I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seem'd a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of Heaven;
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd.
So once it would have been,-'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:

A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul."

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been :
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;

This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,

If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,

This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O, 'tis a passionate Work!-yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in th' unfeeling armour of old time,

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

6 Throughout this piece, again, the feeling uppermost in the poet's mind is sorrow at the death of his brother. In one of his summer vacations while in college, he had spent four weeks in the neighbourhood of Peele Castle; and all that time the waters had remained perfectly unruffled and smooth, never ceasing to image in their depths the Castle standing near; and now a picture of the place, with the sea heaving under a mighty storm, -the same sea which had been so calm and still, that it seemed to him "the gentlest of all gentle Things," - only reminds him of his brother's fate, and, from the fierce contrast, impresses him with a deeper sense of the terrible might which had slumbered so sweetly before his eye.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn."

WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES
LAMB.8

To a good Man of most dear memory
This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart

From the great city where he first drew breath,
Was rear'd and taught; and humbly earn'd his bread,
To the strict labours of the merchant's desk
By duty chain'd. Not seldom did those tasks
Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress,
His spirit, but the recompense was high,
Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire;
Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air;
And, when the precious hours of leisure came,
Knowledge and wisdom, gain'd from converse sweet
With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets

7 This is justly regarded as one of the author's noblest and most characteristic pieces. Hardly any of them has been oftener quoted, or drawn forth more or stronger notes of admiration. Perhaps the higher function of Poetry has never been better expressed than in the last half of the fourth stanza. The author's private correspondence at the time shows that the shaping and informing spirit of the piece was not a thing assumed for any purpose of art. In a letter to a friend, dated March 16, 1805, he wrote as follows: "For myself, I feel that there is something cut out of my life which cannot be restored. I never thought of him but with hope and delight: we looked forward to the time, not distant, as we thought, when he would settle near us, when the task of his life would be over, and he would have nothing to do but reap his reward. I never wrote a line without a thought of its giving him pleasure: my writings, printed and manuscript, were his delight, and one of the chief solaces of his long voyages. But I will not be cast down; were it only for his sake, I will not be dejected: and I hope, when I shall be able to think of him with a calmer mind, that the remembrance of him dead will even animate me more than the joy which I had in him living."

8 Light will be thrown upon the tragic circumstance alluded to in this poem, when, after the death of Charles Lamb's Sister, his biographer, Mr. Sergeant Tal fourd, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which could not, at the time his Memoir was written, be given to the public. Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were I to give way to my own feel. ings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual power, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under the most trying circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother's friends; and others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance. The death of Charles Lamb himself was doubtless hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom he had been attached from the time of their being school-fellows at Christ's Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and probably would have gone to college upon one of the school foundations but for the impediment in his speech.-Author's Notes, 1843.

With a keen eye and overflowing heart:
So genius triumph'd over seeming wrong,
And pour'd out truth in works by thoughtful love
Inspired,-works potent over smiles and tears.
And, as round mountain-tops the lightning plays,
Thus innocently sported, breaking forth
As from a cloud of some grave sympathy,
Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all
The vivid flashes of his spoken words.
From the most gentle creature nursed in fields
Had been derived the name he bore, a name,
Wherever Christian altars have been raised,
Hallow'd to meekness and to innocence;
And if in him meekness at times gave way,
Provoked out of herself by troubles strange,
Many and strange, that hung about his life;
Still, at the centre of his being, lodged
A soul by resignation sanctified:

And if too often, self-reproach'd, he felt
That innocence belongs not to our kind,
A power that never ceased to abide in him,
Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins
That she can cover, left not his exposed
To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven.
O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived!

From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart
Those simple lines flow'd with an earnest wish,
Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve
Fitly to guard the precious dust of him.

Whose virtues call'd them forth. That aim is miss'd;
For much that truth most urgently required
Had from a faltering pen been ask'd in vain:
Yet, haply, on the printed page received,

Th' imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed
As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air
Of memory, or see the light of love.

Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend,
But more in show than truth; and from the fields,
And from the mountains, to thy rural grave
Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er
Its green untrodden turf and blowing flowers;
And taking up a voice shall speak (though still
Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity

Which words less free presumed not even to touch) Of that fraternal love whose Heaven-lit lamp

From infancy, through manhood, to the last
Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour,
Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined
Within thy bosom.

66

"Wonderful" hath been
The love establish'd between man and man,
Passing the love of women;
" and between
Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock join'd
Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love
Without whose blissful influence Paradise

Had been no Paradise; and Earth were now
A waste where creatures bearing human form,
Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear,
Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;
And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve,
That he hath been an Elm without his Vine,
And her bright dower of clustering charities,
That round his trunk and branches might have clung,
Enriching and adorning. Unto thee,

Not so enrich'd, not so adorn'd, to thee
Was given (say rather thou of later birth
Wert given to her) a Sister, - 'tis a word
Timidly utter'd, for she lives, the meek,
The self-restraining, and the ever-kind, -
In whom thy reason and intelligent heart
Found-for all interests, hopes, and tender cares,
All softening, humanising, hallowing powers,
Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought-
More than sufficient recompense! Her love
(What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?)
Was as the love of mothers; and when years,
Lifting the boy to man's estate, had call'd
The long-protected to assume the part

Of a protector, the first filial tie

Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight,

Remain'd imperishably interwoven

With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world,

Did they together testify of time

And season's difference, a double tree

With two collateral stems sprung from one root;

Such were they; such thro' life they might have been

In union, in partition only such;

Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High;

Yet, through all visitations and all trials,

9 Wordsworth here delicately hints that Lamb refrained from matrimonial ties on account of his sister, whose sad infirmity seemed to him to invest her claims with peculiar sacredness. And such, I believe, was the fact.

Still they were faithful; like two vessels launch'd
From the same beach one ocean to explore
With mutual help, and sailing, to their league
True, as inexorable winds, or bars
Floating or fix'd of polar ice, allow.

But turn we rather, let my spirit turn
With thine, O silent and invisible Friend!
To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief,
When reunited, and by choice withdrawn
From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught
That the remembrance of foregone distress,
And the worse fear of future ill (which oft
Doth hang around it, as a sickly child
Upon its mother) may be both alike
Disarm'd of power to unsettle present good
So prized, and things inward and outward held
In such an even balance, that the heart
Acknowledges God's grace, His mercy feels,
And in its depth of gratitude is still."

O gift divine of quiet sequestration!
The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise,
And feeding daily on the hope of Heaven,
Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves
To life-long singleness; but happier far
Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others,
A thousand times more beautiful appear'd,
Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie

Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds

His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead

To the blest world where parting is unknown.

ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS.

[1835.

GLAD TIDINGS.

FOR ever hallow'd be this morning fair,
Blest be th' unconscious shore on which ye tread,

Since the publication of Talfourd's Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, in 1848, the matter here referred to has become well known. Mary Lamb was subject to dreadful turns of insanity, during which she had to be separated from her brother, and kept in close confinement. In a letter to Coleridge, dated September 27, 1796, Lamb has the following: "My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital."

2 Of this series of Sonnets, much the greater number are not particularly suited to the purpose of this volume. But some of them, besides being exceedingly beautiful in themselves, are fully in keeping with that purpose, and are withal so mellow with Christian gentleness and wisdom, that I could not make up my mind to leave

them out.