AND AND LAW. On utmost Kilda's 1 shore, whose lonely race Nor heeds the rein, nor hears the sounding thong : Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds, Blows are not felt; but, tossing high his head, The royal eagle draws his vigorous young, And by the well-known joy to distant plains Strong-pounced, and ardent with paternal fire. Attracted strong, all wide he bursts away ; Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own, O'er rocks, and woods, and craggy mountains flies, He drives them from his fort, the towering seat, And, neighing, on the aërial summit takes For ages, of his empire ; which, in peace, The exciting gale ; then, steep-descending, cleaves Unstained he holds, while many a league to sea The headlong torrents foarning down the hills, He wings his course, and preys in distant isles. E'en where the madness of the straitened stream Turns in black eddies round : such is the force THE YOUNG OF THE POULTRY-YARD.-THE ROOK ; HEN AND With which his frantic heart and sinews swell. CHICKENS; COCK ; DUCK ; SWAN ; TCRKEY ; PEACOCK ; DOVE. Should I my steps turn to the rural seat, THE EFFECT OF SPRING ON THE MONSTERS OF THE DEEP THE WILD BEASTS OF THE FOREST - THE SHEPWhose lofty elms, and venerable oaks, HERD ; LAMBS AT PLAY. - ANCIENT RAMPART ; LIBERTY Invite the rook, who high amid the boughs, In early Spring, his airy city builds, Nor undelighted by the boundless Spring And ceaseless caws amusive ; there, well-pleased, Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep : I might the various polity survey From the deep ooze and gelid cavern roused, Of the mixed household kind. The careful hen They flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy. Dire were the strain, and dissonant, to sing The cruel raptures of the savage kind ; How, by this flame their native wrath sublimed, Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond They roam, amid the fury of their heart, The finely-checkered duck before her train The far-resounding waste in fiercer bands, Rows garrulous. The stately-sailing swan And growl their horrid loves. But this the theme Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale ; I sing, enraptured, to the British Fair, And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet Forbids, and leads me to the mountain brow, Where sits the shepherd on the grassy turf, Inhaling, healthful, the descending sun. of various cadence ; and his sportive lambs, And swims in radiant majesty along. This way and that convolved, in friskful glee, O'er the whole homely scene, the cooing dove Their frolics play. And now the sprightly race Flies thick in amorous chase, and wanton rolls Invites them forth ; when swift, the signal given, The glancing eye, and turns the changeful neck. They start away, and sweep the massy mound That runs around the hill ; the rampart once Of iron war, in ancient barbarous times, Indulge their purer loves, the rougher world When disunited Britain ever bled, Of brutes, below, rush furious into flame, Lost in eternal broil : ere yet she grew And fierce desire. Through all his lusty veins To this deep-laid indissoluble state, The bull, deep-scorched, the raging passion feels. Where Wealth and Commerce lift their golden heads; Of pasture sick, and negligent of food, And o'er our labors Liberty and Law, CREATIVE LOVE. - INSTINCT. - SPRING, THE SMILE OF GOD. Dejected wanders, nor the enticing bud What is this mighty breath, ye sages, say, Crops, though it presses on his careless sense. That, in a powerful language, felt, not heard, And oft, in jealous maddening fancy rapt, Instructs the fowls of heaven, and through their breast He seeks the fight, and, idly butting, feigns These arts of love diffuses ? What, but God ? His rival gored in every knotty trunk. Inspiring God ! who, boundless Spirit all, Him should he meet, the bellowing war begins : And unremitting Energy, pervades, Their eyes flash fury ; to the hollowed earth, Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole. Whence the sand flies, they mutter bloody deeds, He ceaseless works alone ; and yet alone And, groaning deep, the impetuous battle mix : Seems not to work : with such perfection framed While the fair heifer, balmy-breathing, near, Is this complex, stupendous scheme of things. But, though concealed, to every purer eye Chief, lovely Spring ! in thee, and thy soft scenes, The smiling God is seen ; while water, earth, With this hot impulse seized in every nerve, And air attest his bounty ; which exalts 1 The farthest of the Western Islands of Scotland. The brute creation to this finer thought, THE HORSE IN SPRING. HIS HEADLONG PASSION. And, annual, melts their undesigning hearts Profusely thus in tenderness and joy. THE EFFECT OF SPRING ON MAX. - ON THE BENEVOLENT. Still let my song a nobler note assume, And sing the infusive force of Spring on Man ; When heaven and earth, as if contending, vio To raise his being, and serene his soul, Can he forbear to join the general smile Of Nature ? Can fierce passions vex his breast, While every gale is peace, and every grove Is melody? Hence! from the bounteous walks Of flowing Spring, ye sordid sons of earth, Hard, and unfeeling of another's woe, Or only lavish to yourselves, away! Butcome, ye generous minds, in whose wide thought, Of all his works, creative Bounty burns With warmest beam ; and on your open front And liberal eye sits, from his dark retreat Inviting modest Want. Nor, till invoked, Can restless Goodness wait ; your active search Leaves no cold wintry corner unexplored ; Like silent-working Heaven, surprising oft The lonely heart with unexpected good. For you the roving spirit of the wind Blows Spring abroad ; for you the teeming clouds Descend in gladsome plenty o'er the world ; And the sun sheds his kindest rays for you, Ye flower of Iluman Race ! With woods o'erhung and shagged with mossy rocks, A RURAL WALK OF WEDDED LOVERS. EFFECTS OF SPRING ON THE SICK ; THE PIOCS. - HOLY AND HAPPY THOUGHTS. In these green days, Reviving Sickness lifts her languid head ; Life flows afresh ; and young-eyed Health exalts The whole creation round. Contentment walks The sunny glade, and feels an inward bliss Spring o'er his mind, beyond the power of kings To purchase. Pure serenity apace Induces thought and contemplation still. By swift degrees the love of Nature works, And warms the bosom ; till at last sublimed To rapture and enthusiastic heat, We feel the present Deity, and taste iny of God to see a happy world! Perhaps thy loved Lucinda shares thy walk, With soul to thine attuned. Then Nature all Wears to the lover's eye a look of love ; And all the tumult of a guilty world, Tossed by ungenerous passions, sinks away. The tender heart is animated peace ; And as it pours its copious treasures forth In varied converse, softening every theme, You, frequent-pausing, turn, and from her eyes, Where meekened sense and amiable grace And lively sweetness dwell, enraptured, drink That nameless spirit of ethereal joy, Unutterable happiness ! which love Alone bestows, and on a favored few. THE PROSPECT AT HAGLEY PARK. A TRIBUTE 14 TE AUTHOR'S FRIEND, LYTTELTON. – HAGLEY PARK DESCRIB&D. - THE WATERFALL. - SOOTHING VOICES OF XATCRE. - PHILOSOPHY. - PATRIOTISM. - POETRY. These are the sacred feelings of thy heart, Thy heart informed by reason's purer ray, O Lyttelton,' the friend ! thy passions thus And meditations vary, as at large, [stray'st ; Courting the Muse, through Hagley Park thou Thy Brit.. Tempé 2! There, along the dale Meantime you gain the height from whose fair brow The bursting prospect spreads, immense, around : And snatched o'er hill and dale, and wood and lawn, And verdant field, and darkening heath between, And villages embosomed soft in trees, And spiry towns by surging columns marked Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams : Wide-stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt The Hospitable Genius lingers still, To where the broken landscape, by degrecs Ascending, rougheng into rigid hills; O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise. 1 George, Lord Lyttelton, eldest son of S# Thomas, Baronet of Hagley, in Worcestershire, England. Born 1709; died Aug. 22, 1773. Besides being a poet of some reputation, one of his biographers calls him “a judicious critic, an entertaining traveller, a wise and upright statesman, and a good man.” By a lavish expenditure he rendered his residence, Hagley Park, "a terrestrial paradise.” 2 Tempé is a valley of Thessaly, renowned for its rural beauty. THE MAIDEN IN SPRING. - EFFECTS OF LOVE. - WARNING. Flushed by the spirit of the genial year, Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom Shoots, less and less, the live carnation round; To the vain bosom of his distant fair ; THE LOVER'S MOONLIGHT WALK. - THE LOVE-LETTER. - HIS TANTALIZING DREAMS. YOUTI WARNED FROM LAWLESS LOVE. - ITS EXERVATING EFFECTS. And let the aspiring youth beware of love, of the smooth glance beware ; for 't is too late When on his heart the torrent-softness pours. Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul, Wrapped in gay visions of unreal bliss, Still paints the illusive form ; the kindling grace ; The enticing smile ; the modest seeming eye, Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven, Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death ; And still, false-warbling in his cheated ear, Her siren voice, enchanting, draws him on To guileful shores, and meads of fatal joy. E'en present, in the very lap of love Inglorious laid ; while music flows around, Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wanton hours ; Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears Her snaky crest : a quick-returning pang [still Shoots through the conscious heart; where honor And great design, against the oppressive load Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave. Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day, Nor quits his deep retirement, till the moon Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east, Enlightened by degrees, and in her train Leads on the gentle Hours ; then forth he walks, Beneath the trembling languish of her beam, With softened soul, and woos the bird of eve To mingle woes with his ; or, while the world And all the sons of Care lie hushed in sleep, Associates with the midnight shadows drear ; And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours His idly-tortured heart into the page Meant for the moving messenger of love ; Where rapture burns on rapture, every line With rising frenzy fired. But, if on bed Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies. All night he tosses, nor the balmy power In any posture finds ; till the gray morn Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch, Exanimate by love : and then perhaps Exhausted nature sinks a while to rest, Still interrupted by distracted dreams, That o'er the sick imagination rise, And in black colors paint the mimic scene. Oft with the enchantress of his soul he talks ; Sometimes in crowds distressed ; or if retired To secret, winding, flower-enwoven bowers, Far from the dull impertinence of man, Just as he, credulous, his endless cares Begins to lose in blind oblivious love, Snatched from her yielded hand, he knows not how, Through forests huge, and long untravelled heaths With desolation brown, he wanders waste, In night and tempest wrapped ; or shrinks aghast, Back, from the bending precipice ; or wades The turbid stream below, and strives to reach The further shore ; where, succorless and sad, She with extended arms his aid implores ; But strives in vain ; borne by the outrageous flood To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave, Or whelmed beneath the boiling eddy sinks. THE LOVER'S PANGS. --LOVE-SICKNESS. But absent, what fantastic woes, aroused, Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed, Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life ! Neglected fortune flies ; and, sliding swift, Prone into ruin fall his scorned affairs. ”T is naught but gloom around ; the darkened sun Loses his light; the rosy-bosomed Spring To weeping fancy pines ; and yon bright arch, Contracted, bends into a dusky vault. All Nature fades extinct; and she alone, Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought, Fills every sense, and pants in every vein. Books are but forinal dulness, tedious friends ; And sad amid the social band he sits, Lonely, and unattentive. From his tongue The unfinished period falls : while, borne away On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies THE TORMENTS OF JEALOUSY. These are the charming agonies of love, Whose misery delights. But through the heart Should jealousy its venom once diffuse, The loathing virgin, in eternal care, "T is then delightful misery no more, THE REARING AND EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. Meantime a smiling offspring rises round, And mingles both their graces. By degrees, The human blossom blows ; and every day, Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm, The father's lustre, and the mother's bloom. Then infant reason grows apace, and calls For the kind hand of an assiduous care. Delightful task ! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot, To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix The generous purpose in the glowing breast. A HAPPY MARRIAGE UNION. - SELFISH PASSION; TRUE LOVE. But happy they! the happiest of their kind ! Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend. 'T is not the coarser tie of human laws, Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind, That binds their peace, but harmony itself, Attuning all their passions into love ; Where friendship full exerts her softest power, Perfect esteem enlivened by desire Ineffable, and sympathy of soul ; Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will, With boundless confidence : for naught but love Can answer love, and render bliss secure. Let him, ungenerous, who, alone intent To bless himself, from sordid parents buys PICTURE OF A HAPPY LIFE; CONNUBIAL BLISS.- EUTHANASIA. 0, speak the joy ! ye, whom the sudden tear WILLY THOMALIN, why sitten we so Upon so fair a morrow? And slake the Winter sorrow. THOMALIN. Nay, but thy seeing will not serve; My sheep for that may chance to swerve, And fall into some mischief ; And waked again with grief; Fell headlong into a dell, She should bave need no more spell ; She mought ne gang on the green. THOMALIN. Siker, Willy, thou warnest well ; For Winter's wrath begins to quell, And pleasant Spring appeareth ; The grass now 'gins to be refresht, The swallow peeps out of her nest, And cloudy welkin cleareth. WILLY. WILLY Now tell us what thou hast seen. THOMALIN. Seest not thilk same hawthorn stud, How bragly it begins to bud And utter his tender head ? Flora now calleth forth each flower, And bids make ready Maia's bower, That new is uprist from bed : Tho shall we sporten in delight, And learn with Lettice to wex light That scornfully looks askaunce ; Tho will we little Love awake, That now sleepeth in Lethe lake, And pray him leaden our daunce. THOMALIN. Willy, I ween thou be a sot; But is abroad at his game. It was upon a holy-day, I cast to go a shooting ; For birds in bushes tooting ; I heard a busie bustling ; But then heard no more rustling. And manfully thereat shot : And, laughing, lope to a tree; Which lightly he bent at me : WILLY. How kenst thou that he is awoke? Or hast thyself his slumber broke? Or made privy to the same? THOMALIN. No; but happily I him spide, With wings of purple and blue ; Whereby by chance I him knew. |