Like star-beam on the slow sequestered tide Lone-glittering, through the high tree branching wide. And here, in Inspiration's eager hour, Poor Chatterton! he sorrows for thy fate Who would have praised and loved thee, ere too late. Hence, gloomy thoughts! no more my soul shall dwell On joys that were! No more endure to weigh Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray; The wizard passions weave a holy spell! O Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive! And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng, man. SONGS OF THE PIXIES. a THE PIXIES, in the superstition of Devonshire, are race of beings invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to At a small distance from a village in that county, half way up a wood-covered hill, is an excavation called the Pixies' Parlor. The roots of old trees form its ceiling; and on its sides are innumerable cyphers, among which the author discovered his own and those of his brothers, cut by the hand of their childhood. At the foot of the hill flows the river Otter. To this place the author, during the summer months of the year 1793, conducted a party of young ladies; one of whom, of stature elegantly small, and of complexion colorless yet clear, was proclaimed the Faery Queen. On which occasion the following Irregular Ode was written. or inappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be popular; but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and rapid, must expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now hear no more of it: not that their poems are better understood at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions, or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride, to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring above us. If any man expect from my poems the same easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for him I have not written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero. I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own "exceeding great reward:" it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and the Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. S. T. C. Juvenile Poems. IGENEVIEVE. MAID of my Love, sweet Genevieve! SONNET. TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON. MILD Splendor of the various-vested Night! Mother of wildly-working visions! hail! I watch thy gliding, while with watery light Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil; And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud ANTHEM FOR THE CHILDREN OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. SERAP ERAPHS! around th' Eternal's seat who throng the song Of fervent gratitude to raise- Th' all-gracious Parent hears the wretch's prayer; And bids compassion seek the realms of woe |