That happy vision of beloved Faces,-
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close,
I sate, my being blended in one thought,
(Thought was 't? or aspiration? or resolve?)
Absorb'd, yet hanging still upon the sound;
And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring: it flows silently,
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And, hark! the Nightingale begins its song,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!10
A melancholy bird? O, idle thought!

In Nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale

Of his own sorrow,) he, and such as he,

First named these notes a melancholy strain:
And many a poet echoes the conceit;

Poet who hath been building up the rhyme

When he had better far have stretch'd his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moon light, to the influxes

Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And of his fame forgetful: so his fame
Should share in Nature's immortality,
A venerable thing! and so his song

10 This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere de scription. It is spoken in the character of the melancholy man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton.-See page 119, note 7.

Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical
Who lose the deepening twilights of the Spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still
Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music!

And I know a grove
Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales; and far and near,
In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
They answer and provoke each other's song,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all;
Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That, should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moon-lit bushes,

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may perchance behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full, Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade

Lights up her love-torch.

A most gentle Maid,

Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the castle, and at latest eve
(Even like a Lady vow'd and dedicate

To something more than Nature in the grove)

Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes. That gentle Maid! and oft a moment's space,

What time the Moon was lost behind a cloud,

Hath heard a pause of silence; till the Moon,
Emerging, hath awaken'd earth and sky
With one sensation, and these wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if some sudden gale had swept at once
An hundred airy harps! And she hath watch'd
Many a nightingale perch'd giddily

On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

Farewell, Ŏ Warbler! till to-morrow eve,
And you, my friends, farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear homes. That strain again?
Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe
Who, capable of no articulate sound
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! And I deem it wise

To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well
The evening-star; and once, when he awoke
In most distressful mood, (some inward pain

Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream,)
I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,

And he beheld the Moon, and, hush'd at once,
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes, that swam with undropp'd tears,
Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam! Well!-
It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs, that with the night
He may associate joy! Once more farewell,
Sweet Nightingale! Once more, my friends, farewell!

FROST AT MIDNIGHT.

THE frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelp'd by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud, and, hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude which suits
Abstruser musings; save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
"Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village!-sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not:
Only that film which flutter'd on the grate
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in this hush of Nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,

To which the living spirit in our frame,
That loves not to behold a lifeless thing,
Transfuses its own pleasures, its own will.

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft,
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirr'd and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt
Lull'd me to sleep, and sleep prolong'd my dreams;
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fix'd with mock study on my swimming book;
Save if the door half open'd, and I snatch'd
A hasty glance, and still my heart leap'd up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike.
Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersèd vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought;
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore
And in far other scenes! For I was rear'd
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in Himself.
Great universal Teacher, He shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

'Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the Summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eve-drops fall,
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

DEJECTION: AN ODE.

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!

We shall have a deadly storm.- SIR PATRICK SPENCE.

WELL! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Eolian lute,
Which better far were mute.

For, lo! the new Moon winter-bright,
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread,
But rimm'd and circled by a silver thread,)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming on of rain and squally blast.

And O, that even now the gust were swelling,

And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!

Those sounds which oft have raised me whilst they awed,

And sent my soul abroad,

Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,

Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!