VII. Young as I am, my course is run, I cannot lift my limbs to know If they have any life or no. For once could have thee close to me, MATERNAL GRIEF. DEPARTED Child! I could forget thee once A shadow, never, never to be displaced The child she mourned had overstepped the pale Not unvouchsafed -a light that warmed and cheered Daily before the mother's watchful eye, | Unfolded, beauty, for its present self, Have you espied upon a dewy lawn That nature prompts them to display, their looks, And character of gladness, as if spring Lodged in their innocent bosoms, and the spirit Of the rejoicing morning were their own. Such union, in the lovely girl maintained And her twin brother, had the parent seen, Ere, pouncing like a ravenous bird of prey, Death in a moment parted them, and left The mother, in her turns of anguish, worse So clear, so bright, our fathers said A frog leaps out from bordering grass, Shrunk from his mother's presence, shunned with fear For a light heart in a dull season. In his known haunts of joy where'er he might, In walks whose boundary is the lost one's grave, And you may love him in the pool, In which he swims as taught by nature, Nor blush if o'er your heart be stealing Long may you love your pensioner mouse, Which, soothed and sweetened by the grace of Heaven Soft as the dying throb of the lyre. THE REDBREAST. STOGENTED IN A WESTMORELAND COTTAGE. DRIVEN in by Autumn's sharpening air And, caught by glimpses now-now missed, If the soft voice he throws about Comes from within doors or without! He's at your elbow-to your feeling Heart-pleased we smile upon the bird l' seen, and with like pleasure stirred Commend him, when he's only heard. But small and fugitive our gain Compared with hers who long hath lain, With languid limbs and patient head Reposing on a lone sick-bed; Were now, she daily hears a strain That cheats her of too busy cares, Eses her pain, and helps her prayers. And who but this dear bird beguiled The fever of that pale-faced child; Now cooling with his passing wing, Her forehead, like a breeze of Spring: Recalling now, with descant soft Sed round her pillow from aloft, Sweet thoughts of angels hovering nigh, And the invisible sympathy (Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, Blessing the bed she lies upon?'* And sometimes, just as listening ends Is slumber, with the cadence blends A dream of that low-warbled hymn Which old folk, fondly pleased to trim Above and round the sacred places Thrice happy creature! in all lands And he belike will flinch or start, HER EYES ARE WILD. I. HER eyes are wild, her head is bare, And underneath the hay-stack warm, II. "Sweet babe! they say that I am mad, NOTES ΤΟ POEMS FOUNDED ON THE AFFECTIONS. Note, p. 87. "The Brothers." met from a letter addressed by Wordsworth to James Fox in 1802, and accompanying a copy .-Pens: be two poems, The Brothers' and 'Michael,' ure attempted to draw a picture of the domestic I know they exist amongst a class of men now almost confined to the north of England. are small independent proprietors of land, here » 'statesmen,' men of respectable education, who abour on their own little properties. The domestic As will always be strong amongst men who live estry not crowded with population; if these men a inred above poverty. But, if they are proprietors estates which have descended to them from sors, the power which these affections will magst such men, is inconceivable by those ase stay had an opportunity of observing hired farmers, and the manufacturing poor. Their and serves as a kind of permanent rallyLieir domestic feelings, as a tablet upon *y are written, which makes them objects of in a thousand instances when they would se be forgotten. It is a fountain fitted to the of social man, from which supplies of affection ~as by beart was intended for, are daily drawn. lass of men is rapidly disappearing. You, Sir, lur aesse, exness, upon which every good man will ate you, that the whole of your public conduct he way or other been directed to the preservation rass of men, and those who hold similar situaYou have felt that the most sacred of all pro* tue property of the poor. The two poems I care mentioned were written with a view to at nen who do not wear fine cloaths can feel Pectus enim est quod disertos facit, et vis Itemque imperitis quoque, si modo sint aliquo accal, verba non desunt.' The poems are ́es from nature; and I hope whatever effect at have upon you, you will at least be able to The letter from which this extract is made, was published in 1838, by Sir Henry Bunbury, among some miscellaneous letters in his "Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, etc.," p. 436. It is this poem of which Coleridge said "THE BROTHERS, that model of English pastoral, which I never yet read with unclouded eye." Biographia Literaria, Vol. II., chap. v., p. 85, Note, Edit. of 1847. And Southey, writing to Coleridge, July 11, 1801, says: "God bless Wordsworth for that poem! (THE BROTHERS.")" Life and Correspondence of Southey, Vol. II., p. 150, chap. viii. — H. R.] Page 96. 'I travelled among unknown men.' ["Amongst the Poems founded on the Affections is one called, from its first line, 'I travelled among unknown men,' which ends with these lines, wherein the poet addresses his native land : Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed That Lucy's eyes surveyed. A friend, a true poet himself, to whom I owe some new insight into the merits of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, and who showed me to my surprise, that there were nooks in that rich and varied region, some of the shy treasures of which I was not perfectly acquainted with, first made me feel the great beauty of this stanza; in which the poet, as it were, spreads day and night over the object of his affections, and seems, under the influence of passionate feeling, to think of England, whether in light or darkness, only as her play-place and verdant home.-S. C." (Sara Coleridge.) Biographia Literaria of S. T. Coleridge, Vol. II., chap. ix., p. 173, Note, Edit. of 1847.-H. R.] Page 98. 'Let other bards of angels sing.' [In his editions of 1845 and 1850, the author has ex Saat they may excite profitable sympathies included the following stanza, which was the second in and and good hearts; and may in some small this piece in the earlier editions, to the readers of which large our feelings of reverence for our species, it had become familiar, and is therefore preserved in ge of human nature, by showing that this note: ties are possessed by men whom we are ➡ to consider, not with reference to the points they resemble us, but to those in which they artly differ from us." R Such if thou wert in all men's view, A universal show, What would my fancy have to do? My feelings to bestow? - H. R.] |