Letters four do form his name. Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend, Nether Stowey, April 28th, 1798. FAMINE. And through the chink of a cottage-wall- FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER. A WAR ECLOGUE. WITH AN APOLOGETIC PREFACE.* BOTH. Whisper it, sister! in our ear. The Scene a desolated Tract in La Vendée. FAMINE FAMINE. A baby beat its dying mother. No! no! no! No! no! no! No! no! no! Sisters! I from Ireland came! While crash! fell in the roof, I wist, FAMINE Whisper it, sister! so and so! la a dark hint, soft and slow. SLAUGHTER. BOTH. BOTH. Who bade you do't? SLAUGHTER. FIRE. The same! the same! He let me loose, and cried Halloo! ALL. вотн. Who bade you do it? SLAUGHTER. He let us loose, and cried Halloo! FAMINE. • See Appendix to " Sibylline Leaves." Wisdom comes with lack of food. . One of the many fine words which the most uneducated † According to the superstition of the West Countries, if you kad about this time a constant opportunity of acquiring from meet the Devil, you may either cut him in half with a straw, oi the sermou in the pulpit, and the proclamations on the you may cause him instantly to disappear by spitting over his Lornets. horns. Alas! to mend the breaches wide He made for these poor ninnies, They all must work, whate'er betide, Both days and months, and pay beside (Sad news for Avarice and for Pride) A sight of golden guineas. presume to offer to the public a silly tale of old-fashioned love and five years ago, I own I should have allowed and felt the force of this objection. But, alas ! explosion has succeeded explosion so rapidly,that novelty itself ceases to appear new; and it is possible that now even a simple story,wholly uninspired with politics or personality, may find some attention amid the bub bub of revolutions, as to those who have remained a long time by the falls of Niagara, the lowest whispering becomes distinct ly audible. S. T. C Dec. 21, 1799. But here once more to view did pop The man that kept his senses. And now he cried—“Stop, neighbors ! stop! The Ox is mad! I would not swop, No, not a school-boy's farthing top For all the parish fences. O LEAVE the lily on its stem; o leave the rose upon the spray; O leave the elder bloom, fair maids! And listen to my lay. “ The Ox is mad! Ho! Dick, Bob, Mat! What means this coward fuss ? Ho! stretch this rope across the plat'T will trip him up—or if not that, Why, damme! we must lay him flat See, here's my blunderbuss !" A cypress and a myrtle-bough This morn around my harp you twined Because it fashion'd mournfully Its murmurs in the wind. “ A lying dog! just now he said, The Ox was only glad, Let’s break his Presbyterian head!"“ Hush!" quoth the sage, “ you've been misled, No quarrels now—let's all make head You drove the poor Ox mad!” And now a Tale of Love and Woe, A woful Tale of Love I sing ; Hark, gentle maidens, hark! it sighs And trembles on the string. But most, my own dear Genevieve, It sighs and trembles most for thee! O come, and hear what cruel wrongs Befell the Dark Ladie. As thus I sat in careless chat, With the morning's wet newspaper, Our pursy woollen draper. And in he rush'd and panted : “Well, have you heard ?”—“No! not a whit." “What! han't you heard?”—Come,out with it!" “That Tierney votes for Mister Pitt, And Sheridan 's recanted.” Few Sorrows hath she of her own, My hope, my joy, my Genevieve! She loves me best, whene'er I sing The songs that make her grieve. a All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stir this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame. II. LOVE POEMS. Oh! ever in my waking dreams, I dwell upon that happy hour, When midway on the mount I sate, Beside the ruin'd tower. The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve! Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in ævo. Petrarch. She lean'd against the armed man, The statue of the armed knight, She stood and listen’d 10 my harp, Amid the ling’ring light. I sang an old and moving storyAn old rude song, that fitted well That ruin wild and hoary. INTRODUCTION TO THE TALE OF THE DARK LADIE. The following Poem is intended as the introduction to a somewhat longer one. The use of the old Ballad word Ladie for Lady, is the only piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust that the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity (as Camden sa ys) will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a forco and propriety in it A heavier objection may be adduced against the author, that in these times of fear and expectation, when novelties explode around us in all directions, he should She listen'd with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest graco, For well she knew, I could not choose But gaze upon her face. Upon his shield a burning brand ; I wld her how he pined : and ah! The deep, the low, the pleading tone With which I sung another's love, Interpreted my own. She listend with a fitting blush ; With downcast eyes, and modest grace ; And she forgave me, that I gazed Too fondly on her face ! That crazed this bold and lonely Knight, And how he roam'd the mountain-woods, Nor rested day or night; Her wet cheek glow'd: she stept aside, As conscious of my look she stepp'd ; Then suddenly, with tim'rous eye, She flew to me and wept. She press'd me with a moek embrace ; And bending back her head, look'd up, And gazed upon my face. 'T was partly love, and partly fear, And partly 't was a bashful art, The swelling of her heart. And told her love with virgin pride ; And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous bride. And how he cross'd the woodman's paths, Through briers and swampy mosses beat ; How boughs rebounding scourged his limbs, And low stubs gored his feet; That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade ; And now once more a tale of woe, A woeful tale of love I sing : For thee, my Genevieve! it sighs, And trembles on the string. There came and look'd him in the face An Angel beautiful and bright; And how he knew it was a Fiend, This miserable Knight! When last I sang the cruel scorn That crazed this bold and lonely Knight, And how he roam'd the mountain-woods Nor rested day or night; Of man's perfidious cruelty : Befell the Dark Ladie. And how, unknowing what he did, He leapt amid a lawless band, And saved from outrage worse than death The Ladie of the Land ! LEWTI, OR THE CIRCASSIAN LOVE-CHAUNT. And how she wept, and clasp'd his knees ; And how she tended him in vainAnd meekly strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain : And how she nursed him in a cave; And how his madness went away, A dying man he lay ; That tend'rest strain of all the ditty, Disturb'd her soul with pity! All impulses of soul and sense Had thrill'd my guiltless Genevieve ; The rich and balmy eve; An undistinguishable throng, Subdued and cherish'd long ! She wept with pity and delight, She blush'd with love and maiden-shame; And, like the murmurs of a dream, I heard her breathe my name. Heave and swell with inward sighs- Her gentle bosom rise. The moon was high, the moonlight gleam And the shadow of a star Heaved upon Tarnaha's stream; But the rock shone brighter far, The rock half-shelter'd from my view By pendent boughs of tressy yewSo shines my Lewti's forehead fair, Gleaming through her sable hair. Image of Lewti! from my mind Depart; for Lewti is not kind. I saw a cloud of palest hue, Onward to the moon it pass'd; Till it reach'd the moon at last : And with such joy I find my Lewti : And even so my pale wan cheek Drinks in as deep a flush of beauty ! Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind, If Lewti never will be kind. The little cloud-it floats away, Away it goes; away so soon? Away it passes from the moon! Ever fading more and more, To joyless regions of the sky, And now 't is whiter than before ! When, Lewii! on my couch I lie, O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot Forth from this tangle wild of bush and brake I saw a vapor in the sky, Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse; Thin, and white, and very high; Here too the lovelorn man who, sick in soul, ( ne'er beheld so thin a cloud : And of this busy human heart aweary, Perhaps the breezes that can fly Worships the spirit of unconscious life Now below and row above, In tree or wild-flower.-Gentle Lunatic! Have snatch'd aloft the lawny shroud If so he might not wholly cease to be, Of Lady fair--that died for love. He would far rather not be that, he is ; For maids, as well as youths, have perish'd But would be something, that he knows not of, From fruitless love too fondly cherish’d. In winds or waters, or among the rocks ! But hence, fond wretch ! breathe not contagio Hush! my heedless feet from under here! Slip the crumbling banks for ever: No myrtle-walks are these : these are no groves Like echoes to a distant thunder, Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood They plunge into the gentle river. He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore The river-swans have heard my tread, His dainty feet, the brier and the thom And startle from their reedy bed. Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird O beauteous Birds! methinks ye measure Easily caught, ensnare him, Oye Nymphs, Your movements to some heavenly tune! Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades ! O beauteous Birds! 't is such a pleasure And you, ye Earth-winds ! you that make at mori To see you move beneath the moon, The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! I would it were your true delight You, O ye wingless Airs ! that creep between To sleep by day and wake all night. The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze, Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon, I know the place where Lewti lies, The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bedWhen silent night has closed her eyes : Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp, It is a breezy jasmine-bower, Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb. The nightingale sings o'er her head : Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes ! Voice of the Night! had I the power With prickles sharper than his darts bemock That leafy labyrinth to thread, His little Godship, making him perforce This is my hour of triumph! I can now With my own fancies play the merry fool, And laugh away worse folly, being free. Oh! that she saw me in a dream, Here will I seat myself, beside this old, Hollow, and weedy oak, which ivy-twine And dreamt that I had died for care ; Clothes as with net-work : here will I couch m All pale and wasted I would seem, limbs, Yet fair withal, as spirits are! I'd die indeed, if I might see Close by this river, in this silent shade, As safe and sacred from the step of man As an invisible world—unheard, unseen, And list'ning only to the pebbly brook That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound 1795. Or to the bees, that in the neighboring trunk Was never Love's accomplice, never raised The tendril ringlets from the maiden's brow, TIIE PICTURE, OR THE LOVER'S And the blue, delicate veins above her cheek; RESOLUTION. Ne'er play'd the wanton-never half-disclosed The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering thence THROUGU weeds and thorns, and matted underwood Eye-poisons for some love-distemper'd youth, I force my way; now climb, and now descend Who ne'er henceforth may see an aspen-grove |
0 Reviews Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified Write review |