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XIV.

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN.

Ar the corner of Wood-street, when day-light appears,
There's a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only Dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her Heart is in heaven: but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.

XV.

POWER OF MUSIC.

AN Orpheus! an Orpheus!-yes, Faith may grow bold, And take to herself all the wonders of old ;—

Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same

In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.

His station is there;-and he works on the crowd,
He sways them with harmony merry and loud;
He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim-
Was aught ever heard like his Fiddle and him?

What an eager assembly! what an empire is this!
The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss;
The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest;
And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest.

As the Moon brightens round her the clouds of the night,
So he where he stands is a centre of light;

It gleams on the face, there, of dusky-browed Jack,
And the pale-visaged Baker's, with basket on back.

That errand-bound 'Prentice was passing in haste-
What matter! he's caught-and his time runs to waste-
The News-man is stopped, though he stops on the fret,
And the half-breathless Lamp-lighter he's in the net!

The Porter sits down on the weight which he bore;
The Lass with her barrow wheels hither her store;-
If a Thief could be here he might pilfer at ease;
She sees the Musician, 'tis all that she sees!

He stands, back'd by the Wall;-he abates not his din;
His hat gives him vigour, with boons dropping in,
From the Old and the Young, from the Poorest; and there!
The one-pennied Boy has his penny to spare.

O blest are the Hearers, and proud be the Hand
Of the pleasure it spreads through so thankful a Band;
I am glad for him, blind as he is!-all the while
If they speak 'tis to praise, and they praise with a smile.

That tall Man, a Giant in bulk and in height,
Not an inch of his body is free from delight;
Can he keep himself still, if he would? oh, not he!
The music stirs in him like wind through a tree.

There's a Cripple who leans on his Crutch; like a Tower
That long has lean'd forward, leans hour after hour!—
A Mother, whose Spirit in fetters is bound,

While she dandles the babe in her arms to the sound.

Now, Coaches and Chariots, roar on like a stream ; Here are twenty souls happy as Souls in a dream : They are deaf to your murmurs—they care not for you, Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue!

XVI.

STEPPING WESTWARD.

While my Fellow-traveller and I were walking by the side of Loch Ketterine, one fine evening after sun-set, in our road to a Hut where in the course of our Tour we had been hospitably entertained some weeks before, we met, in one of the loneliest parts of that solitary region, two well dressed Women, one of whom said to us, by way of greeting, "What you are stepping westward?"

"What you are stepping westward?"—" Yea." -Twould be a wildish destiny,

If we, who thus together roam

In a strange Land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance :
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a Sky to lead him on?

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