calm they breathe-oh, how unlike
What in the field 'twas his so long to know;
Where many a mournful, many an anxious thought,
Troubling, perplexing, on his weary mind

Preyed, ere to arms the morning-trumpet called;
Where, till the work was done and darkness fell,
Blood ran like water, and, go where thou wouldst,
Death in thy path-way met thee, face to face.

For on, regardless of himself, He went ; And, by no change elated or depressed, Fought, till he won the' imperishable wreath, Leading the conquerors captive; on he went, Bating nor heart nor hope, whoe'er opposed; The greatest warriors, in their turn, appearing; The last that came, the greatest of them allOne scattering fear, as born but to subdue, And, even in rout, in ruin, scattering fear; So long, till warred on by the elements, Invincible; the mightiest of the earth!

When such the service, what the recompense? What was not due to him if he survived? Yet, if I err not, a renown as fair, And fairer still, awaited him at home; When in his place, day after day, he stood, The party-zeal, that round him raged, restraining; -His not to rest, while his the strength to serve.

REFLECTIONS.

MAN to the last is but a froward child;
So eager for the future, come what may,
And to the present so insensible!

Oh, if he could in all things as he would,
Years would as days and hours as moments be;
He would, so restless is his spirit here,
Give wings to Time, and wish his life away!

THE heart, they say, is wiser than the schools;
And well they may. All that is great in thought,
That strikes at once as with electric fire,
And lifts us, as it were, from earth to heaven,
Comes from the heart; and who confesses not
Its voice as sacred, nay almost divine,
When inly it declares on what we do,
Blaming, approving? Let an erring world
Judge as it will, we care not while we stand
Acquitted there; and oft, when clouds on clouds
Compass us round and not a track
appears,
Oft is an upright heart the surest guide,
Surer and better than the subtlest head;
Still with its silent counsels thro' the dark
Onward and onward leading.

THIS Child, so lovely and so cherub-like, (No fairer spirit in the heaven of heavens)

Say, must he know remorse ? must Passion come,
Passion in all or any of its shapes,

To cloud and sully what is now so pure?
Yes, come it must. For who, alas! has lived,
Nor in the watches of the night recalled
Words he has wished unsaid and deeds undone ?
Yes, come it must. But if, as we may hope,
He learns ere long to discipline his mind,
And onward goes, humbly and cheerfully,
Assisting them that faint, weak though he be,
And in his trying hours trusting in God—
Fair as he is, he shall be fairer still;
For what was Innocence will then be Virtue.

Oн, if the selfish knew how much they lost,
What would they not endeavour, not endure,
To imitate, as far as in them lay,
Him who his wisdom and his power employs
In making others happy!

WRITTEN AT DROPMORE.
July, 1831.

GRENVILLE, to thee my gratitude is due
For many an hour of studious musing here,
For many a day-dream, such as hovered round
Hafiz, or Sadi; thro' the golden East,
Search where we would, no fairer bowers than these,
Thine own creation; where, called forth by thee,
"Flowers worthy of Paradise, with rich inlay,
Broider the ground," and every mountain-pine
Elsewhere unseen (his birth-place in the clouds,
His kindred sweeping with majestic march
From cliff to cliff along the snowy ridge
Of Caucasus, or nearer yet the Moon)
Breathes heavenly music.-Yet much more I owe
For what so few, alas! can hope to share,
Thy converse; when, among thy books reclined,
Or in thy garden-chair that wheels its course
Slowly and silently thro' sun and shade,
Thou speak'st, as ever thou art wont to do,
In the calm temper of philosophy;

-Still to delight, instruct, whate'er the theme.

WRITTEN IN JULY, 1834.

GREY, thou hast served, and well, the sacred Cause
That Hampden, Sydney died for. Thou hast stood,
Scorning all thought of Self, from first to last,
Among the foremost in that glorious field;
From first to last; and, ardent as thou art,
Held on with equal step as best became
A lofty mind, loftiest when most assailed;
Never, though galled by many a barbed shaft,
By many a bitter taunt from friend and foe,
Swerving, nor shrinking. Happy in thy Youth,
Thy Youth the dawn of a long summer-day;
But in thy Age still happier; thine to earn
The gratitude of millions yet unborn;
Thine to conduct, through ways how difficult,
A mighty people in their march sublime
From Good to Better. Great thy recompence,
When in their eyes thou read'st what thou hast done;
And may'st thou long enjoy it; may'st thou long
Preserve for them what still they claim as theirs,
That generous fervour and pure eloquence,
Thine from thy birth and Nature's noblest gifts,
To guard what They have gained !

D 2