Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse; Though timorous of heart, and hard beset

Whence tumbled headlong from the height of life, By death in various forms, dark-snares and dogs, They furnish matter for the tragic muse. And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,

Even in the vale, where wisdom loves to dwell, Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kine With friendship, peace, and contemplation joined, Eye the bleak heaven, and next, the glistening earth, How many, racked with honest passions, droop With looks of dumb despair ; then, sad dispersed, In deep retired distress. How many stand Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow. Around the deathbed of their dearest friends,

As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce And point the parting anguish. Thought fond man All winter drives along the darkened air,

Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills, In his own loose revolving fields the swain

That one incessant struggle fender life, Disastered stands ; sees other hills ascend,

One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate, Of unknown joyless brow, and other scenes,

Vice in his high career would stand appalled, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;

And heedless rambling impulse learn to think; Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid

The consious heart of charity would warm, Beneath the formless wild ; but wanders on

And her wide wish benevolence dilate; From hill to dale, still more and more astray, The social tear would rise, the social sigh; Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, And into clear perfection, gradual bliss, Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of Refining still, the social passions work.

home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth

Hymn on the Seasons. In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul ! What black despair, what horror, fills his heart ! These, as they change, Almighty Father, these When for the dusky spot which fancy feigned,

Are but the varied God. The rolling year His tufted cottage rising through the snow,

Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring He meets the roughness of the middle waste,

Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love. Far from the track and blessed abode of man; Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; While round him night resistless oloses fast,

Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; And every tempest howling o'er his head,

And every sense and every heart is joy. Renders the savage wilderness more wild.

Then comes thy glory in the Summer months, Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,

With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,

Shoots full perfection through the swelling year: A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;

And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks, Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge

And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, Smoothed up with snow; and what is land unknown, By brooks and groves in hollow-whispering gales. What water of the still unfrozen spring,

Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined, In the loose parsh or solitary lake,

And spreads a common feast for all that lives. Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. In Winter awful thou ! with clouds and storms These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest roller, Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,

Majestic darkness ! On the whirlwind's wing Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,

Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore, Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots

And humblest nature with thy northern blast. Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,

Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,
His wife, his children, and his friends, unseen. Deep-felt, in these appear! a simple train,
In vain for him the officious wife prepares

Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm : Such beauty and beneficence combined ;
In vain his little children, peeping out

Shade unperceived, so softening into shade;
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire

And all so forming a harmonious whole, With tears of artless innocence. Alas!

That, as they still succeed, they ravish still. Nor wife nor children more shall he behold,

But wandering oft, with rude unconscious gaze, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense,

That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres; And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,

Works in the secret deep; shoots steaming thence Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse,

The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring; Stretched out, and bleaching on the northern blast. Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;

Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth, [Benevolent Reflections, from Winter. ']

And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,

With transport touches all the springs of life.
Ah little think the gay licentious proud,

Nature, attend! join, every living soul
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround; Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth, In adoration join; and ardent raise
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;

One general song! To Him, ye vocal gales,
Ah little think they, wbile they dance along, Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes.
How many feel, this very moment, death

Oh talk of Him in solitary glooms, And all the sad variety of pain.

Where o'er the rock the scarcely waving pine How many sink in the devouring flood,

Fills the brown shade with a religious awe. Or more devouring flame. How many bleed, And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar, By shameful variance betwixt man and man. Who shake the astonished world, lift high to heaven How many pine in want and dungeon glooms; The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage. Shut from the common air, and common use

His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills; Of their own limbs. How many drink the cup And let me catch it as I muse along. Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread

Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound; Of misery. Sore pierced by wintry winds,

Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze How many shrink into the sordid hut

Along the vale; and thou majestic main, Of cheerless poverty. How many shake

A secret world of wonders in thyself, With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,

Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice

6

Or bids you roar, or bids your roaring fall.

Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
So roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers, Nearer and nearer still they darkening come,
In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts, Till with the general all-involving storm
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints. Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise ;
Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave to Him;

And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown,
Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart, Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.

Beneath descending hills, the caravan
Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams;

The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain, Ye constellations, while your angels strike,

And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.
Great source of day! blest image here below

[The Siberian Exile.]
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,

Our infant winter sinks On nature write with every beam His praise.

Divested of his grandeur, should our eye
The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world,

Astonished shoot into the frigid zone;
While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn. Where for relentless months continual night
Bleat out afresh ye hills; ye mossy rocks

Holds o'er the glittering waste her starry reign.
Retain the sound; the broad responsive low,

There, through the prison of unbounded wilds, Ye valleys, raise ; for the Great Shepherd reigns,

Barred by the hand of nature from escape, And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.

Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around Ye woodlands, all awake; a boundless song

Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow; Buret from the groves; and when the restless day, And henvy-loaded groves; and solid floods Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep,

That stretch athwart the solitary waste
Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charm

Their icy horrors to the frozen main ;
The listening shades, and teach the night His praise. And cheerless towns far distant, never blessed
Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles;

Save when its annual course the caravan
At once the head, the heart, the tongue of all, Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay.
Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast,
Assembled men to the deep organ join

[Pestilence at Carthagena.]
The long resounding voice, oft breaking clear,
At solemn pauses, through the swelling base;

Wasteful, forth And, as each mingling flame increases each,

Walks the dire power of pestilent disease. In one united ardour rise to heaven.

A thousand hideous fiends her course attend, Or if you rather choose the rural shade,

Sick nature blasting, and to heartless wo
And find a fane in every sacred grove,

And feeble desolation casting down
There let the shepherd's lute, the virgin's lay, The towering hopes and all the pride of man.
The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre,

Such as of late at Carthagena quenched
Still sing the God of seasons as they roll.

The British fire. You, gallant Vernon, saw Por me, when I forget the darling theme,

The miserable scene; you, pitying, saw Whether the blossom blows, the Summer ray

To infant weakness sunk the warrior's arm; Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams,

Saw the deep racking pang, the ghastly form, Of Winter rises in the blackening east

The lip pale quivering, and the beamless eye
Be my tongue mute, my fancy paint no more, No more with ardour bright; you heard the groans
And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat.

Of agonising ships, from shore to shore;
Should fate command me to the farthest verge Heard, nightly plunged amid the sullen waves,
Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, The frequent corse; while on each other fixed
Rivers unknown to song; where first the sun

In sad presage, the blank assistants seemed
Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam

Silent to ask whom Fate would next demand.
Flames on the Atlantic isles, 'tis nought to me;
Since God is ever present, ever felt,

[From the Castle of Indolence.']
In the void waste as in the city full;
And where He vital breathes, there must be joy. O mortal man, who livest here by toil,
When even at last the solemn hour shall come,

Do not complain of this thy hard estate ;
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,

That like an emmet thou must ever moil, I cheerful will obey; there with new powers,

Is a sad sentence of an ancient date; Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go,

And, certes, there is for it reason great; Where universal love not smiles around,

For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail, Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns ;

And curse thy star, and early drudge and late, From seeming evil still educing good,

Withouten that would come a heavier bale, And better thence again, and better still,

Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale. In infinite progression. But I lose

In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, Myself in Him, in light ineffable !

With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round, Come, then, expressive silence, muse His praise.

A most enchanting wizard did abide,

Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found. [The Caravan of Mecca.]

It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground:

And there a season atween June and May,
Breathed hot
From all the boundless furnace of the sky,

Half pranked with spring, with summer half im

browned, And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,

A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,

No living wight could work, ne cared even for play, Son of the desert ! e'en the camel feels,

Was nought around but images of rest : Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast. Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ; Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,

And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest, Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands From poppies breathed ; and beds of pleasant green,

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

POBTS.

*

Oh, grievous folly ! to heap up estate,

The pride of Turkey and of Persia land ?
Losing the days you see beneath the sun;

Soft quilts on quilts, on carpets carpets spread,
When, sudden, comes blind unrelenting fate, And couches stretched around in seemly band ;
And gives the untasted portion you have won, And endless pillows rise to prop the head ;
With ruthless toil, and many a wretch undone, So that each spacious room was one full-swelling bed.
To those who mock you gone to Pluto's reign,
There with sad ghosts to pine, and shadows dun:

And everywhere huge covered tables stood,
But sure it is of vanities most vain,

With wines high flavoured and rich viands crowned ;
To toil for what you here untoiling may obtain.'

Whatever sprightly juice or tasteful food
He ceased. But still their trembling ears retained And all old ocean genders in his round;
The deep vibrations of his ’witching song;

Some hand unseen these silently displayed,
That, by a kind of magic power, constrained

Even undemanded by a sign or sound;
To enter in, pell-mell, the listening throng,

You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,
Heaps poured on heaps, and yet they slipped along, Fair ranged the dishes rose, and thick the glasses
In silent ease; as when beneath the beam

played.
Of summer-moons, the distant woods among,
Or by some flood all silvered with the gleam,

The rooms with costly tapestry were hung,

Where was inwoven many a gentle tale;
The soft-embodied fays through airy portal stream.

Such as of old the rural poets sung,

Or of Arcadian or Sicilian vale:
Waked by the crowd, slow from his bench arose Reclining lovers, in the lonely dale,
A comely full-spread porter, swollen with sleep; Poured forth at large the sweetly-tortured heart;
His calm, broad, thoughtless aspect breathed repose ; Or, sighing tender passion, swelled the gale,
And in sweet torpor he was plunged deep,

And taught charmed echo to resound their smart;
Ne could himself from ceaseless yawning keep;

While flocks, woods, streams, around, repose and peace
While o'er his eyes the drowsy liquor ran,

impart.
Through which his half-waked soul would faintly

Those pleased the most, where, by a cunning hand,
peep,
Then taking his black staff, he called his man,

Depainted was the patriarchal age;
And roused himself as much as rouse himself he can.

What time Dan Abraham left the Chaldee land,

And pastured on from verdant stage to stage,
The lad leaped lightly at his master's call.

Where fields and fountains fresh could best engage.
He was, to weet, a little roguish page,

Toil was not then. Of nothing took they heed,
Save sleep and play who minded nought at all, But with wild beasts the sylvan war to wage,
Like most the untaught striplings of his age. And o'er vast plains their herds and flocks to feed ;
This boy he kept each band to disengage,

Blest sons of nature they! true golden age indeed !
Garters and buckles, task for him unfit,
But ill-becoming his grave personage,

Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls,
And which his portly paunch would not permit,

Bade the gay bloom of vernal landscapes rise,
So this same limber page to all performed it.

Or autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls;

Now the black tempest strikes the astonished eyes, il Meantime the master-porter wide displayed

Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies;
Great store of caps, of slippers, and of gowns ; The trembling sun now plays o'er ocean blue,
Wherewith he those that entered in, arrayed

And now rude mountains frown amid the skies ;
Loose, as the breeze that plays along the downs, Whate'er Lorraine light-touched with softening hue,
And waves the summer-woods when evening frowns. Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew.
Oh fair undress, best dress ! it checks no vein,
But every flowing limb in pleasure drowns,

A certain music, never known before,
And heightens ease with grace. This done, right fain

Here lulled the pensive melancholy mind,
Sir porter sat him down, and turned to sleep again.

Full easily obtained. Behoves no more,
But sidelong, to the gently-waving wind,

To lay the well-tuned instrument reclined ;
Strait of these endless numbers, swarming round, From which with airy flying fingers light,
As thick as idle motes in sunny ray,

Beyond each mortal touch the most refined,
Not one eftsoons in view was to be found,

The god of winds drew sounds of deep delight;
But every man strolled off his own glad way, Whence, with just cause, the harp of Æolus it
Wide o'er this ample court's blank area,

hight.
With all the lodges that thereto pertained ;
No living creature could be seen to stray ;

Ah me! what hand can touch the string so fine!
While solitude and perfect silence reigned :

Who up the lofty diapason roll
So that to think you dreamt you almost was constrained.

Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine,

Then let them down again into the soul ?
As when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles,

Now rising love they fanned ; now pleasing dole
Placed far amid the melancholy main

They breathed, in tender musings, through the heart; (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,

And now a graver sacred strain they stole,
Or that aërial beings sometimes deign

As when seraphic hands a hymn impart :
To stand embodied to our senses plain);

Wild warbling nature all, above the reach of art!
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in ocean Phæbus dips his wain,

Such the gay splendour, the luxurious state

Of Caliphs old, who on the Tigris' shore,
A vast assembly moving to and fro;
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.

In mighty Bagdad, populous and great,
Held their bright court, where was of ladies store;

And verse, love, music, still the garland wore;
The doors, that knew no shrill alarming bell, When sleep was coy, the bard in waiting there
Ne cursed knocker plied by villain's hand,

Cheered the lone midnight with the muse's lore;
Self-opened into halls, where, who can tell

Composing music bade his dreams be fair,
What elegance and grandeur wide expand,

And music lent new gladness to the morning air.

21

事