The horned moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on,
Yet never a breeze up blew;

The mariners all 'gan work the ropes
Where they were wont to do;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools-
We were a ghastly crew.

O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway.

POETS.

To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell; but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding-guest:
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

The mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone and now the wedding-guest Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn:

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

Ode to the Departing Year [1795.]

I.

Spirit who sweepest the wild harp of time!
It is most hard, with an untroubled ear
Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fixed on heaven's unchanging clime
Long when I listened, free from mortal fear,

With inward stillness, and submitted mind;
When lo! its folds far waving on the wind,
I saw the train of the departing year!
Starting from my silent sadness,
Then with no unholy madness,

Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight,

I raised the impetuous song, and solemnised his flight.

From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,
Haste for one solemn hour;

And with a loud and yet a louder voice, O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth Weep and rejoice!

Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth
Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of hell:
And now advance in saintly jubilee
Justice and Truth! They, too, have heard thy spell,
They, too, obey thy name, divinest Liberty!

III.

I marked Ambition in his war-array!

I heard the mailed monarch's troublous cry— "Ah! wherefore does the northern conqueress stay! Groans not her chariot on its onward way?'

Fly, mailed monarch, fly!

Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace,
No more on Murder's lurid face

The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!

Manes of the unnumbered slain!
Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain!
Ye that erst at Ismail's tower,
When human ruin choked the streams,
Fell in conquest's glutted hour,

'Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams!
Spirits of the uncoffined slain,
Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft, at night, in misty train,

Rush around her narrow dwelling!
The exterminating fiend is fled-

(Foul her life, and dark her doom) Mighty armies of the dead

Dance like death-fires round her tomb! Then with prophetic song relate Each some tyrant-murderer's fate !

V.

Throughout the blissful throng
Hushed were harp and song:

Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven
(The mystic words of Heaven)
Permissive signal make:

The fervent Spirit bowed, then spread his wings and spake:

'Thou in stormy blackness throning
Love and uncreated Light,

By the Earth's unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!
By Peace with proffered insult scared,
Masked Hate and envying Scorn!
By years of havoc yet unborn!

And Hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bared!
But chief by Afric's wrongs,

Strange, horrible, and foul!
By what deep guilt belongs

To the deaf Synod, " full of gifts and lies By Wealth's insensate laugh! by Torture's howl!

Avenger, rise!

For ever shall the thankless island scowl, Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow? Speak! from thy storm-black heaven, O speak aloud! And on the darkling foe Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud! O dart the flash! O rise and deal the blow! The past to thee, to thee the future cries! Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below! Rise, God of Nature! rise.'

VI.

The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs;
My ears throb hot; my eyeballs start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!