Their vernal loves commencing, Will better welcome you than I With their sweet influencing.

Believe me, while in bed you lay,
Your danger taught us all to pray:
You made us grow devouter!

*

Each eye look'd up and seem'd to say,

How can we do without her?

Besides, what vex'd us worse, we knew
They have no need of such as you †
In the place where you were going:
This world has angels all too few,
And Heaven is overflowing!

SOMETHING CHILDISH, BUT VERY

NATURAL.

WRITTEN IN GERMANY.

F I had but two little wings
And were a little feathery bird,
To you I'd fly, my dear!

But thoughts like these are idle things,
And I stay here.

* Your danger taught us how to pray; You made us all devouter-1799.

† Besides (which vex'd us worse) we knew They had no need of such as you-ib. Annual Anthology, Bristol, 1800.

But in my sleep to you I fly :
I'm always with you in my sleep!
The world is all one's own.

But then one wakes, and where am I?
All, all alone.

Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids:
So I love to wake ere break of day:
For though my sleep be gone,
Yet while 'tis dark, one shuts one's lids,
And still dreams on.

HOME-SICK.

WRITTEN IN GERMANY.*

is sweet to him who all the week

'Tis

Through city-crowds must push his way, To stroll alone through fields and woods,

And hallow thus the Sabbath-day.

And sweet it is in summer bower,
Sincere, affectionate and gay,
One's own dear children feasting round,
To celebrate one's marriage-day.

But what is all to his delight

Who having long been doom'd to roam,

* Annual Anthology, Bristol, 1800.

Throws off the bundle from his back,
Before the door of his own home?

Home-sickness is a wasting pang ;*

This feel I hourly more and more: There's healing only in thy wings,

Thou Breeze that play'st on Albion's shore!

ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION. †

Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,

The linnet and thrush say, "I love and I love!" In the winter they're silent-the wind is so strongWhat it says I don't know, but it sings a loud song. But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,

And singing, and loving-all come back together. ["I love, and I love," almost all the birds say From sunrise to star-rise, so gladsome are they !] But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he— "I love my Love, and my Love loves me !" ['Tis no wonder that he's full of joy to the brim, When he loves his Love, and his Love loves him !]

* Is no baby pang ;-1800.

+ Printed in The Morning Post, October 16, 1802, with the following title:"The Language of Birds: Lines spoken extempore to a little child in early spring."

ON REVISITING THE SEA-SHORE,

AFTER LONG ABSENCE, UNDER STRONG MEDICAL RECOMMENDATION NOT TO BATHE.*

GOD be with thee, gladsome Ocean!

How gladly greet I thee once more! Ships and waves, and ceaseless motion, And men rejoicing on thy shore.†

Dissuading spake the mild physician, "Those briny waves for thee are death!" + But my soul fulfill'd her mission,

And lo! I breathe untroubled breath!

Fashion's pining sons and daughters,
That seek the crowd they seem to fly, §
Trembling they approach thy waters;
And what cares Nature if they die ?

Me a thousand hopes || and pleasures,
A thousand recollections bland,

* Printed in The Morning Post, September 15, 1801, and there entitled, "Ode after bathing in the sea, contrary to medical advice."

Ships, and waves, and endless motion,

And life rejoicing on thy shore.-1801.

Mildly said the mild physician

To bathe me on thy shores were death;―ib.

§ That love the City's gilded sty-ib.

VOL. II.

|| Loves-ib.

Thoughts sublime, and stately measures,
Revisit on thy echoing strand : *

Dreams (the soul herself forsaking,)
Tearful raptures,† boyish mirth;
Silent adorations, making

A blessed shadow of this Earth!

O ye hopes that stir within me,
Health comes with you from above!
God is with me, God is in me!
I cannot die, if Life be Love.

HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE,

IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

[Chamouni is one of the highest mountain valleys of the Barony of Faucigny in the Savoy Alps; and exhibits a kind of fairy world, in which the wildest appearances (I had almost said horrors) of Nature alternate with the softest and most beautiful. The chain of Mont Blanc is its boundary; and besides the

* Sounding strand-1801.

+ Grieflike transports-il.

First printed in The Morning Post, Saturday, September 11, 1802, with the title of "Chamouni, the Hour before Sunrise, a Hymn;" reprinted with many alterations in The Friend of October 26, 1809.

"The Hymn to Chamouni," says De Quincey (Tait's Magazine, Sept. 1834), "is an expansion of a short poem in stanzas upon the same subject by Frederica Brun, a female poet of Germany, previously known to the world under her maiden