God! sing, ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt th' eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
Thou, too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing
peaks,

Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou
That as I raised my head, a while bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country! O thou queen,
Thou delegated deity of earth,

O dear, dear England! how my longing eye
Turn'd westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs!

My native land. Fill'd with the thought of thee this heart was proud,

Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills,
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim! Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is everywhere! the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty family,

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Himself our Father, and the world our home.
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

LINES

WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM AT ELBINGERODE, IN
THE HARTZ FOREST.

I STOOD on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills,
A surging scene, and only limited

By the blue distance. Heavily my way
Downward I dragg'd through fir-groves evermore,
Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral
forms

Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound;
And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly,
Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct
From many a note of many a waterfall,

And the rook's chatter: 'mid whose islet stones
The ding kidling with its tinkling bell
Leap'd frolicsome, or old romantic goat

Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
In low and languid mood:† for I had found

That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive
Their fmer influence from the life within:
Fair ciphers else: fair, but of import vague
Or unconcerning, where the heart not finds
History or prophecy of friend, or child,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,

The highest mountain in the Hartz, and, indeed, in North Germany.

When I have gazed

From some high eminence on goodly vales,
And cots and villages embower'd below,
The thought would rise that all to me was strange
Amid the scenes so fair, nor one small spot
Where my tired mind might rest, and call it home.
Southey's Hymn to the Penates.

ON OBSERVING A BLOSSOM ON THE FIRST
OF FEBRUARY, 1796.

SWEET flower! that peeping from thy russet stem
Unfoldest timidly, (for in strange sort

This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering
month

Hath borrow'd Zephyr's voice, and gazed upon thee
With blue voluptuous eye,) alas, poor flower!
These are but flatteries of the faithless year.
Perchance, escaped its unknown polar cave,
E'en now the keen north-east is on its way.
Flower that must perish! shall I liken thee
To some sweet girl of too, too rapid growth,
Nipp'd by consumption 'mid untimely charms?
Or to Bristowa's bard, the wondrous boy!
An amaranth, which earth scarce seem'd to own,
Till disappointment came, and pelting wrong
Beat it to earth? or with indignant grief
Shall I compare thee to poor Poland's hope,
Bright flower of hope kill'd in the opening bud?
Farewell, sweet blossom! better fate be thine,
And mock my boding! Dim similitudes
Weaving in moral strains, I've stolen one hour
From anxious SELF, life's cruel task-master!
And the warm wooings of this sunny day
Tremble along my frame, and harmonize

Th' attemper'd organ, that even saddest thoughts

Mix with some sweet sensations, like harsh tones
Play'd deftly on a soft-toned instrument.

THE EOLIAN HARP.

COMPOSED AT CLEVEDON, SOMERSETSHIRE.

My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our cot, our cot o'ergrown
With white-flower'd jasmin, and the broad-leaved
myrtle,

* Chatterton.

(Meet emblems they of innocence and love!)

And watch the clouds, that late were rich with REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A PLACE

light,

Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve

Serenely brilliant (such should wisdom be)

Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents

OF RETIREMENT.

Sermoni propriora.—Hor.

Sn tch'd from yon bean-field! and the world so Low was our pretty cot: our tallest rose

hush'd!

The stally murmur of the distant sea

Tells us of silence.

And that simplest lute,

Placed length-ways in the clasping casement,

hark!

How by the desultory breeze caress'd,

Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its
strings,

Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentler gales from Fairy-land,
Where melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of paradise,

Peep'd at the chamber window. We could hear
At silent noon, and eve, and early morn,
The sea's faint murmur. In the open air
Our myrtles blossom'd; and across the porch
Thick jasmins twined: the little landscape round
Was green and woody, and refresh'd the eye.
It was a spot which you might aptly call
The Valley of Seclusion! once I saw
(Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quietness)
A wealthy son of commerce saunter by,
Bristowa's citizen: methought, it calm'd
His thirst of idle gold, and made him muse
With wiser feelings; for he paused, and look'd
With a pleased sadness, and gazed all around,
Then eyed our cottage, and gazed round again,
And sigh'd, and said, it was a blessed place.
And we were bless'd. Oft with patient ear
Long listening to the viewless sky-lark's note,

Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing! (Viewless, or haply for a moment seen
O the one life within us and abroad,

Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere-
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is music slumbering on her instrument.

And thus, my love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;
Full many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd,
And many idle, flitting fantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject lute!
And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps,
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the soul of each, and God of all?

But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O beloved woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallow'd dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said, and holily dispraised
These shapings of th' unregenerate mind!
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain philosophy's aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of Him,
The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
i praise him, and with faith that inly feels;
Who with his saving mercies healed me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wilder'd and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this cot, and thee, heart-honour'd
maid!

Gleaming on sunny wings,) in whisper'd tones
I've said to my beloved, "Such, sweet girl!
The inobtrusive song of happiness,
Unearthly minstrelsy! then only heard
When the soul seeks to hear; when all is hush'd,
And the heart listens !"

But the time, when first
From that low dell, steep up the stony mount
I climb'd with perilous toil, and reach'd the top,
O! what a goodly scene! Here the bleak mount,
The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep,
Gray clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields
And river, now with bushy rocks o'erbrow'd,
Now winding bright and full, with naked banks;
And seats, and lawns, the abbey and the wood,
And cots, and hamlets, and faint city spire;
The channel there, the islands, and white sails,
Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless

ocean

It seem'd like Omnipresence! God, methought,
Had built him there a temple: the whole world
Seem'd imaged in its vast circumference,
No wish profaned my overwhelmed heart.
Blest hour! It was a luxury, to be!

Ah! quiet dell; dear cot, and mount sublime!
I was constrain'd to quit you. Was it right,
While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd and bled,
That I should dream away th' intrusted hours
On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use?
Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye
Drops on the cheek of one he lifts from earth:
And he that works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half: he chills me while he aids,
My benefactor, not my brother man!
Yet even this, this cold beneficence,
Praise, praise it, O my soul! oft as thou scann's
The sluggard pity's vision-weaving tribe!
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched
Nursing in some delicious solitude