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CXV

LINES

Composed at Grasmere, during a walk one Evening, after a stormy day, the Author having just read in a Newspaper that the dissolution of Mr. Fox was hourly expected.

LOUD is the Vale! the Voice is up

With which she speaks when storms are gone,

A mighty unison of streams!

Of all her Voices, One!

Loud is the Vale;-this inland Depth

In peace is roaring like the Sea;

Yon star upon the mountain-top

Is listening quietly.

Sad was I, even to pain deprest,
Importunate and heavy load * !
The Comforter hath found me here,
Upon this lonely road;

And many thousands now are sad-
Wait the fulfilment of their fear;
For he must die who is their stay,
Their glory disappear.

* Importuna e grave salma.

MICHAEL ANGELO.

A Power is passing from the earth
To breathless Nature's dark abyss;
But when the great and good depart
What is it more than this-

That Man, who is from God sent forth,
Doth yet again to God return ?—
Such ebb and flow must ever be,

Then wherefore should we mourn?

CXVI

EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE
DEATH OF JAMES HOGG

WHEN first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide

Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel led.

1806

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes:

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its stedfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source;

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!

Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,
"Who next will drop and disappear?"

Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,
Like London with its own black wreath,
On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking,
I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.

As if but yesterday departed,
Thou too art gone before; but why,
O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?

Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For Her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.

No more of old romantic sorrows,

For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid!

With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,

And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.

Nov. 1835

CXVII

A POET'S EPITAPH

ART thou a Statist in the van

Of public conflicts trained and bred?
-First learn to love one living man ;
Then may'st thou think upon the dead.

A Lawyer art thou ?-draw not nigh!
Go, carry to some fitter place
The keenness of that practised eye,
The hardness of that sallow face.

Art thou a Man of purple cheer?
A rosy Man, right plump to see?
Approach; yet, Doctor, not too near,
This grave no cushion is for thee.

Or art thou one of gallant pride,
A Soldier and no man of chaff?
Welcome !-but lay thy sword aside,
And lean upon a peasant's staff.

Physician art thou? one, all eyes,
Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave?

Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,
O turn aside, and take, I pray,
That he below may rest in peace,
Thy ever-dwindling soul, away!

A Moralist perchance appears;

Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor

And he has neither eyes nor ears;
Himself his world, and his own God;

sod:

One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling
Nor form, nor feeling, great or small;
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,

An intellectual All-in-all!

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