II.

The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, 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 ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them?

III.

Imagination; honorable aims;

Free commune with the choir that can not die ;`
Science and song; delight in little things,

The buoyant child surviving in the man;
Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,
With all their voices--O dare I accuse
My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,
Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no!
It is her largeness, and her overflow,
Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so !.

IV.

For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,
But tim'rously beginning to rejoice
Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start
In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.
Beloved! 'tis not thine; thou art not there!
Then melts the bubble into idle air,

And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.

V.

The mother with anticipated glee

Smiles o'er the child, that, standing by her chair

And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare

To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight

She hears her own voice with a new delight;

And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes aright,

N*

VI.

yore

Then is she tenfold gladder than before!
But should disease or chance the darling take,
What then avail those songs, which sweet of
Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake?
Dear maid no prattler at a mother's knee
Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee :
Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me?

FROM THE GERMAN.

KNOW'ST thou the land where the pale citrons grow,
The golden fruits in darker foliage glow?

Soft blows the wind that breathes from that blue sky!
Still stands the myrtle and the laurel high!
Know'st thou it well that land, beloved Friend?
Thither with thee, O, thither would I wend!

FANCY IN NUBIBUS.

OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS.

O! IT is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould

Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low

And check aslant see rivers flow of gold

'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go

From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight,

Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

THE TWO FOUNTS.

STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER RECOVERY WITH UN-
BLEMISHED LOOKS, FROM A SEVERE ATTACK OF PAIN.

'Twas my last waking thought, how it could be,
That thou, sweet friend, such anguish shouldst endure;
When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he
Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure.

Methought he fronted me with peering look
Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game
The loves and griefs therein, as from a book;
And uttered praise like one who wished to blame.

In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin
Two Founts there are, of suffering and of cheer!
That to let forth, and this to keep within!
But she, whose aspect I find imaged here,

Of Pleasure only will to all dispense,
That Fount alone unlock, by no distress
Choked or turned inward, but still issue thence
Unconquered cheer, persistent loveliness.

As on the driving cloud the shiny bow,

That gracious thing made up of tears and light,
Mid the wild rack and rain that slants below
Stands smiling forth, unmoved and freshly bright ;—

As though the spirits of all lovely flowers,
Inweaving each its wreath and dewy crown,
Or ere they sank to earth in vernal showers,
Had built a bridge to tempt the angels down.

Ev'n so, Eliza ! on that face of thine,
On that benignant face, whose look alone
(The soul's translucence thro' her crystal shrine !)
Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own,

A beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing,
But with a silent charm compels the stern

And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring,
To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn.

Who then needs wonder, if (no outlet found
In passion, spleen, or strife,) the fount of pain.
O'erflowing beats against its lovely mound,
And in wild flashes shoots from heart to brain?

Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam
On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile,
Had passed yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile,
Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream;

Till audibly at length I cried, as though
Thou had'st indeed been present to my eyes,
O sweet, sweet sufferer; if the case be so,
I pray thee, be less good, less sweet, less-wise!

In every look a barbed arrow send,

On those soft lips let scorn and anger live!
Do any thing, rather than thus, sweet friend!
Hoard for thyself the pain, thou wilt not give!

THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN.

PREFATORY NOTE.

A PROSE Composition, one not in metre at least, seems prima facie to require explanation or apology. It was written in the year 1798, near Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, at which place (sanctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and recollections) the author had taken up his residence in order to enjoy the society and close neighborhood. of a dear and honored friend, T. Poole, Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connection with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were suggested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the contents for each of the three books or cantos, of which the work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook the first canto: I the second: and whichever had done first, was to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by; yet at this moment I can not without something more than a smile moot the question which of the two things was the most impracticable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and simple to imitate the Death of Abel? Methinks I see his grand and noble countenance as at the moment when having despatched my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened to him with my manuscript—that look of humorous despondency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme-which broke up in a laugh: and the Ancient Mariner was written instead.

Years afterward, however, the draft of the plan and proposed incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favor in the eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic work could not but have weighed with me, even though no parental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in realizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off the "Fortunate Isles" of the Muses: and then other and more momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer anchorage 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 writ