Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past, Mix'd with such feelings, as perplex the soul Self-question'd in her sleep; and some have said* We lived, ere yet this robe of Flesh we wore. O my sweet baby! when I reach my door, If heavy looks should tell me thou art dead (As sometimes, through excess of hope, I fear), I think that I should struggle to believe Thou wert a spirit, to this nether sphere Sentenced for some more venial crime to grieve; Didst scream, then spring to meet Heaven's quick reprieve, While we wept idly o'er thy little bier! SONNET. TO A FRIEND WHO ASKED, HOW I FELT WHEN THE NURSE FIRST PRESENTED MY INFANT TO ME. CHARLES! my slow heart was only sad, when first I scann'd that face of feeble infancy: For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst All I had been, and all my child might be! But when I saw it on its Mother's arm, And hanging at her bosom (she the while Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile) Then I was thrill'd and melted, and most warm Impress'd a Father's kiss: and all beguiled Of dark remembrance and presageful fear, I seem'd to see an angel-form appear― "T was even thine, beloved woman mild! So for the Mother's sake the Child was dear, And dearer was the Mother for the Child. While others wish thee wise and fair, Thy Mother's name, a potent spell, Meek Quietness, without offence; Associates of thy name, sweet Child! So when, her tale of days all flown, Some hoary-headed Friend, perchance, Ev'n thus a lovely rose I view'd In summer-swelling pride; Nor mark'd the bud, that green and rude Peep'd at the Rose's side. It chanced, I pass'd again that way And wond'ring saw the self-same spray Ah fond deceit! the rude green bud EPITAPH ON AN INFANT. ITs balmy lips the Infant blest Relaxing from its Mother's breast, How sweet it heaves the happy sigh Of innocent Satiety! And such my Infant's latest sigh! O tell, rude stone! the passer-by, That here the pretty babe doth lie, Death sang to sleep with Lullaby. MELANCHOLY. A FRAGMENT. STRETCH'D on a moulder'd Abbey's broadest wai IMITATED FROM STOLBERG. MARK this holy chapel well! The Birth-place, this, of William Tell. Here first, an infant to her breast, And kiss'd the babe, and bless'd the day, "Vouchsafe him health, O God, and give God gave him reverence of laws, The eye of the Hawk, and the fire therein! To Nature and to Holy writ The straining oar and chamois chase He knew not that his chosen hand, A CHRISTMAS CAROL. And now they check'd their eager tread, They told her how a glorious light, Streaming from a heavenly throng, Around them shone, suspending night! While, sweeter than a Mother's song, Blest Angels heralded the Savior's birth, Glory to God on high! and peace on Earth. A botanical mistake. The plant which the poet here describes is called the Hart's Tongue. She listen'd to the tale divine, And closer still the Babe she press'd; And while she cried, the Babe is mine! The milk rush'd faster to her breast: Joy rose within her, like a summer's morn; Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace, Sweet Music's loudest note, the Poet's story,- And is not War a youthful King, Him Earth's majestic monarchs hail Their Friend, their Play-mate! and his bold bright eye Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh. "Tell this in some more courtly scene, And therefore is my Soul elate. "A murderous fiend, by fiends adored, He kills the Sire and starves the Son; The Husband kills, and from her board Steals all his Widow's toil had won; Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away All safety from the Night, all comfort from the Day "Then wisely is my soul elate, That Strife should vanish, Battle cease: The Mother of the Prince of Peace. Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn : Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born!" HUMAN LIFE, ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY Ir dead, we cease to be; if total gloom Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, And to repay the other! Why rejoices Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf, That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold! Yet what and whence thy gain if thou withhold These costless shadows of thy shadowy self? Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun! Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none : Thy being's being is contradiction. How shall I yield you Due entertainment, Celestial Quire? But soon did righteous Heaven her guilt pursue! Where'er with wilder'd steps she wander'd pale, Still Edmund's image rose to blast her view, Still Edmund's voice accused her in each gale. With keen regret, and conscious guilt's alarms, Go, Traveller! tell the tale with sorrow fraught: KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. [The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and, as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits. In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's "Pilgrimage :”— Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of up-"Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a buoyance Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance, stately garden thereunto; and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall." The author continued for abou' three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation, or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter. Then all the charm Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Eapepov adiev aow: but the to-morrow is yet to come. As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.-Note to the first Edition, 1816.] IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: But oh that deep romantic chasm which slanted And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw : It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she play'd, Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 't would win me, That with music loud and long, * would build that dome in air, That sunny dorge! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, Since in me, round me, everywhere, Eternal Strength and Wisdom are. But yester-night I pray'd aloud Up-starting from the fiendish crowd And whom I scorn'd, those only strong! So two rights pass'd: the night's dismay The third night, when my own loud scream And whom I love, I love indeed. APPENDIX. APOLOGETIC PREFACE TO "FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER." Ar the house of a gentleman, who by the principles. and corresponding virtues of a sincere Christian consecrates a cultivated genius and the favorable accidents of birth, opulence, and splendid connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in a dinner-party, with more men of celebrity in science or polite literature, than are commonly found collected round the same table. In the course of conversation, one of the party reminded an illustrious Poet, then present, of some verses which he had recited that morning, and which had appeared in a newspaper under the name of a War-Eclogue, in which Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, were introduced as the speakers. The gentleman so addressed replied, that he was rather surprised that none of us should have noticed or heard of the poem, and strengthens it. But the more intense and insane as it had been, at the time, a good deal talked of in the passion is, the fewer and the more fixed are the Scotland. It may be easily supposed, that my feel-correspondent forms and notions. A rooted hatred, ings were at this moment not of the most comforta- an inveterate thirst of revenge, is a sort of madness, ble kind. Of all present, one only knew or suspect- and still eddies round its favorite object, and exered me to be the author: a man who would have cises as it were a perpetual tautology of mind in established himself in the first rank of England's thoughts and words, which admit of no adequate living Poets, if the Genius of our country had not substitutes. Like a fish in a globe of glass, it moves decreed that he should rather be the first in the first restlessly round and round the scanty circumference, rank of its Philosophers and scientific Benefactors. which it cannot leave without losing its vital eleIt appeared the general wish to hear the lines. As my ment. friend chose to remain silent, I chose to follow his There is a second character of such imaginary example, and Mr. ***** recited the Poem. This he representations as spring from a real and earnest decould do with the better grace, being known to have sire of evil to another, which we often see in real ever been not only a firm and active Anti-Jacobin and life, and might even anticipate from the nature of Anti-Gallican, but likewise a zealous admirer of Mr. the mind. The images, I mean, that a vindictive Pitt, both as a good man and a great Statesman. As man places before his imagination, will most often be a Poet exclusively, he had been amused with the taken from the realities of life: they will be images Eclogue; as a Poet, he recited it; and in a spirit, of pain and suffering which he has himself seen inwhich made it evident, that he would have read and flicted on other men, and which he can fancy himrepeated it with the same pleasure, had his own self as inflicting on the object of his hatred. I will name been attached to the imaginary object or agent. suppose that we had heard at different times two After the recitation, our amiable host observed, common sailors, each speaking of some one who had that in his opinion Mr. ***** had overrated the merits wronged or offended him: that the first with appaof the poetry; but had they been tenfold greater, rent violence had devoted every part of his adversathey could not have compensated for that malignity ry's body and soul to all the horrid phantoms and of heart, which could alone have prompted senti- fantastic places that ever Quevedo dreamt of, and ments so atrocious. I perceived that my illustrious this in a rapid flow of those outré and wildly-comfriend became greatly distressed on my account; but bined execrations, which too often with our lower fortunately I was able to preserve fortitude and pres-classes serve for escape-valves to carry off the excess ence of mind enough to take up the subject without of their passions, as so much superfluous steam that exciting even a suspicion how nearly and painfully would endanger the vessel if it were retained. The it interested me. to other, on the contrary, with that sort of calmness of What follows, is substantially the same as I then tone which is to the ear what the paleness of anger replied, but dilated and in language less colloquial. is to the eye, shall simply say, "If I chance to be It was not my intention, I said, to justify the publi- made boatswain, as I hope I soon shall, and can but cation, whatever its author's feelings might have once get that fellow under my hand (and I shall be been at the time of composing it. That they are upon the watch for him), I'll tickle his pretty skin! calculated to call forth so severe a reprobation from I wont hurt him! oh no! I'll only cut the a good man, is not the worst feature of such poems. Their moral deformity is aggravated in proportion to the pleasure which they are capable of affording to vindictive, turbulent, and unprincipled readers. Could it be supposed, though for a moment, that the author seriously wished what he had thus wildly imagined, even the attempt to palliate an inhumanity so monstrous would be an insult to the hearers. But it seemed to me worthy of consideration, whether the mood of mind, and the general state of sensations, in which a Poet produces such vivid and fantastic images, is likely to coexist, or is even compatible, man in all Venice ;" with that gloomy and deliberate ferocity which a serious wish to realize them would presuppose. It had been often observed, and all my experience the skipping spirit, whose thoughts and words recip tended to confirm the observation, that prospects of rocally ran away with each other; the liver!" I dare appeal to all present, which of the two they would regard as the least deceptive symptom of deliberate malignity? nay, whether it would surprise them to see the first fellow, an hour or two afterward, cordially shaking hands with the very man, the fractional parts of whose body and soul he had been so charitably disposing of; or even perhaps risking his life for him. What language Shakspeare considered characteristic of malignant disposition, we see in the speech of the good-natured Gratiano, who spoke "an infinite deal of nothing more than any -Too wild, too rude and bold of voice! -O be thou damn'd, inexorable dog' pain and evil to others, and, in general, all deep feelings of revenge, are commonly expressed in a few words, ironically tame, and mild. The mind under so direful and fiend-like an influence seems to take a and the wild fancies that follow, contrasted with Shymorbid pleasure in contrasting the intensity of its lock's tranquil " I stand here for law." wishes and feelings, with the slightness or levity of Or, to take a case more analogous to the present the expressions by which they are hinted; and in-subject, should we hold it either fair or charitable to decd feelings so intense and solitary, if they were believe it to have been Dante's serious wish, that all not precluded (as in almost all cases they would be) the persons mentioned by him, (many recently deby a constitutional activity of fancy and association, and by the specific joyousness combined with it, would assuredly themselves preclude such activity. Passion, in its own quality, is the antagonist of action: though in an ordinary and natural degree the former alternates with the latter, and thereby revives parted, and some even alive at the time), should ac tually suffer the fantastic and horrible punishments. to which he has sentenced them in his Hell and Purgatory? Or what shall we say of the passages in which Bishop Jeremy Taylor anticipates the state of those who, vicious themselves, have been the |