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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 roll'd.

TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE.
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 through 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!

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And while the torrent thunders loud,
And as the echoing cliffs reply,
The huts peep o'er the morning-cloud,
Perch'd, like an eagle's nest, on high.

IMITATION OF AN ITALIAN SONNET.

LOVE, under Friendship's vesture white,
Laughs, his little limbs concealing;
And oft in sport, and oft in spite,
Like Pity meets the dazzled sight,
Smiles through his tears revealing.

But now as Rage the God appears!
He frowns, and tempests shake his frame!-
Frowning, or smiling, or in tears,

'T is Love; and Love is still the same.

A CHARACTER.

As through the hedge-row shade the violet steals,
And the sweet air its modest leaf reveals;
Her softer charms, but by their influence known,
Surprise all hearts, and mould them to her own.

TO THE

YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY **.
An! why with tell-tale tongue reveal 1
What most her blushes would conceal?
Why lift that modest veil to trace
The seraph-sweetness of her face?
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!

AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST.
TREAD lightly here; for here, 't is 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!

TO THE GNAT.

WHEN by the greenwood 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;

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

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

away,

'T is thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heaven
And all is Solitude, and all is Night!
-Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheathes 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!

A WISH.

MINE be a cot beside the hill,

A bee-hive's hum shall soothe 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.

WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT. 1786. WHILE through the broken pane the tempest sighs, And my step falters on the faithless floor, Shades of departed joys around me rise, With many a face that smiles on me no more; With many a voice that thrills of transport gave, Now silent as the grass that tufts their grave!

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.

In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers,
That breathe a gale of fragrance round,
I charm the fairy-footed hours
With my loved lute's romantic sound;
Or crowns of living laurel weave,
For those that win the race at eve.

The shepherd's horn at break of day,
The ballet danced in twilight glade,
The canzonet and roundelay
Sung in the silent greenwood shade,
These simple joys, that never fail,
Shall bind me to my native vale.

AN INSCRIPTION.

SHEPHERD, or Huntsman, or worn Mariner,
Whate'er thou art, who wouldst allay thy thirst,
Drink and be glad. This cistern of white stone,
Arch'd, and o'erwrought with many a sacred verse,
This iron cup chain'd for the general use,
And these rude seats of earth within the grove,
Were given by FATIMA. Borne hence a bride,
'T was here she turn'd from her beloved sire,
To see his face no more. Oh, if thou canst,
('T is not far off) visit his tomb with flowers;
And with a drop of this sweet water fill
The two small cells scoop'd in the marble there,
That birds may come and drink upon his grave,
Making it holy !2

WRITTEN IN 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!
-Though 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 3 the boatman told;
His arm, that feil below his knee,
His cattle-ford and mountain-hold.
Tarbat,4 thy shore I climb'd at last;
And, thy shady region pass'd,
Upon another shore I stood,
And look'd upon another flood; 5
Great Ocean's self! ('T is 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.

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. 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;

See an anecdote related by Pausanias. iii, 20.

2 A Turkish superstition.

3A famous out-law.

Signifying in the Erse anguage an Isthmus. Loch-Long.

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The shatter'd fortress, whence the Dane
Blew his shrill blast, nor rush'd in vain,
Tyrant of the drear domain:
All into midnight-shadow sweep,
When day springs upward from the deep!
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
Toll'd duly on the desert air,
And crosses deck'd 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!

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TO THE BUTTERFLY.

CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lovest 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!

WRITTEN IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

OCTOBER 10, 1806.

WHOE'ER thou art, approach, and, with a sigh,
Mark where the small remains of Greatness lie.2
There sleeps the dust of Fox for ever gone:
How near the Place where late his Glory shone!
And, though no more ascends the voice of Prayer,
Though the last footsteps cease to linger there,
Still, like an awful dream that comes again,
Alas! at best as transient and as vain,
Still do I see (while through the vaults of night
The funeral-song once more proclaims the rite)
The moving Pomp along the shadowy Isle,
That, like a Darkness, fill'd the solemn Pile;
The illustrious line, that in long order led,

Of those that loved Him living, mourn'd Him dead;
Of those the Few, that for their Country stood
Round Him who dared be singularly good:
All, of all ranks, that claim'd Him for their own;
And nothing wanting-but Himself alone !3

Oh say, of Him now rests there but a name;
Wont, as He was, to breathe ethereal flame?
Friend of the Absent, Guardian of the Dead !4
Who but would here their sacred sorrows shed?
(Such as He shed on Nelson's closing grave;
How soon to claim the sympathy He gave!)
In Him, resentful of another's wrong,
The dumb were eloquent, the feeble strong.
Truth from his lips a charm celestial drew-
Ah, who so mighty and so gentle too ?5

What though with War the madding Nations rung, «Peace, when He spoke, was ever on his tongue! Amidst the frowns of Power, the tricks of State, Fearless, resolved, and negligently great!

In vain malignant vapours gather'd round;
He walked, erect, on consecrated ground.
The clouds, that rise to quench the Orb of day,
Reflect its splendour, and dissolve away!

After the Funeral of the Right Hon. Charles James Fox.

2 Venez voir le peu qui nous reste de tant de grandeur, etc. -BOSSUET. Oraison funèbre de Louis de Bourbon.

Et rien enfin ne manque dans tous ces honneurs, que celui à qui on les rend.-Ibid.

Alluding particularly to his speech on moving a new writ for the borough of Tavistock, March 16, 1802.

"See that admirable delineation of his character by Sir James Mackintosh, which first appeared in the Bombay Courier, January 17, 1807.

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When in retreat He laid his thunder by, For lettered ease and calm Philosophy, Blest were his hours within the silent grove, Where still his godlike Spirit deigns to rove; Blest by the orphan's smile, the widow's prayer, For many a deed, long done in secret there. There shone his lamp on Homer's hallow'd page; There, listening, sate the hero and the sage;

And they, by virtue and by blood allied,
Whom most He loved, and in whose arms He died.
Friend of all Human-kind! not here alone
(The voice, that speaks, was not to thee unknown)
Wilt Thou be missed.-O'er every land and sea
Long, long shall England be revered in Thee!
And, when the Storm is hush'd-in distant years-
Foes on Thy grave shall meet, and mingle tears!

THE EN D.

THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

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