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LINES TO W. L., ESQ.,

WHILE HE SANG A SONG TO PURCELL'S MUSIC.

WHILE my young cheek retains its healthful hues,
And I have many friends who hold me dear;
L! methinks, I would not often hear
Such melodies as thine, lest I should lose
All memory of the wrongs and sore distress,
For which my miserable brethren weep!
But should uncomforted misfortunes steep
My daily bread in tears and bitterness;
And if at death's dread moment I should lie
With no beloved face at my bed-side,
To fix the last glance of my closing eye,
Methinks, such strains, breathed by my angel-
guide,

Would make me pass the cup of anguish by,

Mix with the blest, nor know that I had died!

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SONNET.

COMPOSED ON A JOURNEY HOMEWARD; THE AUTHOR HAVING RECEIVED INTELLIGENCE OF THE BIRTH

OF A SON, SEPTEMBER 20, 1796.

OFT o'er my brain does that strange fancy roll Which makes the present (while the flash doth last)

Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past, Mix'd with such feelings, as perplex the soul Self-question'd in her sleep; and some have said*

We lived ere yet this robe of flesh we wore. O my sweet baby! when I reach my door, If heavy looks shall tell me thou art dead, (As sometimes, through excess of hope, I fear,) I think that I should struggle to believe Thou wert a spirit, to this nether sphere Sentenced for some more venial crime to grieve; Didst scream, then spring to meet Heaven's quick reprieve,

While we wept idly o'er thy little bier!

SONNET.

TO A FRIEND WHO ASKED, HOW I FELT WHEN THE NURSE FIRST PRESENTED MY INFANT TO ME.

CHARLES! my slow heart was only sad, when first I scann'd that face of feeble infancy:

For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst

All I had been, and all my child might be! But when I saw it on its mother's arm,

And hanging at her bosom (she the while Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile,) Then I was thrill'd and melted, and most warm Impress'd a father's kiss: and all beguiled Of dark remembrance and presageful fear, I seem'd to see an angel form appear"Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!

So for the mother's sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child.

SONNET TO THE RIVER OTTER.

DEAR native brook! wild streamlet of the west!
How many various-fated years have past,
What happy, and what mournful hours, since last
I skimm'd the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise, Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows gray,

And bedded sand that vein'd with various dyes Gleam'd through thy bright transparence! On my way,

Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs: Ah! that once more I were a careless child!

THE VIRGIN'S CRADLE HYMN.

COPIED FROM A PRINT OF THE VIRGIN IN A
CATHOLIC VILLAGE IN GERMANY.

DORMI, Jesu! Mater ridet,
Quæ tam dulcem somnum videt,

Dormi, Jesu! blandule!

Si non dormis, Mater plorat,
Inter fila cantans orat
Blande, veni, somnule.

ENGLISH.

Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling, Mother sits beside thee smiling:

Sleep, my darling, tenderly!

If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,
Singing as her wheel she turneth:
Come, soft slumber, balmily!

* Ην που ημων η ψυχη πριν εν τωδε τω ανθρωπινω ειδει γενέσθαι. PLAT. in Phadon.

ON THE CHRISTENING OF A FRIEND'S

CHILD.

THIS day among the faithful placed,

And fed with fontal manna;

O with maternal title graced

Dear Anna's dearest Anna!

While others wish thee wise and fair,

A maid of spotless fame,

I'll breathe this more compendious prayerMayst thou deserve thy name!

Thy mother's name, a potent spell,

That bids the virtues hie From mystic grove and living cell Confest to fancy's eye;

Meek quietness, without offence;

Content, in homespun kirtle; True love; and true love's innocence, White blossom of the myrtle!

Associates of thy name, sweet child!
These virtues mayst thou win;
With face as eloquently mild
To say, they lodge within.

So when, her tale of days all flown,

Thy mother shall be miss'd here; When Heaven at length shall claim its own, And angels snatch their sister;

Some hoary-headed friend, perchance,

May gaze with stifled breath, And oft, in momentary trance, Forget the waste of death.

E'en thus a lovely rose I view'd

In summer-swelling pride;

Nor mark'd the bud, that green and rude Peep'd at the rose's side.

It chanced, I pass'd again that way
In autumn's latest hour,

And wondering saw the selfsame spray
Rich with the selfsame flower.

Ah fond deceit! the rude green bud
Alike in shape, place, name,

Had bloom'd, where bloom'd its parent stud,
Another and the same!

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT.

ITs balmy lips the infant blest Relaxing from its mother's breast, How sweet it heaves the happy sigh Of innocent satiety !

And such my infant's latest sigh! O tell, rude stone! the passer by, That here the pretty babe doth lie, Death sang to sleep with lullaby.

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They told her how a glorious light,
Streaming from a heavenly throng,
Around them shone, suspending night!

While, sweeter than a mother's song,
Blest angels heralded the Saviour's birth,
Glory to God on high! and peace on earth.

She listen'd to the tale divine,

And closer still the babe she press'd;
And while she cried, the babe is mine!
The milk rush'd faster to her breast:
Joy rose within her, like a summer morn;
Peace, peace on earth! the Prince of peace is born.
Thou mother of the Prince of peace,

Poor, simple, and of low estate!
That strife should vanish, battle cease,

O why should this thy soul elate?

Sweet music's loudest note, the poet's story,Didst thou ne'er love to hear of fame and glory?

And is not war a youthful king,

A stately hero clad in mail?
Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;

Him earth's majestic monarchs hail

Their friend, their playmate! and his bold bright eye
Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh.

"Tell this in some more courtly scene,
To maids and youths in robes of state!

I am a woman poor and mean,

And therefore is my soul elate.

War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled,
That from the aged father tears his child!

* A botanical mistake. The plant which the poet here describes is called the hart's tongue.

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IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

MARK this holy chapel well!
The birthplace, this, of William Tell.
Here, where stands God's altar dread,
Stood his parents' marriage bed.

Here first, an infant to her breast,
Him his loving mother prest;
And kiss'd the babe, and bless'd the day,
And pray'd as mothers used to pray:
"Vouchsafe him health, O God, and give
The child, thy servant, still to live!"
But God has destined to do more
Through him, than through an armed power.

God gave him reverence of laws,
Yet stirring blood in freedom's cause-
A spirit to his rocks akin,

The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein !

To nature and to holy writ
Alone did God the boy commit:
Where flash'd and roar'd the torrent, oft
His soul found wings, and soar'd aloft!

The straining oar and chamois chase
Had form'd his limbs to strength and grace:
On wave and wind the boy would toss,
Was great, nor knew how great he was!
He knew not that his chosen hand,
Made strong by God, his native land
Would rescue from the shameful yoke
Of slavery-the which he broke !

HUMAN LIFE.

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY.

Ir dead, we cease to be; if total gloom

Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare As summer gusts, of sudden birth and doom, Whose sound and motion not alone declare, But are their whole of being! If the breath

Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If e'en a soul like Milton's can know death,

O man! thou vessel, purposeless, unmeant, Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes! Surplus of nature's dread activity,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

She form'd with restless hands unconsciously! Blank accident! nothing's anomaly !

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves, each fittest to create, And to repay the other! Why rejoices

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold!
Yet what and whence thy gain if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none:
Thy being's being a contradiction,

ELEGY,

IMITATED FROM ONE OF AKENSIDE'S BLANK VERSE

INSCRIPTIONS.

NEAR the lone pile with ivy overspread,

Fast by the rivulet's sleep-persuading sound, Where " sleeps the moonlight" on yon verdant

bed

O humbly press that consecrated ground!

For there does Edmund rest, the learned swain !
And there his spirit most delights to rove:
Young Edmund! famed for each harmonious strain,
And the sore wounds of ill-requited love.

Like some tall tree that spreads its branches wide,
And loads the west wind with its soft perfume,
His manhood blossom'd: till the faithless pride
Of fair Matilda sank him to the tomb.

But soon did righteous Heaven her guilt pursue! Where'er with wilder'd steps she wander'd pale, Still Edmund's image rose to blast her view,

Still Edmund's voice accused her in each gale.

With keen regret, and conscious guilt's alarms,
Amid the pomp of affluence she pined:
Nor all that lured her faith from Edmund's arms
Could lull the wakeful horror of her mind.

Go, traveller! tell the tale with sorrow fraught:
Some tearful maid, perchance, or blooming youth
May hold it in remembrance; and be taught
That riches cannot pay for love or truth.

THE VISIT OF THE GODS.

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER.

NEVER, believe me,

Appear the immortals,

Never alone:

Scarce had I welcomed the sorrow-beguiler, Iacchus! but in came boy Cupid the smiler;

Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his throne! | return to his room, found, to his no small surprise They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!

With divinities fills my
Terrestrial hall!

How shall I yield you

Due entertainment,
Celestial choir ?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance

Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joy-
ance,

That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!
Ha! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my
soul !

O give me the nectar!

O fill me the bowl!
Give him the nectar!

Pour out for the poet,

Hebe pour free!

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io paan, I cry!

The wine of th' immortals

Forbids me to die!

KUBLA KHAN;

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

[THE following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and, as far as the author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.

and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter.

Then all the charm

Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each misshapes the other. Stay a while,
Poor youth! who scarcely darest lift up thine eyes-
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dimof lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.

Yet, from the still surviving recollections in his
mind, the author has frequently purposed to finish
for himself what had been originally, as it were,
given to him. Zapepov adiov aow: but the to-mor-
row is yet to come.

As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease. -Note to the first edition, 1816.]

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree ;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Infolding sunny spots of greenery.

But O that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth-
ing,

In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, in Purchas's "Pilgrimage:". -"Here the Khan A mighty fountain momently was forced : Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst garden thereunto; and thus ten miles of fertile Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, ground were enclosed with a wall." The author Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever at least of the external senses, during which time It flung up momently the sacred river. he has the most vivid confidence that he could not Five miles, meandering with a mazy motion, have composed less than from two to three hun-Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, dred lines; if that indeed can be called composition Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man, in which all the images rose up before him as things And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: with a parallel production of the correspondent And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far expressions, without any sensation, or conscious- Ancestral voices prophesying war! ness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, It was a miracle of rare device,

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

and detained by him above an hour, and on his A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drank the milk of Paradise.

Such punishments, I said, were due

To natures deepliest stain'd with sin:
For aye entempesting anew

Th' unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,

To know and loath, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed.

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.

IN SEVEN PARTS.

THE PAINS OF SLEEP.

ERE on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to love compose,

In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought express'd!
Only a sense of supplication,

A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

But yesternight I pray'd aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorn'd, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mix'd,
On wild or hateful objects fix'd.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know,
Whether I suffer'd, or I did:

For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo,
My own or others', still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights pass'd: the night's dismay
Sadden'd and stunn'd the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seem'd to me
Distemper's worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discri mina et singulorum munera ? Quid agunt ? quæ loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit inge. nium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.-T. BURNET: Archaol. Phil. p. 68.

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