Contents.

Page

V

XV

Page ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF H. K. WHITE, CLIFTON GROVE.

16 BY ROBERT SOUTHEY ..

Gondoline, a Ballad.

21 POEMS INSERTED IN THE LIFE.

Lines written on a Survey of the Heavens, On being confined 10 School one pleasant

in the Morning before Day-break. ... 23 Morning in Spring; written at the Age Lines, supposed to be spoken by a Lover at of Thirteen vi the Grave of his Mistress .

24 Extract from An address to Contemplation; My Study.

ib. written at Fourteen ib. To an early Primrose

25 To the Rosemary.

Sonnet. To the Trent

ib. To the Morning

ib.

“Give me a Cottage on some CamMy own Character..

brian wild".

ib Ode on Disappointment

Supposed to have been addressed by Lines written in Wilford Church-Yard, on

a Female Lunatic to a Lady.

26 Recovery from Sickness.

io.

In the Character of Dermody ib. To the Wind, at Midnight .

.xxii
The Winter Traveller.

ib. (Lines, by Professor Smyth, of Cambridge,

By Capel Lofft, Esq.

ib. on a Monument erected by Francis Boott,

Recantatcry in Reply . .

ib. Esq., an American Gentleman, in All

On hearing an Æolian Harp. ib Saints' Church, Cambridge, to the Memory

-“What art thou, Mighty One" 27 of Henry Kirke White

xxiii Ballad, “Be hush'd, be hush'd, ye bitter Lines, and Note, by Lord Byron)

ib.
winds".

ib. POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE THE PUBLICA. The Lullaby of a Female Convict to her TION OF CLIFTON GROVE.

Child ..

ib. Childhood, Part I.

POEMS OF A LATER DATE:
II.
The Fair Maid of Clifton—A New Ballad Extemporaneous Verses

ib. in the old style. ..

To Poesy; addressed to Capel Lofft, Esq. . 28 Song “The Robin Red-Breast" 5 Ode to H. Fuseli, Esq. R. A..

ib. Winter Song

ib.
to the Earl of Carlisle

29 Song “Sweet Jessy, I fain would caress" 6 Description of a Summer's Eve.

30 “Oh, that I were the fragrant Flower To Contemplation

ib. that kisses " ....

ib. To the Genius of Romance, a fragment 31 Fragment of an Eccentric Drama. ib. The Savoyard's Return

32 To a friend

8 “Go to the raging sea, and say, Be still". ib. On reading the Poems of Warton. ib. Written in the Prospect of Death .

ib. To the Muse

ib. Pastoral Song, “Come, Anna, come 33 To Love.. 9 Verses, “When Pride and Envy

ib. The Wandering Boy . ib. Epigram on Robert Bloomfield

ib. Fragment, * The Western Gale' ib. To Midnight

ib. Ode, written on Whit-Monday ib. To Thought; written at Midnight

34 Canzonet 10 Genius . .

26. Commencement of a Poem on Despair... ib. Fragment of an Ode to the Moon... . 35 On Rural Solitude ..

ib. Fragment, “Loud rage the winds without" i " In hollow Music, sighing through the glade" 11

"Oh, thou most fatal of Pandora's “Thou Mongrel, who dost show thy teeth,

train

ib. and yelp"

.

“I have a wish, and near my heart" 36 Ode to the Morning Star.

ib.

“Once more his beagles wake the The Hermit of the Pacific.. . slumb'ring morn"....

ib To the Wind, a Fragment (for conclusion of

“Drear winter! who dost knock" ib this piece, see Life, P. xxii)

12

“Behold the shepherd boy, who The Eve of death. ib. homeward tends".

ib. Thanatos

13

"Where yonder wonds in gloomy Athanatos ib

37 On Music

ib.

“With slow step, along the desert Ode to the Harvest Moon

sand" Song, “ Softly, softly blow, ye breezes" . Sonnet. To a friend. The Shipwreck'd Solitary's Song .

15

“Oh! had the soul's deep silence Elegy, occasioned by the Death of Mr. Gill ib. power to speak”.

.

pomp arise"

Account of the Life of Lenry Kirke Tunite.

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Not alone by the Muses,
But by the Virtues loved, his soul in its youthful aspirings
Sought the Holy Hill, and his thirst was for Siloah's waters.

Vision of Judgment.
No marble marks thy couch of lowly sleep,
But living statues there are seen to weep.
Alliction's semblance bends not o'er thy tomb,
Aflliction's self deplores thy youthful doom!

BYRON.

It fell to my lot to publish, with the assistance of her voice before she could rouse him.” When of my friend Mr. Cottle, the first collected edition he was about seven, he would creep unperceived of the works of Chatterton, in whose history I felt into the kitchen, to teach the servant to read and a more than ordinary interest, as being a native write; and he continued this for some time before of the same city, familiar from my childhood with it was discovered that he had been thus laudably those great objects of art and nature by which he employed. He wrote a tale of a Swiss emigrant, had been so deeply impressed, and devoted from which was probably his firsi composition, and my childhood with equal ardor to the same pur- gave it to this servant, being ashamed to show it suits. It is now my fortune to lay before the world to his mother. The consciousness of genius is some account of one whose early death is not less always at first accompanied with this diffidence, to be lamented, as a loss to English literature, and it is a sacred, solitary feeling. And perhaps, no forwhose virtues were as admirable as his genius. ward child, however extraordinary the promise of In the present instance there is nothing to be re- his childhood, ever produced anything truly great. corded, but what is honorable to himself and to When Henry was about six, he was placed the age in which he lived; little to be regretted, under the Rev. John Blanchard, who kept, at that but that one so ripe for heaven should so soon time, the best school in Nottingham. Here he have been removed from the world.

learnt writing, arithmetic, and French. When he HENRY KIRKE White, the second son of John was about eleven, he one day wrote a separate and Mary White, was born in Nottingham, March theme for every boy in his class, which consisted 21st, 1785. His father was a butcher; his mother, of about twelve or fourteen. The master said he whose maiden name was Neville, is of respectable had never known them write so well upon any Staffordshire family.

subject before, and could not refrain from ex. Froin the years of three till five, Henry learnt to pressing his astonishment at the excellence of read at the school of Mrs. Garrington; whose name, Henry's. It was considered as a great thing for unimportant as it may appear, is mentioned be. him to be at so good a school, yet there were some cause she had the good sense to perceive his extra- circumstances which rendered it less advantage. ordinary capacity, and spoke of what it promised ous to him than it might have been. Mrs. White with confidence. She was an excellent woman, and had not yet overcome her husband's intention of he describes her with affection in his poem upon breeding him up to his own business; and by an Childhood. At a very early age his love of read. arrangement which took up too much of his time, ing was decidedly manifested; it was a passion to and would have crushed his spirit, if that “mount. which everything else gave way. “I could fancy," ing spirit” could have been crushed, one whole says his eldest sister, “I see him in his little chair, day in the week, and his leisure hours on the with a large book upon his knee, and my mo- others, were employed in carrying the butcher's ther calling, “Henry, my love, come to dinner;' basket. Some differences at length arose between which was repeated so often without being re- his father and Mr. Blanchard, in consequence of garded, that she was obliged to change the tone which Henry was removed.

One of the ushers, when he came to receive the Oh, far away I then would rove,

To some secluded bushy grove, money due for tuition, took the opportunity of

There hop and sing with careless glee, informing Mrs. White what an incorrigible son

Hop and sing at liberty she had, and that it was impossible to make the And till death should stop my laye, lad do anything. This information made his Far from men would spend my days. .friends very uneasy: they were dispirited about

About this time his mother was induced, by the him; and had they relied wholly upon this report, advice of several friends, to open a Ladies' Board. the stupidity or malice of this man would have ing and Day School in Nottingham, her eldest blasted Henry's progress for ever. He was, how. daughter having previously been a teacher in one ever, placed under the care of a Mr. Shipley, who for some time. In this she succeeded beyond her soon discovered that he was a boy of quick per most sanguine expectations, and Henry's homeception, and very admirable talents ; and came comforts were thus materially increased, though with joy, like a good man, to relieve the anxiety it was still out of the power of his family to give and painful suspicions of his family.

him that education and direction in life which While his schoolmasters were complaining that his talents deserved and required. they could make nothing of him, he discovered

It was now determined to breed him up to the what Nature had made him, and wrote satires

hosiery trade, the staple manufacture of his native upon them. These pieces were never shown to place; and at the age of fourteen he was placed any, except his most particular friends, who say in a stocking-loom, with the view, at some future that they were pointed and severe. They are enumerated in the table of contents to one of his house. During the time that he was thus employ

period, of getting a situation in a hosier's ware manuscript volumes, under the title of School. Lampoons; but, as was to be expected, he had ed, he might be said to be truly unhappy; he weni

to his work with evident reluctance, and could cut the leaves out and destroyed them.

not refrain from sometimes hinting his extreme One of his poems, written at this time, and

aversion to it; but the circumstances of his family under these feelings, is preserved:

obliged them to turn a deaf ear. His mother, ON BEING CONFINED TO SCHOOL ONE PLEASANT however, secretly felt that he was worthy of better

MORNING IN SPRING.

WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF THIRTEEN.

The morning sun's enchanting rays
Now call forth every songsler's praise;
Now the lark, with upward flight,
Gayly ushers in the light:
While, wildly warbling from each tree,
The birds sing songs to Liberty
But for me no songster sings,
For me no joyous lark up-springs;
For I, confined in gloomy school,
Must own the pedant's iron rule,
And, far from sylvan shades and bowers,
In durance vile must pass the hours;
There con the scholiast's dreary lines,
Where no bright ray of genius shines,
And close to rugged learning cling,
While laughs around the jocund spring.
How gladly would my soul forego
All that arithmeticians know,
Or stiff grammarians quaintly teach,
Or all that industry can reach,
To taste each morn of all the joys
That with the laughing sun arise;
And unconstrain'd to rove along
The bushy brakes and glens among;
And woo the muse's gentle power,
In unfrequented rural bower!
But, ah! such heaven-approaching joys
Will never greet my longing eyes;
Still will they cheat in vision fine,
Yet never but in fancy shine.
Oh, that I were the little wren
That shrilly chirps from yonder glen!

1 His temper and tone of mind at this period, when he was in his fourteenth year, are displayed in this extract from an Address to Contemplation.

Thee do I own, the prompter of my joys,
The soother of my cares, inspiring peace;
And I will ne'er forsake thee.-Men may rave,
And blame and censure me, that I don't tie
My ev'ry thought down to the desk, and spend
The morning of my life in adding figures
With accurate monotony ; that so
The good things of the world may be my lot,
And I may taste the blessedness of wealth:
But, oh! I was not made for money-getting:
For me no much-respected plume awaits,
Nor civic honor, envied.-For as still
I tried to cast with school dexterity
The interesting sums, my vagrant thoughts
Would quick revert to many a woodland haunt,
Which fond remembrance cherish'd, and the per
Dropt from my senseless fingers as I pictured,
In my mind's eye, how on the shores of Trent
I erewhile wanderd with my early friends
In social intercourse. And then I'd think
How contrary pursuits had thrown us wide,
One from the other, scatter'd o'er the globe;
They were set down with sober steadiness,
Each to his occupation. I alone,
A wayward youth, misled by Fancy's vagaries,
Remain'd unsettled, insecure, and veering
With ev'ry wind to ev'ry point o'th' compass.
Yes, in the counting house I could indulge
In fits of close abstraction: yea, amid
The busy, bustling crowds could meditate,
And send my thoughts ten thousand leagues away
Beyond the Atlantic, resting on my friend.
Aye, Contemplation, ev’n in earliest youth

422