In this, how different, lost Star, from thine,
That no to-morrow shall our beams restore!

Between 1815 and 1819.

TO B. R. HAYDON.

HIGH is our calling, Friend!- Creative Art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,

While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!

1815.

NOVEMBER 1.

How clear, how keen, how marvellously bright

The effluence from yon distant mountain's head,
Which, strewn with snow smooth as the sky can shed,
Shines like another sun on mortal sight

Uprisen, as if to check approaching Night,

And all her twinkling stars. Who now would tread,
If so he might, yon mountain's glittering head
Terrestrial, but a surface, by the flight

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Of sad mortality's earth-sullying wing,

Unswept, unstained? Nor shall the aërial Powers
Dissolve that beauty, destined to endure,
White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure,
Through all vicissitudes, till genial Spring

Has filled the laughing vales with welcome flowers.

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1815.

THE RIVER DUDDON.

I.

SOLE listener, Duddon! to the breeze that played
With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound
Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound
Unfruitful solitudes, that seemed to upbraid
The sun in heaven!- but now, to form a shade
For Thee, green alders have together wound
Their foliage; ashes flung their arms around;
And birch-trees risen in silver colonnade.
And thou hast also tempted here to rise,

'Mid sheltering pines, this Cottage rude and grey;
Whose ruddy children, by the mother's eyes
Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day,
Thy pleased associates : — light as endless May
On infant bosoms lonely Nature lies.

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ΙΟ

II.

THE PLAIN OF DONNERDALE.

THE old inventive Poets, had they seen,
Or rather felt, the entrancement that detains
Thy waters, Duddon! 'mid these flowery plains –

The still repose, the liquid lapse serene,
Transferred to bowers imperishably green,
Had beautified Elysium! But these chains
Will soon be broken; a rough course remains,
Rough as the past; where Thou, of placid mien,
Innocuous as a firstling of the flock,

And countenanced like a soft cerulean sky,
Shalt change thy temper; and with many a shock
Given and received in mutual jeopardy,
Dance, like a Bacchanal, from rock to rock,

Tossing her frantic thyrsus wide and high!

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ΙΟ

III.

unheard, unseen;

RETURN, Content! for fondly I pursued,
Even when a child, the Streams -
Through tangled woods, impending rocks between;
Or, free as air, with flying inquest viewed
The sullen reservoirs whence their bold brood
Pure as the morning, fretful, boisterous, keen,
Green as the salt-sea billows, white and green
Poured down the hills, a choral multitude!
Nor have I tracked their course for scanty gains;
They taught me random cares and truant joys,
That shield from mischief and preserve from stains
Vague minds, while men are growing out of boys;
Maturer Fancy owes to their rough noise
Impetuous thoughts that brook not servile reins.

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ΙΟ

IV.

AFTER-THOUGHT.

I THOUGHT of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away. - Vain sympathies !
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;

Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish; - be it so !

Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,

We feel that we are greater than we know.

Between 1806 and 1820.

BETWEEN NAMUR AND LIEGE.

WHAT lovelier home could gentle Fancy choose?
Is this the stream, whose cities, heights, and plains,
War's favourite playground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the Morn with pearly dews?
The Morn, that now, along the silver MEUSE,
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,
Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews
The ripening corn beneath it.
As mine eyes
Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,
How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its grey rocks clustering in pensive shade-

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That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise

From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and still!

1821.

THE MONUMENT COMMONLY CALLED LONG MEG
AND HER DAUGHTERS, NEAR THE

RIVER EDEN.

A WEIGHT of awe, not easy to be borne,

Fell suddenly upon my Spirit — cast

From the dread bosom of the unknown past,

When first I saw that family forlorn.

Speak Thou, whose massy strength and stature scorn
The power of years - pre-eminent, and placed
Apart, to overlook the circle vast —

Speak, Giant-mother! tell it to the Morn

While she dispels the cumbrous shades of Night;
Let the Moon hear, emerging from a cloud;
At whose behest uprose on British ground
That Sisterhood, in hieroglyphic round
Forth-shadowing, some have deemed, the infinite
The inviolable God, that tames the proud!

1821.

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10

SECLUSION.

LANCE, shield, and sword relinquished, at his side
A bead-roll, in his hand a clasped book,

to hide

Or staff more harmless than a shepherd's crook,
The war-worn Chieftain quits the world
His thin autumnal locks where Monks abide
In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell

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