I may not vilely prostitute to those
Whose infants owe them less
Than the poor caterpillar owes

Its gaudy parent fly.

You were a mother! at your bosom fed

The babes that loved you.

eye,

You, with laughing

Each twilight-thought, each nascent feeling read,
Which you yourself created. Oh! delight!
A second time to be a mother,

Without the mother's bitter groans:
Another thought, and yet another,

By touch, or taste, by looks or tones

O'er the growing sense to roll,

The mother of your infant's soul !

The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides
His chariot-planet round the goal of day,

All trembling gazes on the eye of God,

A moment turned his awful face away; And as he viewed you, from his aspect sweet New influences in your being rose,

Blest intuitions and communions fleet

With living Nature, in her joys and woes!
Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see
The shrine of social Liberty!

O beautiful! O Nature's child!
'Twas thence you hailed the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure,
Thence learn'd you that heroic measure.

ODE TO TRANQUILLITY.

TRANQUILLITY! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame:
Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
To low intrigue, or factious rage;

For oh dear child of thoughtful Truth,

To thee I gave my early youth,

And left the bark, and blest the steadfast shore,

Ere yet the tempest rose and scared me with its roar.

Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
On him but seldom, Power divine,

Thy spirit rests! Satiety

And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Mock the tired worldling. Idle hope
And dire remembrance interlope,

To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:
The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.

But me thy gentle nand will lead

At morning through the accustomed mead;
And in the sultry summer's heat

Will build me up a mossy seat;

And when the gust of Autumn crowds,

And breaks the busy moonlight clouds,

Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune, Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding moon.

The feeling heart, the searching soul,

To thee I dedicate the whole!
And while within myself I trace

The greatness of some future race,

II.

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear-

O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green :
And still I gaze-and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;

Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,

I see,

not feel how beautiful they are!

III.

My genial spirits fail:

And what can these avail

To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavor,

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west:

I

may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

IV.

O Lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live:

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud! And would we aught behold, of higher worth,

Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the
poor loveless ever-anxious crowd.
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

Enveloping the Earth

And from the soul itself must there be sent

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element !

V.

O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist,

This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.

Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower,
A new Earth and new Heaven,

Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud—
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud—
We in ourselves rejoice!

And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colors a suffusion from that light.

VI.

There was a time when, though my path was rough, This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: For hope grew round me like the twining vine, And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,
But oh! each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.

For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can:
And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man—
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream!

I turn from you, and listen to the wind,

Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream Of agony by torture lengthened out, That lute sent forth!

without,

Thou Wind, that ravest

Bare craig, or mountain-tairn,* or blasted tree, Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers, Of dark brown gardens, and of peeping flowers, Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song, The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.

Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!

* Tairn is a small lake, generally, if not always applied to the lakes up in the mountains, and which are the feeders of those in the valleys. This address to the Stormwind will not appear extravagant to those who have heard it at night, and in a mountainous country.