If, then, some natural shadows spread
Our inward prospect over,
The soul's deep valley was not slow
Its brightness to recover.
Eternal blessings on the Muse,
And her divine employment!
The blameless Muse, who trains her sons
For hope and calm enjoyment;
Albeit sickness, lingering yet,
Has o'er their pillow brooded;
And Care waylays their steps-a sprite Not easily eluded.
For thee, O Scott! compelled to change
Green Eildon-hill and Cheviot
For warm Vesuvio's vine-clad slopes,
And leave thy Tweed and Tiviot
For mild Sorrento's breezy waves ;
May classic fancy, linking
With native fancy her fresh aid,
Preserve thy heart from sinking!
Oh! while they minister to thee,
Each vying with the other,
May Health return to mellow age
With Strength, her venturous brother;
And Tiber, and each brook and rill
Renowned in song and story,
With unimagined beauty shine,
Nor lose one ray of glory!
For thou, upon a hundred streams,
By tales of love and sorrow,
Of faithful love, undaunted truth,
Hast shed the power of Yarrow;
And streams unknown, hills yet unseen,
Wherever they invite thee,
At parent Nature's grateful call,
With gladness must requite thee.
A gracious welcome shall be thine,
Such looks of love and honour
As thy own Yarrow gave to me
When first I gazed upon her;
Beheld what I feared to see,
Unwilling to surrender
Dreams treasured up from early days,
The holy and the tender.
And what, for this frail world, were all
That mortals do or suffer,
Did no responsive harp, no pen,
Memorial tribute offer?
Yea, what were mighty Nature's self?
Her features, could they win us,
Unhelped by the poetic voice
That hourly speaks within us?
Nor deem that localised romance
Plays false with our affections;
Unsanctifies our tears-made sport
For fanciful dejections:
Ah no! the visions of the past
Sustain the heart in feeling
Life as she is our changeful life-
With friends and kindred dealing.
Bear witness, ye, whose thoughts that day
In Yarrow's groves were centred ;
Who through the silent portal arch
Of mouldering Newark entered;
And clomb the winding stair that once
Too timidly was mounted
By the "last minstrel" (not the last !)
Ere he his tale recounted.
Flow on forever, Yarrow stream!
Fulfil thy pensive duty,
Well pleased that future bards should chant
For simple hearts thy beauty;
To dream-light dear while yet unseen,
Dear to the common sunshine,
And dearer still, as now I feel,
To memory's shadowy moonshine!
MEMORIES OF DEPARTED FRIENDS.
(From "Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg.")
WHEN first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
When last along its banks I wandered
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways
My steps the Border-minstrel led.
The mighty minstrel breathes no longer,
Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow
Has closed the shepherd-poet's eyes;
Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its steadfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source;
The rapt one, of the god-like forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth;
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.
Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother
From sunshine to the sunless land!
Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,
"Who next will drop and disappear?'
Our haughty life is crowned with darkness
Like London with its own black wreath,
On which with thee, O Crabbe !-forthlooking
I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.
As if but yesterday departed,
Thou, too, art gone before; but why
O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?
FROM my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton, with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind forever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps
Of generations of illustrious men,
Unmoved. I could not lightly pass
Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept,
Wake where they waked, range that enclosure old,
That garden of great intellects, undisturbed.
I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade;
Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales
Of amorous passion. And that gentle bard
Chosen by the Muses for their Page of State-
Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,
I called him brother, Englishman and friend!
Yea, our blind poet, who in his later day,
Stood almost single; uttering odious truth,-
Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,―
I seemed to see him here
Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress
Bounding before me.
O THOU ! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou faery voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat
To brood on air than on an earthly stream;
Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,
Where earth and heaven do make one imagery;
O blessed vision! happy child!
That art so exquistely wild,
I think of thee with many fears
For what may be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times when pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality;
And grief, uneasy lover! never rest
But when she sate within the touch of thee.
Oh! too industrious folly!
Oh! vain and causeless melancholy!
Nature will either end thee quite;
Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee, by individual right,
A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow,
Or the injuries of to-morrow?
Thou art a dewdrop, which the morn brings forth,
Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks;
Or to be trailed along the soiling earth;
A gem that glitters while it lives,
And no forewarning gives;
But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife
Slips in a moment out of life.
CALM is the fragrant air, and loath to lose
Day's grateful warmth, though moist with falling dews. Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none;
Look up a second time, and, one by one,
You mark them twinkling out with silvery light,
And wonder how they could elude the sight!
The birds of late so noisy in their bowers,
Warbled a while with faint and fainter powers,
But now are silent as the dim-seen flowers. .
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