QUEEN of the stars!

(RYDAL.)

-so gentle, so benign, That ancient fable did to thee assign, When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow Warned thee these upper regions to forego, Alternate empire in the shades below — A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail From the close confines of a shadowy vale. Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene, Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen Through cloudy umbrage, well might that fair face, And all those attributes of modest grace,

In days when fancy wrought unchecked by fear, Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere, To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear!

O still belov'd (for thine, meek Power, are charms That fascinate the very babe in arms, While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright, Spreading his little palms in his glad mother's sight) O still belov'd, once worshipped! Time, that frowns In his destructive flight on earthly crowns, Spares thy mild splendour; still those far-shot beams Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays; And through dark trials still dost thou explore Thy way for increase punctual as of yore, When teeming Matrons-yielding to rude faith In mysteries of birth and life and death And painful struggle and deliverance - prayed Of thee to visit them with lenient aid. What though the rites be swept away, the fanes Extinct that echoed to the votive strains; Yet thy mild aspect does not, cannot, cease Love to promote and purity and peace; And Fancy, unreproved, even yet may trace Faint types of suffering in thy beamless face.

Told, also, how the voiceless heavens declare
God's glory; and acknowledging thy share
In that blest charge; let us-without offence
To aught of highest, holiest, influence-
Receive whatever good 't is given thee to dispense.
May sage and simple, catching with one eye
The moral intimations of the sky,

Learn from thy course, where'er their own be taken,
To look on tempests, and be never shaken;'
To keep with faithful steps the appointed way
Eclipsing or eclipsed, by night or day,
And from example of thy monthly range
Gently to brook decline and fatal change;
Meek, patient, stedfast, and with loftier scope,
Than thy revival vields, for gladsome hope!

XIV.

How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high
Her way pursuing among scattered clouds,
Where, ever and anon, her head she shrouds
Hidden from view in dense obscurity!
But look, and to the watchful eye

A brightening edge will indicate that soon
We shall behold the struggling Moon
Break forth,-again to walk the clear blue sky

XV.

TO LUCCA GIORDANO.

GIORDANO, verily thy pencil's skill
Hath here portrayed with Nature's happiest grace
The fair Endymion couched on Latmos Hill;
And Dian gazing on the shepherd's face
In rapture, yet suspending her embrace,
As not unconscious with what power the thrill
Of her most timid touch his sleep would chase,
And with his sleep, that beauty calm and still.
O may this work have found its last retreat
Here in a Mountain-bard's secure abode,
One to whom, yet a schoolboy, Cynthia showed
A face of love which he in love would greet,
Fixed, by her smile, upon some rocky seat;
Or lured along where greenwood paths he trod.

RYDAL MOUNT, 1846.

XVI.

Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high,
Travelling where she from time to time enshrouds
Her head, and nothing loth her majesty
Renounces, till among the scattered clouds
One with its kindling edge declares that soon

Will reappear before the uplifted eye
A form as bright, as beautiful a moon,

To glide in open prospect through clear sky
Pity that such a promise e'er should prove
False in the issue, that yon seeming space
Of sky should be in truth the steadfast face

Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move
By transit not unlike man's frequent doom)
The wanderer lost in more determined gloom.

XVII.

WHERE lies the truth? has man, in wisdom's creed, A pitiable doom; for respite brief

A care more anxious, or a heavier grief?

Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed
God's bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed
Must man, with labour born, awake to sorrow
When flowers rejoice, and larks with rival speed
Spring from their nests to bid the sun good morrow!
They mount for rapture, as their songs proclaim,
Warbled in hearing both of earth and sky;
But o'er the contrast wherefore heave a sigh!
Like those aspirants let us soar
our aim,
Through life's worst trials, whether shocks or snares,
A happier, brighter, purer Heaven than theirs.*

1846.

[* See also, as connected with the series of "EVENING VOLUNTARIES," the "Ode composed upon an evening of extraordinary splendour and beauty," p. 311.-H. R.]

Note 1, p. 398.

"Simon Lee."

"O Reader! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring," &c.

The same feeling, or something closely resembling it, seems to be indicated in each of the following quotations, especially in the exquisite phrase of Shakspeare:

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past.
SHAKSPEARE'S Sonnets, No. XXX.

'Farewell, selfe-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings foorth."SPENSER: Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney.

Is there not in this concurrence obviously casual · SHAKSPEARE SPENSER WORDSWORTH, proof of a trait of the temperament of poetic genius? This simple stanza appears too to have touched a chord in the heart of Coleridge, who in one of his letters thus refers to it: "To have formed the habit of looking at every thing, not for what it is relative to the purposes and associations of men in general, but for the truths which it is suited to represent to contemplate objects as words and pregnant symbols — the advantages of this are so many, and so important, so eminently calculated to excite and evolve the power of sound and connected reasoning, of distinct and clear conception, and of genial feeling, that there are few of Wordsworth's finest passages and who, of living poets, can lay claim to half the number? that I repeat so often as that homely quatrain,

"O Reader! had you in your mind

-

Another time all plain, all quite thread-bare;
Thou must have all within, and nought without;
Sit poorly without light, disrobed: no care
Of outward grace, to amuse the poor devout;
Powerless, unfollowed: scarce men can spare
The necessary rites to set thee out.

Either truth, goodness, virtue are not still
The self-same which they are, and always one,
But alter to the project of our will;

Or we our actions make them wait upon,
Putting them in the livery of our skill,
And cast them off again when we have done."
DANIEL:- Musophilus.'-II. R.]

Note 3, p. 424.

"Lines on a Portrait."

“They are in truth the Substance, we the Shadows." [This incident is thus narrated by the author or authors of that 'rare' book The Doctor,' with one of the rich comments, which distinguish the work:

"When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian's famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronimite said to him, I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three-score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one after another, — all who were my Seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one gencration has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!'

"I wish I could record the name of the Monk by whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.

"The shows of things are better than themselves," says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name, also, I could wish had been forthcoming; and the clas sical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles: — ̔Ομῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλὴν *Ειδωλ, ̓ ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἤ κούφην σκιών.

These are reflections which should make us think "Of that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayd

Upon the pillars of Eternity,

That is contraire to mutability;

For all that moveth doth in change delight:

But thenceforth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Subaoth hight,

O that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabbath's sight."
SPENSER.

"The Doctor," Vol. III. p. 235. — H. k

EPISTLE

TO SIR GEORGE HOWLAND BEAUMONT, BART.
FROM THE SOUTH-WEST COAST OF CUMBERLAND.-1811.

FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet lake,
From the vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
While, day by day, grim neighbour! huge Black Comb
Frowns, deepening visibly his native gloom,
Unless, perchance rejecting in despite
What on the plain we have of warmth and light,
In his own storms he hides himself from sight.
Rough is the time; and thoughts, that would be free
From heaviness, oft fly, dear friend, to thee;
Turn from a spot where neither sheltered road
Nor hedge-row screen invites my steps abroad;
Where one poor plane-tree, having as it might
Attained a stature twice a tall man's height,
Hopeless of further growth, and brown and sere
Through half the summer, stands with top cut sheer,
Like an unshifting weathercock which proves
How cold the quarter that the wind best loves,
Or like a centinel that, evermore
Darkening the window, ill defends the door
Of this unfinished house - a fortress bare,
Where strength has been the builder's only care,
Whose rugged walls may still for years demand
The final polish of the plasterer's hand.

Or, pilgrim-like, on forest moss reclined,
Gives plaintive ditties to the heedless wind,
Or listens to its play among the boughs
Above her head and so forgets her vows-
If such a visitant of earth there be
And she would deign this day to smile on me
And aid my verse, content with local bounds
Of natural beauty and life's daily rounds,
Without reserve to those whom we love well-
Thoughts, chances, sights, or doings, which we tell
Then, haply, Beaumont! words in current clear
Will flow, and on a welcome page appear
Duly before thy sight, unless they perish here.

What shall I treat of? News from Mona's Isle?
Such have we, but unvaried in its style;
No tales of runagates fresh landed, whence
And wherefore fugitive or on what pretence;
Of feasts, or scandal, eddying like the wind
Most restlessly alive when most confined.
Ask not of me whose tongue can best appease
The mighty tumults of the House of Keys;
The last year's cup whose ram or heifer gained,
What slopes are planted, or what mosses drained:
An eye of fancy only can I cast

On that proud pageant now at hand or past,
When full five hundred boats in trim array,
With nets and sails outspread and streamers gay,
And chanted hymns and stiller voice of prayer,
For the old Manx-harvest to the deep repair,

And oft a prisoner in the cheerless place,
I- of whose touch the fiddle would complain,
Whose breath would labour at the flute in vain,
In music all unversed, nor blessed with skill

A bridge to copy, or to paint a mill,

Tired of my books, a scanty company!
And tired of listening to the boisterous sea-
Pace between door and window muttering rhyme,
An old resource to cheat a froward time!
Though these dull hours (mine is it, or their shame!)
Would tempt me to renounce that humble aim.
- But if there be a Muse who, free to take
Her seat upon Olympus, doth forsake
Those heights (like Phœbus when his golden locks
He veiled, attendant on Thessalian flocks)
And, in disguise, a milkmaid with her pail
Trips down the pathways of some winding dale;
Or, like a Mermaid, warbles on the shores
To fishers mending nets beside their doors;

Like beds of moonlight shifting on the brine.

Mona from our abode is daily seen, But with a wilderness of waves between; And by conjecture only can we speak Of aught transacted there in bay or creek; No tidings reach us thence from town or field, Only faint news her mountain sunbeams yield, And some we gather from the misty air, And some the hovering clouds, our telegraph, declare But these poetic mysteries I withhold;

For Fancy hath her fits both hot and cold,

And should the colder fit with you be on
When you might read, my credit would be gone.

Let more substantial themes the pen engage,
And nearer interests culled from the opening stage
Of our migration. - Ere the welcome dawn
Had from the east her silver star withdrawn.