A THOUGHT SUGGESTED BY A VIEW

OF SADDLEBACK IN CUMBERLAND.

ON stern Blencartha's perilous height

*

The winds are tyrannous and strong;
And flashing forth unsteady light
From stern Blencartha's skiey height,
As loud the torrents throng!
Beneath the moon, in gentle weather,

They bind the earth and sky together.

But oh! the sky and all its forms, how quiet! The things that seek the earth, how full of noise and riot !

SONG, EX IMPROVISO,

ON HEARING A SONG IN PRAISE OF A

LADY'S BEAUTY. †

"TIS not the lily brow I prize,

Nor roseate cheeks nor sunny eyes,
Enough of lilies and of roses!

A thousand fold more dear to me
The look that gentle Love discloses,-
That look which Love alone can see.

Ἔρως ἄει λάληδρος έταιρος.

IN many ways doth the full heart reveal

The presence of the love it would conceal;

*The Amulet, 1833.

†The Keepsake, 1830.

But in far more th' estranged heart lets know

The absence of the love which yet it fain would show.

WHAT IS LIFE?*

RESEMBLES life what once was deem'd of
Too ample in itself for human sight? [light,
An absolute self—an element ungrounded—
All that we see, all colours of all shade

By encroach of darkness made?—

Is very life by consciousness unbounded?

And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath, A war-embrace of wrestling life and death?

HUMILITY THE MOTHER OF CHARITY.

FRAIL creatures are we all! To be the best,

Is but the fewest faults to have :

Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest
To God, thy conscience, and the grave.

66

ON AN INFANT

WHICH DIED BEFORE BAPTISM.

BE, rather than be call'd, a child of God,"
Death whisper'd !-with assenting nod,

Its head upon its mother's breast,

*The Literary Souvenir, 1829.

The Baby bow'd, without demurOf the kingdom of the Blest

Possessor, not inheritor.

-E cœlo descendit yvölɩ σeavτóv.—Juvenal. Γνώθι σεαυτόν !—and is this the prime

And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time !— Say, canst thou make thyself?-Learn first that

Haply thou mayst know what thyself had made. What hast thou, Man, that thou darest call thine

own?—

What is there in thee, Man, that can be known ?—
Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought,

A phantom dim of past and future wrought,
Vain sister of the worm,-life, death, soul, clod—
Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God!

Beareth all things.-2 Cor. xiii. 7.

GENTLY I took that which ungently came, And without scorn forgave :-Do thou the

same.

A wrong done to thee think a cat's-eye spark
Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart

dark.

Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin, Fear that the spark self-kindled from within,

Which blown upon will blind thee with its glare,
Or smother'd stifle thee with noisome air.
Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds,
And soon the ventilated spirit finds

Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenn'd,
Or worse than foe, an alienated friend,
A rib of dry rot in thy ship's stout side,
Think it God's message, and in humble pride
With heart of oak replace it ;-thine the gains-
Give him the rotten timber for his pains!

MY BAPTISMAL BIRTH-DAY.*

GOD'S child in Christ adopted,-Christ my all,— What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply, rather

Than forfeit that blest name, by which I call
The Holy One, the Almighty God, my Father ?—
Father! in Christ we live, and Christ in Thee—
Eternal Thou, and everlasting we.

The heir of heaven, henceforth I fear not death :
In Christ I live! in Christ I draw the breath
Of the true life!-Let then earth, sea, and sky
Make war against me! On my front I show
Their mighty master's seal. In vain they try
To end my life, that can but end its woe.—
Is that a death-bed where a Christian lies ?—
Yes! but not his 'tis Death itself there dies.

*These are presumably the verses recited by Coleridge to Emerson when the latter made a pilgrimage to Highgate on

Τό τοῦ ἘΣΤΗΣΕ τοῦ ἐπιδανοῦς Εpitaphium testamentarium αυτόγραφον.

Quæ linquam, aut nihil, aut nihili, aut vix sunt mea. Sordes

Do Morti: reddo cætera, Christe ! tibi.*

EPITAPH.

STOP, Christian passer-by-Stop, child of God, And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod

A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he.

O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise-to be forgiven for fame

He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou
the same!

9th November, 1833.

August 5, 1833. "When I rose to go, he said, 'I do not know whether you care about poetry, but I will repeat some verses I lately made on my baptismal anniversary,' and he recited with strong emphasis, standing, ten or twelve lines, beginning, 'Born unto God in Christ-""-ENGLISH TRAITS, § 1, First Visit to England.

* Literary Souvenir, 1827.