And that then is his grave! - Before his death
You say that he saw many happy years?
If he had one, the youth had twenty homes.
And you believe, then, that his mind was easy?—
Yes, long before he died, he found that time
Is a true friend to sorrow; and unless
His thoughts were turn'd on Leonard's luckless fortune, He talk'd about him with a cheerful love.
He could not come to an unhallow'd end!
You recollect I mention'd
A habit which disquietude and grief
Had brought upon him; and we all conjectured
That, as the day was warm, he had lain down
Upon the grass, and waiting for his comrades,
He there had fallen asleep; that in his sleep
He to the margin of the precipice
Had walk'd, and from the summit had fallen headlong.
And so, no doubt, he perish'd: at the time,
guess, that in his hands he must have held
His Shepherd's staff; for midway in the cliff
It had been caught; and there for many years
It hung - and moulder'd there.
The Stranger would have thank'd him, but he felt
A gushing from his heart, that took away
The power of speech. Both left the spot in silence;
And Leonard, when they reach'd the church-yard gate,
As the Priest lifted up the latch, turn'd round, -
And, looking at the grave, he said, "My Brother!"
The Vicar did not hear the words: and now,
Pointing towards the Cottage, he entreated
That Leonard would partake his homely fare:
The other thank'd him with a fervent voice;
But added, that, the evening being calm,
He would pursue his journey. So they parted.
It was not long ere Leonard reach'd a grove
That overhung the road: he there stopp'd short,
And, sitting down beneath the trees, review'd
All that the Priest had said: his early years
Were with him in his heart: his cherish'd hopes,
And thoughts which had been his an hour before,
All press'd on him with such a weight, that now,
This vale, where he had been so happy, seem'd
A place in which he could not bear to live:
So he relinquish'd all his purposes.
He travell❜d on to Egremont: and thence,
That night, he wrote a letter to the Priest,
Reminding him of what had pass'd between them;
And adding, with a hope to be forgiven,
That it was from the weakness of his heart
He had not dared to tell him who he was.
This done, he went on shipboard, and is now
A Seaman, a gray-headed Mariner.
(SEE THE CHRonicle of geofFREY OF MONMOUTH, AND MILTON'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.)
WHERE be the Temples which, in Britain's Isle,
or his paternal Gods, the Trojan raised?
Gone like a morning dream, or like a pile
Of clouds-that in cerulean ether blazed!
Ere Julius landed on her white-cliffed shore,
They sank, deliver'd o'er
To fatal dissolution; and, I ween,
No vestige then was left that such had ever been.
Nathless, a British record (long concealed
In old Armorica, whose secret springs
No Gothic conqueror ever drank) revealed
The wond'rous current of forgotten things;
How Brutus came, by oracles impelled,
And Albion's giants quelled,—
A brood whom no civility could melt,
"Who never tasted grace, and goodness ne'er had felt."
By brave Corineus aided, he subdued,
And rooted out the intolerable kind;
And this too-long-polluted land imbued
With goodly arts and usages refined;
Whence golden harvests, cities, warlike towers,
And Pleasure's sumptuous bowers;
Whence all the fix'd delights of house and home,
Friendships that will not break, and love that cannot roam.
O, happy Britain! region all too fair
For self-delighting fancy to endure
That silence only should inhabit there,
Wild beasts, or uncouth savages impure!
But, intermingled with the generous seed,
Grew many a poisonous weed;
Thus fares it still with all that takes its birth
From human care, or grows upon the breast of earth.
Hence, and how soon! that war of vengeance waged
By Guendolen against her faithless lord;
Till she, in jealous fury unassuaged,
Had slain his Paramour with ruthless sword:
Then, into Severn hideously defiled,
She flung her blameless child,
Sabrina,-vowing that the stream should bear
That name through every age, her hatred to declare.
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