With a wild pleasure falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half-opened, and I snatched A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, But still I hoped to see the stranger's face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought! My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, And think that thou shalt learn far other lore And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eve-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
THE THREE GRAVES.
A FRAGMENT OF A SEXTON'S TALE.
[THE Author has published the following humble fragment, encouraged by the decisive recommendation of more than one of our most celebrated living Poets. The language was intended to be dramatic; that is, saited to the narrator; and the metre corresponds to the homeliness of the diction. It is therefore presented as the fragment, not of a Poem, but of a common Ballad-tale. Whether this is sufficient to justify the adoption of such a style, in any metrical composition not professedly ludicrous, the Author is himself in some doubt. At all events, it is not presented as poetry, and it is in no way connected with the Author's judgment concerning poetic diction. Its merits, if any, are exclusively psychological. The story which must be supposed to have been narrated in the first and second parts is as follows.
Edward, a young farmer, meets at the house of Ellen her bosom-friend Mary, and commences an acquaintance, which ends in a mutual attachment. With her consent, and by the advice of their common friend Ellen, he announces his hopes and intentions to Mary's mother, a
Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense Distending wide, and man beloved as man, Where France in all her towns lay vibrating Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud Is visible, or shadow on the main.
For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded, Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
When from the general heart of human kind Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!
———Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down, So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self, With light unwaning on her eyes, to look Far on-herself a glory to behold,
The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain) Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice, Action and joy!—An Orphic song indeed, A song
divine of high and passionate thoughts To their own music chanted!
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air, With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir Of ever-enduring men. The truly great Have all one age, and from one visible space Shed influence! They, both in power and act Are permanent, and Time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them, they in it. Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old, And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame Among the archives of mankind, thy work Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,
Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay, Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes! Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,
The pulses of my being beat anew;
And even as life returns upon the drowned Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains- Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope; And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain ; And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all, Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!
That way no more! and ill beseems it me, Who came a welcomer in herald's guise, Singing of glory, and futurity,
To wander back on such unhealthful road, Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill
Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths Strewed before thy advancing!
Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour Of thy communion with my nobler mind By pity or grief, already felt too long!
Nor let my words import more blame than needs. The tumult rose and ceased; for peace is nigh Where wisdom's voice has found a listening heart. Amid the howl of more than wintry storms,
The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours Already on the wing.
Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed And more desired, more precious for thy song, In silence listening, like a devout child, My soul lay passive, by thy various strain Driven as in surges now beneath the stars, With momentary stars of my own birth, Fair constellated foam,* still darting off Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea, Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.
And when-O Friend! my comforter and guide! Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength!— Thy long sustained Song finally closed,
And thy deep voice had ceased-yet thou thyself Wert still before my eyes, and round us both That happy vision of beloved faces→ Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close I sate, my being blended in one thought (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?) Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound- And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.
"A beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled and went out in it; and every now and then light detachments of this white cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness."-Biographia Literaria, p. 197
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