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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.-MRS. MARY (BLACKFORD) TIGHE.

That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me : To him my tale I teach.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!

The wedding-guests are there;
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bridemaids singing are:
And hark! the little vesper-bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer.

O wedding guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea :

So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seeméd there to be.

Oh sweeter than the marriage-feast,
"Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk,
With a goodly company!-

To walk together to the kirk,

And all together pray,

While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou wedding-guest! He prayeth well who loveth well Both man, and bird, and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

The mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone: and now the wedding-guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn:

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

TO THE AUTHOR OF "THE ANCIENT MARINER."

Your poem must eternal be,

Dear sir; it cannot fail!

For 'tis incomprehensible,

And without head or tail.

Mrs. Mary (Blackford) Tighe.

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The daughter of the Rev. Mr. Blackford, Wicklow County, Ireland, Mary was born in 1773, and died in 1810. Her principal poem, "Psyche," in six cantos, shows a very skilful command of the Spenserian measure, and contains many graceful and elegant stanzas. Sir James Mackintosh says of the last three cantos: "They are beyond all doubt the most faultless series of verses ever produced by a woman." The value of the praise depends on the meaning we give to the word faultless. Moore's song, "I saw thy form in youthful prime," was written in recollection of Mrs. Tighe. The longer piece we publish, written within the year preceding her death, was the last she ever produced, and perhaps the best. Her husband, Henry Tighe, M.P., edited an edition of her poems after her death.

ON RECEIVING A BRANCH OF MEZEREON,
WHICH FLOWERED AT WOODSTOCK, DECEMBER, 1800.
Odors of spring, my sense ye charm
With fragance premature,

And, 'mid these days of dark alarm,
Almost to hope allure.
Methinks with purpose soft ye come,

To tell of brighter hours,

Of May's blue skies, abundant bloom,
Her sunny gales and showers.

Alas! for me shall May in vain
The powers of life restore;
These eyes that weep and watch in pain
Shall see her charms no more.

No, no, this anguish cannot last!
Belovéd friends, adieu!
The bitterness of death were past,
Could I resign but yon.

But ob, in every mortal pang

That rends my soul from life, That soul, which seems on you to hang Through each convulsive strife, Even now, with agonizing grasp

Of terror and regret,

To all in life its love would clasp
Clings close and closer yet.

Yet why, immortal, vital spark!
Thus mortally oppressed?

Look up, my soul, through prospects dark,
And bid thy terrors rest;

Forget, forego thy earthly part,

Thine heavenly being trust:--

Ab, vain attempt! my coward heart, Still shuddering, clings to dust.

Oh ye who soothe the pangs of death
With love's own patient care,
Still, still retain this fleeting breath,
Still pour the fervent prayer:—
And ye whose smile must greet my eye
No more, nor voice my ear,—
Who breathe for me the tender sigh,
And shed the pitying tear,-

Whose kindness (though far, far removed)

My grateful thoughts perceive,
Pride of my life, esteemed, beloved,
My last sad claim receive!

Oh, do not quite your friend forget,
Forget alone her faults;

And speak of her with fond regret

Who asks your lingering thoughts.

WRITTEN AT KILLARNEY, JULY 29, 1800.
How soft the pause! the notes melodious cease
Which from each feeling could an echo call.
Rest on your oars, that not a sound may fall
To interrupt the stillness of our peace:
The fanning west wind breathes upon our cheeks,
Yet glowing with the sun's departed beams.
Thro' the blue heavens the cloudless moon pours
streams

Of pure, resplendent light, in silver streaks
Reflected on the still, unruffled lake;

The Alpine hills in solemn silence frown,

While the dark woods night's deepest shades embrown.

And now once more that soothing strain awake!
Oh, ever to my heart with magic power
Shall those sweet sounds recall this rapturous hour!

repudiated him for marrying an actress, but was finally reconciled. In 1795 Paine delivered at Cambridge a poem, entitled "The Invention of Letters," from the sale of which he got $1500. For his poem of "The Rul ing Passion" he got $1200; while for his famous song of "Adams and Liberty" he got more than $750. This was rare success for a poet in his day. There is little of true lyrical worth in any of Paine's writings; and his one song, while it has some faint flashes of poetic fire, is memorable chiefly for the sensation it produced in its day.

ODE: ADAMS AND LIBERTY.

Written for and sung at the Anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society, 1799.

Ye sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought For those rights which unstained from your sires had descended,

May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought,

And your sons reap the soil which your fathers defended.

'Mid the reign of mild Peace,

May your nation increase,

With the glory of Rome, and the wisdom of Greece;

And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its

waves.

In a clime whose rich vales feed the marts of the world,

Whose shores are unshaken by Europe's commotion,

The trident of Commerce should never be hurled, To increase the legitimate powers of the ocean. But should pirates invade,

Though in thunder arrayed, Let your cannon declare the free charter of trade; For ne'er will the sous of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its

waves.

Robert Treat Paine, Ir.

AMERICAN.

Paine (1773-1811) was a native of Taunton, Massachusetts, and a son of Robert Treat Paine, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His original name was Thomas; but, not wishing to be confounded with that other Thomas Paine, the theist, who criticised the Bible, he had his name changed by the Legislature to that of his father. He graduated at Harvard in the class of 1792, and began writing verse at an early age. He entered a counting-house, but neglected his mercantile duties for the theatre and the gayeties of life. His father

The fame of our arms, of our laws the mild sway,
Had justly ennobled our nation in story,
Till the dark clouds of faction obscured our young
day,

And enveloped the sun of American glory.
But let traitors be told,

Who their country have sold,

And bartered their God for his image in gold, That ne'er will the sons of Columbia be slaves. While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its

waves.

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But long e'er our nation submits to the yoke,
Not a tree shall be left on the field where it
flourished.

Should invasion impend,
Every grove would descend

From the hill-tops they shaded, our shores to defend ;

For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its

waves.

Let our patriots destroy Anarch's pestilent worm, Lest our liberty's growth should be checked by corrosion;

Then let clouds thicken round us: we heed not the storm;

Our realm feels no shock but the earth's own explosion.

Foes assail us in vain,

Though their fleets bridge the main; For our altars and laws with our lives we'll maintain;

For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its

waves.

Let fame to the world sound America's voice;
No intrigues can her sons from their government

sever:

Her pride are her statesmen-their laws are her choice,

And shall flourish till Liberty slumbers forever. Then unite heart and hand,

Like Leonidas' band,

And swear to the God of the ocean and land That ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its

waves.

Robert Southey.

Associated with the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge is that of the poet-laureate, Southey (1774-1843). His fame has not, like that of his associates of the Lake School, gone on increasing. The son of a linen-draper in Bristol, he was intended for the ministry, but disqualified himself for Oxford by adopting, like Coleridge, Unitarian views in religion and republican in politics. These he soon outgrew. Having published his poems of "Wat Tyler" and "Joan of Arc," he married, in 1795, Miss Fricker, sister of the wife of Coleridge. After a residence in Lisbon, and a brief course of legal study in London, he settled near Keswick, and his life became a round of incessant study and voluminous authorship. A list of the works in prose and verse which he produced would fill a long page. Above one hundred volumes in all testify to his diligence. In 1837 his first wife died; and in 1839 he married Miss Caroline Bowles, who was his peer as a writer of poetry. Soon afterward his overtasked mind began to show symptoms of decay. His end was second childishness and mere oblivion. He left, as the result of his literary labors, about £12,000, to be divided among his children, and one of the most valuable private libraries in the kingdom. Southey was a genuine poet in feeling and aspiration, though he did not "wreak himself on expression" with the felicity of Byron and Shelley. Wordsworth once mentioned Southey's verses on the holly-tree as his most perfect poem; "but," he said, "the first line is bad."

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IMMORTALITY OF LOVE.

FROM "THE CURSE OF KEHAMA," BOOK X.
They sin who tell us love can die.
With life all other passions fly,

All others are but vanity;
In heaven ambition cannot dwell,
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell;
Earthly these passions of the earth,
They perish where they have their birth;
But love is indestructible:

Its holy flame forever burneth; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth. Too oft on earth a troubled guest, At times deceived, at times oppressed, It here is tried and purified, Then hath in heaven its perfect rest: It soweth here with toil and care, But the harvest-time of love is there. Oh! when a mother meets on high The babe she lost in infancy, Hath she not then, for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrow, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN AUTUMN.

FROM "MADOC IN WALES."

There was not on that day a speck to stain
The azure heaven; the blesséd sun alone,
In unapproachable divinity,
Careered, rejoicing in his fields of light.
How beautiful, bencath the bright blue sky,
The billows heave! one glowing green expanse,
Save where, along the bending line of shore,
Such hue is thrown as when the peacock's neck
Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst,
Embathed in emerald glory. All the flocks
Of Ocean are abroad: like floating foam
The sea-gulls rise and fall upon the waves;
With long, protruded neck, the cormorants
Wing their far flight aloft; and round and round
The plovers wheel, and give their note of joy.
It was a day that sent into the heart
A summer feeling: even the insect swarms
From their dark nooks and coverts issued forth,
To sport through one day of existence more;
The solitary primrose on the bank
Seemed now as though it had no cause to mourn
Its bleak autumnal birth; the rocks and shores,
The forest and the everlasting hills,
Smiled in that joyful sunshine,—they partook
The universal blessing.

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere,

To those who on my leisure would intrude
Reserved and rude,

Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be,
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,
Some harshness show,

All vain asperities I day by day
Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree.

And as, when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,

The holly-leaves a sober hue display
Less bright than they;

But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the holly-tree?

So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng;

So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they,

That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the holly-tree.

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THE HOLLY-TREE.

O reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The holly-tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves

Ordered by an intelligence so wise

As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize;

And in this wisdom of the holly-tree
Can emblem see

Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme-
One which may profit in the after-time.

MY LIBRARY.

Having no library within reach, I live upon my own stores, which are, however, more ample, perhaps, than were ever before possessed by one whose whole estate was in his inkstand. My days among the dead are past;

Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,

The mighty minds of old:

My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day.

With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe;

And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedewed
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the dead: with them
I live in long-past years;
Their virtues love, their faults condemn,
Partake their hopes and fears,
And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with a humble mind.

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