'ler spires, her teeple-towers with glittering vanes drhounen, ter chapels lurking among trees, ilagers of bended knees
Tak Naket Taich a busy world disdains.
aring Kanson, it self-trifedi,
*er move uncrossed brew wail
mystery, which thou nors
ve Faith! canst overlear
ess toward the fount of is he throne wer, whose ministering spiris orus keep eriods fixed, and laws established. Less
to exalt than prove its nothingness
IN SIGHT OF THE TOWN OF
COCKERMOUTH,
ERE THE AUTHOR WAS BORN, AND ES FATHER'S
REMAINS ARE LAID.
A POINT of life between my parents' dust,
And yours, my buried little ones! am I;
And to those graves looking habitually
In kindred quiet I repose my trust.
Death to the innocent is more than just,
And, to the sinner, mercifully bent;
I hope, if truly I repent
tear the ills which bear I must:
And you, my offspring! that do still remain,
Yet may outstrip me in the appointed race,
If e'er, through fault of mine, in mutual pain
We breathed together for a moment's space,
The wrong, by love provoked, let love arraign,
And only love keep in your hearts a place.
TO THE AUTHOR'S PORTRAIT. [Painted at Rydal Mount, by W. Pickersgill, for St. John's College, Cambridge.]
Go, faithful portrait! and where long hath knelt
Margaret, the saintly foundress, take thy place;
And, if time spare the colours for the grace
Which to the work surpassing skill hath dealt,
Thou, on thy rock reclined, though kingdoms melt
And states be torn up by the roots, wilt seem
To breathe in rural peace, to hear the stream,
To think and feel as once the poet felt.
Whate'er thy fate, those features have not grown
Unrecognised through many a household tear,
More prompt, more glad to fall, than drops of dew
By morning shed around a flower half blown;
Tears of delight, that testified how true
To life thou art, and, in thy truth, how dear!
"WHY ART THOU SILENT?"
WHY art thou silent? Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
As would my deeds have been, with hourly care,
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant
For nought but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak, though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold
Than a forsaken bird's nest filled with snow
Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine;
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know '
KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.
TAX not the royal saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the architect who planned,
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed scholars only, this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
What awful perspective! while from our sight
With gradual stealth the lateral windows hide
Their portraitures, their stone-work glimmers, dyed
In the soft chequerings of a sleepy light.
Martyr, or king, or sainted eremite,
Whoe'er ye be, that thus-yourselves unseen-
Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen,
Shine on! until ye fade with coming night!
But, from the arms of silence-list! oh, list!
The music bursteth into second life;
The notes luxuriate-every stone is kissed
By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife:
Heart-thrilling strains, that cast before the eye
Of the devout a veil of ecstasy!
They dreamt not of a perishable home
Who thus could build. Be mine, in hours of fear
Or grovelling thought, to seek a refuge here;
Or through the aisles of Westminster to roam;
Where bubbles burst, and folly's dancing foam
Melts, if it cross the threshold; where the wreath
Of awe-struck wisdom droops: or let my path
Lead to that younger pile, whose sky-like dome
Hath typified by reach of daring art
Infinity's embrace; whose guardian crest,
The silent cross, among the stars shall spread
As now, when she hath also seen her breast
Filled with mementos, satiate with its part
Of grateful England's overflowing dead.
"MERRY ENGLAND."
THEY called thee 'merry England,' in old time;
A happy people won for thee that name
With envy heard in many a distant clime;
And, spite of change, for me thou keep'st the same Endearing title, a responsive chime
To the heart's fond belief, though some there are Whose sterner judgments deem that word a snare For inattentive Fancy, like the lime
Which foolish birds are caught with. Can, I ask,
This face of rural beauty be a mask
For discontent, and poverty, and crime;
These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will;
Forbid it, Heaven !-that 'merry England' still
May be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme !
MOST sweet it is with unuplifted eyes To pace the ground if path there be or none, While a fair repose round the traveller lies, Which he forbears again to look upon; Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, The work of fancy or some happy tone Of meditation, stepping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone. If thought and love desert us, from that day Let us break off all commerce with the muse : With thought and love companions of our way, Whate'er the senses take or may refuse,
The mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews Of inspiration on the humblest lay.
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