Where pit-falls lie in ev'ry flowery way,

And syrens lure the wanderer to their wiles! Hateful it is to me,

Its riotous railings and revengeful strife;

I'm tired with all its screams and brutal shouts Dinning the ear-away-away with life!

And welcome, oh! thou silent maid,
Who in some foggy vault art laid,
Where never daylight's dazzling ray
Comes to disturb thy dismal sway;
And there amid unwholesome damps dost sleep
In such forgetful slumbers deep,
That all thy senses stupified,
Are to marble petrified.
Sleepy Death, I welcome thee!
Sweet are thy calms to misery.
Poppies I will ask no more,
Nor the fatal hellebore;
Death is the best, the only cure,
His are slumbers ever sure.
Lay me in the Gothic tomb,
In whose solemn fretted gloom
I may lie in mouldering state,
With all the grandeur of the great:
Over me, magnificent,
Carve a stately monument:
Then thereon my statue lay,
With hands in attitude to pray,
And angels serve to hold my head,
Weeping o'er the father dead.
Duly too at close of day,
Let the pealing organ play;

And while the harmonious thunders roll,
Chaunt a vesper to my soul;

Thus how sweet my sleep will be,

Shut out from thoughtful misery!

ATHANATOS.

AWAY with Death!-away

With all her sluggish sleeps and chilling damps,
Impervious to the day,
Where Nature sinks into inanity.

.

How can the soul desire
Such hateful nothingness to crave,
And yield with joy the vital fire,
To moulder in the grave?

Yet mortal life is sad,

Eternal storms molest its sullen sky;

And sorrows ever rife

Drain the sacred fountain dry

Away with mortal life!
But, hail the calm reality,
The seraph Immortality!
Hail the heavenly bowers of peace!
Where all the storms of passion cease.
Wild Life's dismaying struggle o'er,
The wearied spirit weeps no more;
But wears the eternal smile of joy,
Tasting bliss without alloy.
Welcome, welcome, happy bowers,
Where no passing tempest lowers;
But the azure heavens display
The everlasting smile of day;
Where the choral seraph choir,
Strike to praise the harmonious lyre;

Hail! oh hail! I greet thy beam,
As soft it trembles o'er the stream,
And gilds the straw-thatch'd hamlet wide
Where Innocence and Peace reside;

'Tis thou that gladd'st with joy the rustic throng, Promptest the tripping dance, th' exhilarating song.

Moon of Harvest, I do love
O'er the uplands now to rove,
While thy modest ray serene
Gilds the wide surrounding scene;
And to watch thee riding high
In the blue vault of the sky,

Where no thin vapour intercepts thy ray,

But in unclouded majesty thou walkest on thy way.

Pleasing 'tis, oh! modest Moon!

Now the Night is at her noon,
'Neath thy sway to musing lie,
While around the zephyrs sigh,
Fanning soft the sun-tann'd wheat,
Ripen'd by the summer's heat;
Picturing all the rustic's joy

When boundless plenty greets his eye,

And thinking soon,

Oh, modest Moon!

How many a female

Along the road,

To see the load,

eye

will roam

The last dear load of harvest home!

THE EVE OF DEATH.
IRREGULAR.
I.

SILENCE of Death-portentous calm,
Those airy forms that yonder fly,
Denote that your void foreruns a storm,
That the hour of fate is nigh.
see, I see, on the dim mist borne,

I

The Spirit of battles rear his crest!

I see, I see, that ere the morn,

His spear will forsake its hated rest, And the widow'd wife of Larrendill will beat her naked breast.

II.

O'er the smooth bosom of the sullen deep No softly ruffling zephyrs fly;

But nature sleeps a deathless sleep,

For the hour of battle is nigh.

Not a loose leaf waves on the dusky oak, But a creeping stillness reigns around; Except when the raven with ominous croak, On the ear does unwelcomely sound.

I know, I know, what this silence means; I know what the raven saith

Strike, oh, ye bards! the melancholy harp, For this is the eve of death.

III.

Behold, how along the twilight air

The shades of our fathers glide!

There Morven fled, with the blood-drench'd hair, And Colma with grey side.

No gale around its coolness flings,

Yet sadly sigh the gloomy trees;

And, hark! how the harp's unvisited strings

Sound sweet, as if swept by a whispering

breeze!

'Tis done! the sun he has set in blood!

He will never set more to the brave;

Harvest Moon!

For to-morrow he hies to the grave.

CLIFTON GROVE AND

OTHER POEMS.

TO MY LYRE.

AN ODE.

THOU Simple Lyre;-thy music wild Has served to charm the weary hour, And many a lonely night has 'guiled, When even pain has own'd, and smiled, Its fascinating power.

Yet, oh my Lyre! the busy crowd

Will little heed thy simple tones : Them mightier minstrels harping loud Engross, and thou and I must shroud Where dark oblivion 'thrones.

No hand, thy diapason o'er,

Well skill'd, I throw with sweep sublime, For me, no academic lore

Has taught the solemn strain to pour,
Or build the polish'd rhyme.

Yet thou to Sylvan themes can'st soar;

Thou know'st to charm the woodland train: The rustic swains believe thy power Can hush the wild winds when they roar, And still the billowy main.

These honours, Lyre, we yet may keep, I, still unknown, may live with thee, And gentle Zephyr's wing will sweep Thy solemn string, where low I sleep, Beneath the alder-tree.

This little dirge will please me more
Than the full requiem's swelling peal;
I'd rather than that crowds should sigh
For me, that from some kindred eye
The trickling tear should steal.

Yet dear to me the wreath of bay, Perhaps from me debarr'd:

And dear to me the classic zone,

CLIFTON GROVE.

A SKETCH IN VERSE.

Lo! in the west, fast fades the lingering light,
And day's last vestige takes its silent flight.
No more is heard the woodman's measured
stroke,

Which, with the dawn, from yonder dingle broke; No more hoarse clamouring o'er the uplifted head,

The crows assembling, scek their wind-rock'd bed;

Still'd is the village hum-the woodland sounds
Have ceased to echo o'er the dewy grounds,
And general silence reigns, save when below,
The murmuring Trent is scarcely heard to flow;
And save when, swung by 'nighted rustic late,
Oft, on its hinge, rebounds the jarring gate;
Or when the sheep-bell, in the distant vale,
Breathes its wild music on the downy gale.

Now, when the rustic wears the social smile,
Released from day and its attendant toil,
And draws his household round their evening
fire,

And tells the oft-told tales that never tire;
Or where the town's blue turrets dimly rise,
And manufacture taints the ambient skies,
The pale mechanic leaves the labouring loom,
The air-pent hold, the pestilential room,
And rushes out, impatient to begin
The stated course of customary sin:
Now, now my solitary way I bend
Where solemn groves in awful state impend,
And cliffs, that boldly rise above the plain,
Bespeak, blest Clifton! thy sublime domain.
Here lonely wandering o'er the sylvan bower,
I come to pass the meditative hour;
To bid awhile the strife of passion cease,
And woo the calms of solitude and peace.
And oh thou sacred Power, who rear'st on
high

Thy leafy throne where waving poplars sigh!
Genius of woodland shades! whose mild control
Steals with resistless witchery to the soul,
Come with thy wonted ardour, and inspire
My glowing bosom with thy hallow'd fire.
And thou too, Fancy! from thy starry sphere,
Where to the hymning orbs thou lend'st thine ear,
Do thou descend, and bless my ravish'd sight,
Veil'd in soft visions of serene delight.

At thy command, the gale that passes by

Adorns the accepted bard.

And O! if yet 'twere mine to dwell
Where Cam or Isis winds along,
Perchance, inspired with ardour chaste,
I yet might call the ear of taste
To listen to my song.

Oh! then, my little friend, thy style
I'd change to happier lays,

Oh! then, the cloister'd glooms should smile,
And through the long, the fretted aisle
Should swell the note of praise.

Thou wavest thy wand, and lo! what forms

appear!

On the dark cloud what giant shapes career!
The ghosts of Ossian skim the misty vale,
And hosts of Sylphids on the moonbeams sail.
This gloomy alcove, darkling to the sight,
Where meeting trees create eternal night;
Save when, from yonder stream, the sunny ray.
Reflected, gives a dubious gleam of day;
Recalls, endearing to my alter'd mind,
Times when, beneath the boxen hedge reclined,
I watch'd the lapwing to her clamourous brood:
Or lured the robin to its scatter'd food;

Or woke with song the woodland echo wild,
And at each gay response delighted smiled.
How oft, when childhood threw its golden ray
Of gay romance o'er every happy day,
Here would I run, a visionary boy,
When the hoarse tempest shook the vaulted sky,
And, fancy-led, beheld the Almighty's form
Sternly careering on the eddying storm;

And heard, while awe congeal'd my inmost soul,

His voice terrific in the thunder's roll.
With secret joy I view'd with vivid glare,
The volley'd lightnings cleave the sullen air;
And, as the warring winds around reviled,
With awful pleasure big,-I heard and smiled.
Beloved remembrance!-Memory which endears
This silent spot to my advancing years.
Here dwells eternal peace, eternal rest,
In shades like these to live is to be blest.
While happiness evades the busy crowd,
In rural coverts loves the maid to shroud.
And thou too, Inspiration, whose wild flame
Shoots with electric swiftness through the frame,
Thou here dost love to sit with upturn'd eye,
And listen to the stream that murmurs by,
The woods that wave, the grey owl's silken flight,
The mellow music of the listening night:
Congenial calms, more welcome to my breast
Than maddening joy in dazzling lustre drest.
To heaven my prayers, my daily prayers, I raise,
That ye may bless my unambitious days,
Withdrawn, remote, from all the haunts of strife,
May trace with me the lowly vale of life,
And when her banner Death shall o'er me wave,
May keep your peaceful vigils on my grave.
Now as I rove, where wide the prospect grows,
A livelier light upon my vision flows.
No more above the embracing branches meet,
No more the river gurgles at my feet,

But seen deep down the cliff's impending side, Through hanging woods, now gleams its silver tide.

Dim is my upland path,- -across the Green
Fantastic shadows fling, yet oft between

Fair Nature! thee, in all thy varied charms,
Fain would I clasp for ever in my arms!
Thine are the sweets which never, never sate,
Thine still remain through all the storms of fate.
Though not for me 'twas Heaven's divine com-
mand

To roll in acres of paternal land,
Yet still my lot is blest, while I enjoy
Thine opening beauties with a lover's eye.

Happy is he, who, though the cup of bliss
Has ever shunn'd him when he thought to kiss,
Who, still in abject poverty or pain,
Can count with pleasure what small joys remain :
Though were his sight convey'd from zone to

zone,

He would not find one spot of ground his own, Yet as he looks around, he cries with glee, These bounding prospects all were made for

me:

For me yon waving fields their burthen bear,
For me yon labourer guides the shining share,
While happy I in idle case recline,

And mark the glorious visions as they shine.
This is the charm, by sages often told,
Converting all it touches into gold.
Content can soothe, where'er by Fortune placed,
Can rear a garden in the desert waste.

How lovely, from this hill's superior height, Spreads the wide view before my straining sight!

O'er many a varied mile of lengthening ground,
E'en to the blue-ridged hill's remotest bound,
My ken is borne; while o'er my head serene,
The silver moon illumes the misty scene;
Now shining clear, now darkening in the glade,
In all the soft varieties of shade.

Behind me, lo! the peaceful hamlet lies, The drowsy god has seal'd the cotter's eyes. No more where late the social fagot blazed, The vacant peal resounds, by little raised, But lock'd in silence, o'er Arion's star

sheds

Where knots of blue-bells droop their graceful heads,

And beds of violets, blooming 'mid the trees, Load with waste fragrance the nocturnal breeze.

Say, why does Man, while to his opening sight
Each shrub presents a source of chaste delight,
And Nature bids for him her treasures flow,
And gives to him alone his bliss to know,
Why does he pant for Vice's deadly charms?
Why clasp the syren Pleasure to his arms?
And suck deep draughts of her voluptuous breath,
Though fraught with ruin, infamy, and death?
Could he who thus to vile enjoyment clings,
Know what calm joy from purer sources springs;
Could he but feel how sweet, how free from
strife,

The harmless pleasures of a harmless life,
No more his soul would pant for joys impure,
The deadly chalice would no more allure,
But the sweet potion he was wont to sip
Would turn to poison on his conscious lip.

The church-bell tolls, deep-sounding down the glade,

The solemn hour for walking spectres made!
The simple plow-boy, wakening with the sound,
Listens aghast, and turns him startled round,
Then stops his ears, and strives to close his eyes,
Lest at the sound some grisly ghost should rise.
Now ceased the long, the monitory toll,
Returning silence stagnates in the soul;
Save when, disturb'd by dreams, with wild
affright,

The deep-mouth'd mastiff bays the troubled night:
Or where the village ale-house crowns the vale,
The creaking sign-post whistles to the gale,
A little onward let me bend my way

| Where the moss'd seat invites the traveller's stay.
That spot, oh! yet it is the very same;
That hawthorn gives it shade, and gave it name:
There yet the primrose opes its earliest bloom,
There yet the violet sheds its first perfume,

The constellation Delphinus. For authority for this appellation, vide Ovid's Fasti, B. xi. 113.