LINES TO W. L., ESQ., WHILE HE SANG A SONG TO PURCELL'S MUSIC. WHILE my young cheek retains its healthful hues, Would make me pass the cup of anguish by, Mix with the blest, nor know that I had died! 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! 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 DORMI, Jesu! Mater ridet, Dormi, Jesu! blandule! Si non dormis, Mater plorat, ENGLISH. Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling, Mother sits beside thee smiling: Sleep, my darling, tenderly! If thou sleep not, mother mourneth, * 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! 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 And wondering saw the selfsame spray Ah fond deceit! the rude green bud Had bloom'd, where bloom'd its parent stud, 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. They told her how a glorious light, While, sweeter than a mother's song, She listen'd to the tale divine, And closer still the babe she press'd; Poor, simple, and of low estate! 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? Him earth's majestic monarchs hail Their friend, their playmate! and his bold bright eye "Tell this in some more courtly scene, I am a woman poor and mean, And therefore is my soul elate. War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled, * A botanical mistake. The plant which the poet here describes is called the hart's tongue. IMITATED FROM STOLBERG. MARK this holy chapel well! Here first, an infant to her breast, God gave him reverence of laws, The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein ! To nature and to holy writ The straining oar and chamois chase 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, 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! 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 ! Like some tall tree that spreads its branches wide, 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, Go, traveller! tell the tale with sorrow fraught: 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 How shall I yield you Due entertainment, Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joy- That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre! O give me the nectar! O fill me the bowl! Pour out for the poet, Hebe pour free! Quicken his eyes with celestial dew, That Styx the detested no more he may view, 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 Yet, from the still surviving recollections in his 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 So twice five miles of fertile ground And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills, But O that deep romantic chasm which slanted 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 and detained by him above an hour, and on his A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer It was an Abyssinian maid, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, And all who heard should see them there, Such punishments, I said, were due To natures deepliest stain'd with sin: Th' unfathomable hell within, To know and loath, yet wish and do! 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, In humble trust mine eyelids close, No wish conceived, no thought express'd! A sense o'er all my soul imprest But yesternight I pray'd aloud Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: And whom I scorn'd, those only strong! For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo, So two nights pass'd: the night's dismay The third night, when my own loud scream 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. L |