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A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.

The dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,

This dog had been through three months' space
A dweller in that savage place.

Yes, proof was plain that since the day
On which the traveller thus had died
The dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his master's side:

How nourished here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime,
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate.

XXV.

ODE TO DUTY.

STERN daughter of the voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove:
Thou who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;

From vain temptations dost set free;

And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

There are who ask not if thine eye

Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Where no misgiving is, rely

Upon the genial sense of youth :

Glad hearts! without reproach or blot;

Who do thy work, and know it not :

May joy be theirs while life shall last!

And thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast!

Serene will be our days and bright,

And happy will our nature be,

When love is an unerring light,

And joy its own security.

And blest are they who in the main

This faith, even now, do entertain:

Live in the spirit of this creed ;

Yet find that other strength, according to their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,

Too blindly have reposed my trust;

Full oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task imposed, from day to day;

But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy control;
But in the quietness of thought;
Me this unchartered freedom tires ;
I feel the weight of chance desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose which ever is the same.

Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face;

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;

And fragrance in thy footing treads;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient, heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful power!

I call thee: I myself commend

Unto thy guidance from this hour;

Oh! let my weakness have an end!

Give unto me, made lowly wise,

The spirit of self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give;

And, in the light of truth, thy bondman let me live.

Miscellaneous Sonnets.

L

PREFATORY SONNET.

NUNS fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound

Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground:
Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find short solace there, as I have found.

II.

UPON THE SIGHT OF A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE.

PRAISED be the art whose subtle power could stay
Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape;
Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape,
Nor those bright sunbeams to forsake the day;
Which stopped that band of travellers on their way
Ere they were lost within the shady wood;
And showed the bark upon the glassy flood
For ever anchored in her sheltering bay.
Soul-soothing art! which morning, noontide, even,
Do serve with all their changeful pageantry!
Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime,
Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given
To one brief moment, caught from fleeting time,
The appropriate calm of blest eternity.

III.

THE fairest, brightest hues of ether fade;
The sweetest notes must terminate and die;
O friend! thy flute has breathed a harmony
Softly resounded through this rocky glade;
Such strains of rapture as the genius played
In his still haunt on Bagdad's summit high;
He who stood visible to Mirza's eye,
Never before to human sight betrayed.
Lo, in the vale, the mists of evening spread!
The visionary arches are not there,

Nor the green islands, nor the shining seas;
Yet sacred is to me this mountain's head,
From which I have been lifted on the breeze
Of harmony, above all earthly care.

IV.

"WEAK is the will of man, his judgment blind;
Remembrance persecutes, and hope betrays;
Heavy is woe; and joy, for human kind,
A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!"

* See the "Vision of Mirza" in the Spectator.

Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days
Who wants the glorious faculty assigned
To elevate the more than reasoning mind,
And colour life's dark cloud with orient rays.
Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined:

'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.

V.

HAIL Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour!
Not dull art thou as undiscerning Night;
But studious only to remove from sight
Day's mutable distinctions. Ancient power!
Thus did the waters gleam, the mountains lower
To the rude Briton, when, in wolf-skin vest
Here roving wild, he laid him down to rest
On the bare rock, or through a leafy bower
Looked ere his eyes were closed. By him was seen
The selfsame vision which we now behold,
At thy meek biding, shadowy power, brought forth;
These mighty barriers, and the gulf between;
The floods, the stars; a spectacle as old
As the beginning of the heavens and earth

VI.

THE shepherd, looking eastward, softly said,
"Bright is thy veil, O moon, as thou art bright!"
Forthwith, that little cloud, in ether spread,
And penetrated all with tender light,

She cast away, and showed her fulgent head
Uncovered; dazzling the beholder's sight
As if to vindicate her beauty's right,
Her beauty thoughtlessly disparagèd.
Meanwhile that veil, removed or thrown aside,
Went, floating from her, dark'ning as it went;
And a huge mass, to bury or to hide,
Approached this glory of the firmament;
Who meekly yields, and is obscured; content
With one calm triumph of a modest pride.

VII.

How sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks

The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood!

An old place, full of many a lovely brood,

Tall trees, green arbours, and ground flowers in flocks;

And wild rose tiptoe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like to a bonny lass, who plays her pranks

At wakes and fairs with wandering mountebanks,-
When she stands cresting the clown's head, and mocks
The crowd beneath her. Verily I think,

Such place to me is sometimes like a dream

Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam
Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,
And leap at once from the delicious stream.

VIII.

WHERE lies the land to which yon ship must go?
Festively she puts forth in trim array;

As vigorous as a lark at break of day:
Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow?

What boots the inquiry? Neither friend nor foe
She cares for; let her travel where she may,
She finds familiar names, a beaten way
Ever before her, and a wind to blow.
Yet still I ask, what haven is her mark?
And, almost as it was when ships were rare,
(From time to time, like pilgrims, here and there
Crossing the waters) doubt, and something dark,
Of the old sea some reverential fear,

Is with me at thy farewell, joyous bark!

IX.

EVEN as a dragon's eye that feels the stress
Of a bedimming sleep, or as a lamp
Sullenly glaring through sepulchral damp,
So burus yon taper 'mid its black recess
Of mountains, silent, dreary, motionless:
The lake below reflects it not; the sky,
Muffled in clouds, affords no company,
To mitigate and cheer its loneliness.
Yet round the body of that joyless thing,
Which sends so far its melancholy light,
Perhaps are seated in domestic ring
A gay society with faces bright,

Conversing, reading, laughing; or they sing,
While hearts and voices in the song unite.

X.

MARK the concentred hazels that inclose

Yon old grey stone, protected from the ray
Of noontide suns: and even the beams that play
And glance, while wantorly the rough wind blows,

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