Or call my destiny niggard ? O no! no! It is her largeness, and her overflow, Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so l 4. For never touch of gladness stirs my heart, But tim'rously beginning to rejoice I seem to have an indistinct recollection of having read either Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start in one of the ponderous tonnes of George of Venice, or in some In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice. other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew Writers, an Apologue or Rabbinical Tradition to the following purpose: Beloved ! 'tis not thine; thou art not there! While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, Then melts the bubble into idle air, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's And wishing without hope I restlessly despair. ear, the guileful fake serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himsolf the character 5. of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: "Nay. Lord, in thy justice, not so ! for the Man The mother with anticipated glee was the least in fault. Ruther let the Woman return at once Smiles o'er the child, that standing by her chair, to the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise.” And And flattning its round cheek upon her knee, the word of the Most High answered Satan: The tender Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Fiend! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to have the heart To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its She hears her own voice with a new delight; counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes have been inflicted on thyself." aright, 6. [The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact men tioned by Linneus, of a Date tree in a nobleman's garden, Then is she tenfold gladder than before! which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, But should disease or chance the darling take, but never produced fruit, till a branch from a Date-tree had What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore been conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the MS. from which the poem has been Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake ? transcribed, and which contained the two or three introduc- Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee tory stanzas, is wanting : and the author has in vain taxed Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee : his memory to repair the loss. But a rude draught of the Why was I made for love, and love denied to me! poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and the reader is requested to receive it as the subsitute. It is not impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed those of the author at the time the poem was written, may find a pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integ. FANCY IN NUBIBUS, rity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite Metre. S. T.C. OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS. O! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, 1. Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the moun. To make the shifting clouds be what you please, tain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, through the Or le: the easily persuaded eyes absence of objects to reflect the rays. “What no Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould one with us shares, seems scarce our own." The Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low presence of a one, And cheek aslant, see river flow of gold "Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go is for the heart, what the supporting air from within From mount to mount through CLOUDLAND, gor is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight, buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand a burthen, and crushes it into flatness. By those deep sounds possess'd, with inward light 2. Beheld the Iliad and the ODYSSEY The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel THE TWO FOUNTS. the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER RECOVERY it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS, FROM A SEVERE AT graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them? "T was my last waking thought, how it could be 3. That thou, sweet friend, such anguish shouldst endure Imagination; honorable Aims; When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he Free Commune with the choir that cannot die; Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure. Science and Song; Delight in litle things, The buoyant child surviving in the man; Methought he fronted me, with peering look Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky, Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game With all their voices-0 dare I accuse The loves and griefs therein, as from a book: My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen, And utter'd praise like one who wish'd to b.ame. geous land! TACK OF PAIN. In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin, Her father's love she bade me gain ; I went and shook like any reed ! We had exchanged our hearts indeed. Of Pleasure only will to all dispense, SONNET, To each quaint image issuing from the mould Even so, Eliza! on that face of thine, From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous On that benignant face, whose look alone land! (The soul's translucence through her crystal shrine ! Or listening to the tide, with closed sight, Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own. Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possess'd, with inward light Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea! EPIGRAMS. I. I ask'd my fair, one happy day, What I should call her in my lay, Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam By what sweet name from Rome, or Greece, On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile, Neæra, Laura, Daphne, Chloris, Had pass'd: yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile, Carina, Lalage, or Doris, Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream: Dorimene, or Lucrece ? II. Ah,” replied my gentle fair ; Dear one, what are names but air ! 1 pray thee, be less good, less sweet, less wise! Choose thou whatever suits the line; Call me Laura, call me Chloris, In every look a barbed arrow send, Call me Lalage, or Doris, Only-only-call me thine !" Sly Belzebub took all occasions To try Job's constancy, and patience. He took his honor, took his health ; He took his children, took his wealth, RESEMBLES life what once was held of light, His servants, oxen, horses, cows, But cunning Satan did not take his spouse. But Heaven, that brings out good from evil, And loves to disappoint the devil, Had predetermined to restore His servants, horses, oxen, cows THE EXCHANGE. I in my arms the maiden clasping; Bui, oh! I trembled like an aspen. Hoarse Mævius reads his hobbling verse 227 But folks say Mævius is no ass ; the "Fortunate Isles" of the Muses: and then other and more momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer an chorage and a securer port. I have in vain tried to recover the lines from the Palimpsest tablet of my memory: and I can only offer the introductory stanza, which had been committed to writing for the purpose of procuring a friend's judgment on the metre, as a specimen. Encinctured with a twine of leaves, Has he no friend, no loving Mother near ? S.T.C. Your poem must eternal be, Swans sing before they die--'t were no bad thing PREFATORY NOTE. CANTO “ A LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight." Their road was through a forest of fir-trees ; at its entrance A prose composition, one not in metre at least, seems prima the trees stood at distances from each other, and the facie to require explanation or apology. It was written in the path was broad, and the moonlight, and the moonlight year 1798, near Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, at which place shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to in(sanctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and habit that solitude. But soon the path winded and recollections) the Author had taken up his residence in order became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimes to enjoy the society and close neighborhood of a dear and hon speckled, but never illumined it, and now it was ored friend, T. Poole. Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within dark as a cavern. the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connex " It is dark, O my father!" said Enos ; “but the ion with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were sug- soon come out into the open moonlight." gested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the Lead on, my child!" said Cain: “guide me. contents for each of the three books or cantoer, of which the work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed. little child!" And the innocent little child clasped a was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook finger of the hand which had murdered the righteous the first ranto : I the second : and whichever had done first, was Abel, and he guided his father. “The fir branches to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by ; yet drip upon thee, my son." “Yea, pleasantly, father at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile for I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the pitcher moot the question which of the two things was the more im- and the cake, and my body is nyt yet cool, How practicable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancirs, or for a taste on austerely pure and happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir-trees! simple to imitate the Death of Abel? Methinka I see his grand they leap from bongh to bough, ur tho old squirrels and noble countenance as at the moment when having dispatch play round their young ones in the nest. I clomb a tree ed my own portion of the task at full linger-speed. I hastened yesterday at noon, O my father, that I might play to him with my manuscript--that look of humorous despondency fixed on his alınost blank shret of paper, and then its with them; but they leapt away from the branches, silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme-- moment I beheld them on another tree. Why, O my which broke up in a laugh: and the Ancient Mariner was writ- father, would they not play with me? I would b Years afterward, however, the draft of the Plan and propo- good to them as thou art good to me: and I groaned sed Incidenis, and the portion executest, obtained favor in the io them even as thou groanest when thou givest me eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic to cat, and when thou coverst me at evening, and as work could not but have weizher with me, even though no pa- often as I stand at thy knee and thine eyes look at rental partiality had heen thrown into the same goale, as a me." Then Cain stopped, and stilling his groans he make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and composing the whole in stanzas, and mnde some progress in sank to the earth, and the child Enos sluod in the realrzing this intention, when adverse gules drove my bark off darkness beside him. 228 ten instead. And Cain lifted up his voice and cried bitterly, ed from its point, and between its point and the and said, “ The Mighty One that persecuteth me is sands a tall man might stand upright. It was here on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like that Enos had found the pitcher and cake, ard to the wind, like the sand-blašt he passeth through me; this place he led his father. But ere they had reachhe is around me even as the air! O that I might be ed the rock they beheld a human shape : his back unterly no more! I desire to die-yea, the things was towards them, and they were advancing unperthat never had life, neither move they upon the ceived, when they heard him smite his breast and earth-behold! they seem precious to mine eyes. O cry aloud, “Woe is me! woe is me! I must never die that a man might live without the breaih of his nos- again, and yet I am perishing with thirst and huntrils! So I might abide in darkness, and blackness, ger.” and an empty space! Yea, I would lie down, I would Pallid, as the reflection of the sheeted lightning on not rise, neither would I stir my limbs till I became the heavy-sailing night-cloud, became the face of as the rock in the den of the lion, on which the Cain; but the child Enos took hold of the shaggy young lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For skin, his father's robe, and raised his eyes to his the torrent that roareth far off hath a voice, and the father, and listening whispered, “ Ere yet I could clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty speak, I am sure, O my father! that I heard that One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the voice. Have not I often said that I remembered a . cedar grove; and in silence am I dried up." Then sweet voice? O my father! this is it." and Cain Enos spake to his father: “Arise, my father, arise, trembled exceedingly. The voice was sweet indeed, we are but a little way from the place where I found but it was thin and querulous like that of a feeble the cake and the pitcher.” And Cain said, “ How slave in misery, who despairs altogether, yet cannot knowest thou ?" and the child answered—“Behold, refrain himself from weeping and lamentation. And, the bare rocks are a few of thy strides distant from behold! Enos glided forward, and creeping sofily the forest; and while even now thou wert lifting up round the base of the rock, stood before the stranger, thy voice, I heard the echo." Then the child took and looked up into his face. And the Shape shriekhold of his father, as if he would raise him: and ed, and turned round, and Cain beheld him, that his Cain being faint and feeble, rose slowly on his knees limbs and his face were those of his brother Abel and pressed himself against the trunk of a fir, and whom he had killed! And Cain stood like one who stood upright, and followed the child. struggles in his sleep because of the exceeding terThe path was dark till within three strides' length ribleness of a dream. of its termination, when it turned suddenly; the Thus as he stood in silence and darkness of soul, thick black trees formed a low arch, and the moon- the Shape fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, light appeared for a moment like a dazzling portal. and cried out with a bitter outcry, “ Thou eldestEnos ran before and stood in the open air; and when born of Adam, whom Eve, my mother, brought forth, Cain, his father, emerged from the darkness, the cease to torinent me! I was feeding my flocks in child was affrighted. For the mighty limbs of Cain green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou were wasted as by fire; his hair was as the matted killedst me; and now I am in misery." Then Cain curls on the Bison's forehead, and so glared his fierce closed his eyes, and hid them with his hands; and and sullen eye beneath: and the black abundant again he opened his eyes, and looked around him, locks on either side, a rank and tangled mass, were and said to Enos, “ What beholdest thou? Didst thou stained and scorched, as though the grasp of a hear a voice, my son ?" “ Yes, my father, I beheld burning iron hand had striven to rend them; and his a man in unclean garments, and he uttered a sweet countenance told in a strange and terrible language voice, full of lamentation.” Then Cain raised up of agonies that had been, and were, and were still the Shape that was like Abel, and said : “ The to continue to be. Creator of our father, who had respect unto thee, The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye and unto thy offering, wherefore hath he forsaken could reach it was desolate: the bare rocks faced thee?” Then the Shape shrieked a second tim and each other, and left a long and wide interval of thin rent his garment, and his naked skin was like the white sand. You might wander on and look round white sands bencajh their feet; and he shrieked yet and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks, a third time, and threw himself on his face upon the and discover nothing that acknowledged the influ- sand that was black with the shadow of the rock, ence of the seasons. There was no spring, no sum- and Cain and Enos sate beside him; the child by his mer, no autumn: and the winter's snow, that would right hand, and Cain by his left. They were all have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and three under the rock, and within the shadow. The scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised Shape that was like Abel raised himself up, and himself over this desert; but the huge serpent olien spake to the child : “ I know where the cold waters hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and are, but I may not drink; wherefore didst thou then the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within take away my pitcher?" But Cain said, “Didst thou the coils of the serpent. The pointed and shattered not find favor in the sight of the Lord thy God ?” summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude The Shape answered, “The Lord is God of the mimicry of human concerns, and seemed 10 proph- living only, the dead have another God." Then exy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, the child Enos listed up his eyes and prayed; but and battlements, and ships with naked masis. As far Cain rejoiced secretly in his heart.“ Wretched shall from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the they be all the duys of their mortal life,” exclaimed brook there was one rock by itself at a small dis- the Shape,“ who sacrifice worthy and acceptable tance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated sacrifices to the God of the dead; but after death there perhaps by the groan which the Earth uttered their toil ceaseth. Woe is me, for I was well beloved when our first father fell . Before you approached, it by the God of the living, and cruel wert thou, O appeared to lie flat on the ground, but its base slant- my brother, who didst snatch me away from his power and his dominion." Having uttered these now unfelt, but never forgotten. It was at once the words, he rose suddenly, and fled over the sands; melancholy of hope and of resignation. and Cain said in his heart, “ The curse of the Lord We had not long been sellow-travellers, ere a sudis on me; but who is the God of the dead ?" and he den tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek proran after the Shape, and the Shape fled shrieking tection in the vaulted door-way of a lone chapelry : over the sands, and the sands rose like white mists and we sate face to face each on the stone bench behind the steps of Cain, but the feet of him that along-side the low, weather-stained wall, and as close was like Abel disturbed not the sands. He greatly as possible to the massy door. outran Cain, and turning short, he wheeled round, After a pause of silence: Even thus, said he, like and came again to the rock where they had been two strangers that have fled to the same shelter from sitting, and where Enos still stood; and the child the same storm, not seldom do Despair and Hope caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and he meet for the first time in the porch of Death! All fell upon the ground. And Cain stopped, and be extremes meet, I answered; but yours was a strange holding him not, said, “ he has passed into the dark and visionary thought. The better then doth it be. woods," and he walked slowly back to the rocks; seem both the place and me, he replied. From a and when he reached it the child told him that he Visionary wilt thou hear a Vision ? Mark that vivid had caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and flash through this torrent of rain! Fire and water. that the man had fallen upon the ground: and Cain Even here thy adage holds true, and its truth is the once more sate beside him, and said, “ Abel. my bro- moral of my Vision. I entreated him to proceed. ther, I would lament for thee, but that the spirit Sloping his face towards the arch and yet averting within me is withered, and burnt up with extreme his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his agony. Now, I pray thee, by thy flocks, and by thy words: till listening to the wind that echoed within pastures, and by the quiet rivers which thou lovedst, the hollow edifice, and to the rain without, that thou tell me all that thou knowest. Who is the Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound, God of the dead? where doth he make his dwelling? The clash hard by and the murmur all round, what sacrifices are acceptable unto him? for I have he gradually sunk away, alike from me and from his offered, but have not been received; I have prayed, own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm, and and have not been heard; and how can I be afflicted in the duskiness of that place, he sate like an emmore than I already am?” The Shape arose and blem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a mourner answered, “O that thou hadst had pity on me as I on the sodded grave of an only one-an aged moumer, will have pity on thee. Follow me, Son of Adam! who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth not. and bring thy child with thee !" Starting at length from his briet' trance of abstracAnd they three passed over the white sands be- tion, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renewed tween the rocks, silent as the shadows. his discourse, and commenced his parable. During one of those short furloughs from the service of the Body, which the Soul may sometimes obtain even in this, its militant state, I found myself in a ALLEGORIC VISION. vast plain, which I immediately knew to be the Val ley of Life. It possessed an astonishing diversity of A FEELING of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is soils : and here was a sunny spot, and there a dark wont to take possession of me alike in Spring and in one, forming just such a mixture of sunshine and Autumn. But in Spring it is the melancholy of shade, as we may have observed on the mountains' Hope: in Autumn it is the melancholy of Resigna- side in an April day, when the thin broken clouds tion. As I was journeying on foot through the Apen- are scattered over heaven. Almost in the very ennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the Spring and trance of the valley stood a large and gloomy pile, the Autumn and the Melancholy of both seemed to into which I seemed constrained to enter. Every have combined. In his discourse there were the part of the building was crowded with ta wdry ornafreshness and the colors of April: ments and fantastic deformity. On every window Qual ramicel a ramo, was portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colors, some Tal da pensier pensiero horrible tale, or preternatural incident, so that not a In lui germogliava. ray of light could enter, untinged by the medium But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I be through which it passed. The body of the building thought me of the not unlovely decays, both of age was full of people, some of them dancing, in and and of the late season, in the stately elm, after the out, in unintelligible figures, with strange ceremonies clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines, and antic merriment, while others seemed convuised and the vines are as bands of dried withies around with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. Interits trunk and branches. Even so there was a memo- mingled with these, I observed a number of men. ry on his smooth and ample forehead, which blended clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared, now to with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still marshal the various groups and to direct their morelooked—I know not, whether upward, or far onward, ments, and now, with menacing countenances, to or raiher to the line of meeting where the sky rests drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of upon the distance. But how may I express that iron bars intercrossed, which formed at the same dimness of abstraction which lay on the lustre of the time an immense cage, and the shape of a human pilgrim's eyes, like the sitting tarnish from the breath Colossus. of a sigh on a silver mirror! and which accorded I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things with their slow and reluctant movement, whenever night mean ;- when lo! one of the directors canie up he turned them to any object on the right hand or on to me, and with a stern and reproachful look bade the left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay upon me uncover my head, for that the place into which I the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments had entered was the temple of the only true Reli |
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