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.

Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor?

Aëris et linguæ sum filia;

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

ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul,
Once more we hail thy soft control.
-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)

*The law of gravitation.

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 Voice* beloved to join,

Which taught thee first a flight divine,
And nursed thy infant years with many a strain

from Heaven!

* Mrs. Sheridan's.

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.

1812.

"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.

*

:

* 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.

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;

B

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.

WRITTEN IN A SICK CHAMBER.

1793.

THERE, in that bed so closely curtained round,
Worn to a shade, and wan with slow decay,
A father sleeps! Oh hushed be every sound!
Soft may we breathe the midnight hours away!

He stirs yet still he sleeps. May heavenly dreams Long o'er his smooth and settled pillow rise;

Nor fly, till morning thro' the shutter streams,
And on the hearth the glimmering rush-light dies.