Go, call him by his name!
To light the flame of a soldier's fame
On the turf of a soldier's grave.
WINTHROP MAckworth Praed.
THE dreamy rhymer's measured snore
Falls heavy on our ears no more;
And by long strides are left behind
The dear delights of womankind,
Who wage their battles like their loves,
In satin waistcoats and kid gloves,
And have achieved the crowning work
When they have trussed and skewered a Turk.
Another comes with stouter tread,
And stalks among the statelier dead:
He rushes on, and hails by turns
High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns;
And shows the British youth, who ne'er
Will lag behind, what Romans were,
When all the Tuscans and their Lars
Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.
But divine, melodious truth-
Philosophic numbers smooth
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.
Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; And the souls ye left behind you Teach us here the way to find you, Where your other souls are joying, Never slumbering, never cloying. Here your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though fled far away.
Bards of passion and of mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Ye have souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new!
BARDS of passion and of mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wondrous,
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
WHO best can paint th' enamelled robe of spring,
With flow'rets and fair blossoms well bedight;
Who best can her melodious accents sing,
With which she greets the soft return of light;
Who best can bid the quaking tempest rage,
And make th' imperial arch of heav'n to groan Breed warfare with the winds, and finely wage Great strife with Neptune on his rocky throne Or lose us in those sad and mournful days
With which pale autumn crowns the misty year, Shall bear the prize, and in his true essays A poet in our awful eyes appear; For whom let wine his mortal woes beguile, Gold, praise, and woman's thrice-endearing smile. LORD THURLOW.
A Poet's Thought.
TELL me, what is a poet's thought? ·
Is it on the sudden born?
Is it from the starlight caught?
Is it by the tempest taught?
Or by whispering morn?
Was it cradled in the brain?
Chained awhile, or nursed in night? Was it wrought with toil and pain? Did it bloom and fade again,
Ere it burst to light?
No more question of its birth:
Rather love its better part! "Tis a thing of sky and earth, Gathering all its golden worth From the poet's heart.
Resolution and Independence.
THERE was a roaring in the wind all night-
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright —
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of
waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
I was a traveller then upon the moor;
I saw the hare that raced about with joy; I heard the woods and distant waters roarOr heard them not, as happy as a boy. The pleasant season did my heart employ; My old remembrances went from me wholly — And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.
But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low-
To me that morning did it happen so;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came--
Dim sadness, and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor
could name.
I heard the skylark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care,
But there may come another day to me-
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.
My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can he expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountain-side.
By our own spirits we are deified;
We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency and mad-
Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
A leading from above, a something given, Yet it befell that, in this lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven, Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a man before me unawares
Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep, in his extreme old age.
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage,
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness, felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame had
Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,
Upon a long gray staff of shaven wood;
And still, as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood.
Motionless as a cloud the old man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it move at all.
At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon that muddy water, which he conned
As if he had been reading in a book.
And now a stranger's privilege I took; And, drawing to his side, to him did say, "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."
A gentle answer did the old man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew; And him with further words I thus bespake: "What occupation do you there pursue? This is a lonesome place for one like you." Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise Broke from the sable orbs of his yet vivid eyes.
His words came feebly, from a feeble chest ;
But each in solemn order followed each,
With something of a lofty utterance drest,—
Choice word and measured phrase, above the
reach
Of ordinary men, a stately speech,
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray Such as grave livers do in Scotland use —
As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence,
Wonder to all who do the same espy
By what means it could hither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense-
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself-
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.
He told that to these waters he had come
"To gather leeches, being old and poor -
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure;
From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to
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