Nor has the roiling year twice rncuRurcd,
From sign to sign, its stendfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source; 1

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The hcaven-cyed ereature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
lias vanish'd from his lonely hearth.1

Like clouds that rake the mountain-sum-
mits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother follow'd brother
From auushine to the sunless land I

Vet I, whose lids from infant slnmber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,
" Who next will drop and disappear?"

Our hanghty life is erown'd with dark-
ness,
Like London with its own black wreath,

1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge died July to, 1834. a Charles Lamb died Dec. 27, MM.

On which with thee, O Crnbbcl forth

looking,
I gazed from Ilampstead's breezy heath.

As if but yesterday departed,
Thou too art gone befoi-e;" but why,
O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gather'd
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?

Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
Sweet as Hie Spring, as ocean deep,
For Her who, ere her summer faded,
lias sunk into a breathless sleep.*

No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slanghter'd Youth or love-lorn Maidl
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,
And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet
dead.' [Nov., 1S53.

3 The Ucv. George Crabbe died Feb. 3, 1832.

4 Alluding to Mrs. Felicia Hemans, who died May Hi, 1835.

f, These verses were written externpore, immediately niter reading a notice of the Etti i('k Shepherd's death, in the Newcastle paper, to the Editor of which I sent a copy for publication. The persons lamented in these verses were all either of my friends or acquaintances.— Author's A'oto!, 1843.

ELEGIAC STANZAS,

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OP PEELE CASTLE, IK A STORM,
PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT.

I Was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air 1
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I look'd, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never pass'd away.

How perfect was the calm! it seem'd no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

Ab! Tiien, if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The conseeration, and the Poet's dream;

I would hare planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world liow different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seem'd a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of Heaven; —
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of trnth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd.

So once it would have been, — 'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my SouL*

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and bo what I have been :
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old ;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,

If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,

This work of thine I blame not, but commend;

This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O, 'tis a passionate Work!—yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear !

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,

I love to sec the look with which it braves,

Cased in th' unfeeling armour of old time,

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

6 Throughont this piece, again, the feeling uppermost in the poet's mind l» iorrow at the death of his brother. Jn one of his eummer vacations while in college;, lie ha J spent four weeks in the neighbourhood of Peele Castle; and nil that time the waters had remained perfectly unruffled and smooth, never ceasing to image in theii i

from the fieree contrast, impresses him with a deeper sense of the terrible might Which liad slumbered so sweetly before his eyo.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone.
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer.
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here. —
I ot without hope we suffer and we mourn.1

WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES
LAMB.'

To a good Man of most dear memory
This Stone is saered. Here he lies apart
From the great city where he first drew breath,
Was rear'd and tanght; and humbly earn'd his bread,
To the strict labours of the merchant's desk
By duty chain'd. Not seldom did those tasks
Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress,
His spirit, but the recompense was high, —
Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire;
Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air;
And, when the precious hours of leisure came,
Knowledge and wisdom, gain'd from converse sweet
With hooks, or while he ranged the erowded streets

7 This Is justly regarded as one of the anthor's noblest and most characteristic pieces. Hardly any of them has been otlener quoted, or drawn forth more or stronger notes of admiration. Perhaps the higher function of Poetrv has never been better expressed than in the last half of the fourth stanza. The anthor's private correspondence ut the time shows that the shaping and informing spiiit of the piece was not a thing assumed for any purpose .of art. In a letier to a friend, dated March 10,1805, he wrote as follows: " For myself, I feel that there is something cut out of my life which cannot he restored. I" never thought of him but with hope and delight: we looked forward to the time, not distant, as \\v thought, when he would settle near us, when the task of his life would be over, an t he would have nothing to do but reap his reward. I never wrote a line without a thought of 11s giving him pleasure: my writings, printed and manuseript, were his delight, and one of the chief solaces of his long voyages. But I will not bacu.-t down; were it only for his sake, I will not be dejected : and 1 hope, when 1 shall he able to think of him with a calmer mind, that the remembrance of him dead will even animate mo D^oro than the joy which I had in him li\ ing."

8 Light will be thrown upon the tragic circumstance alluded to in this viocm, when, after the death of Charles Lamb's Sister, his biographer, Mr. Sergeant Talfniml, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which could not. at the lime his Memnir was written, be givc'n to the public. Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were 1 to give way lo my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genins and intellectual power, bul upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under the most trying cireumstances. She was loved and honoured bv all her brother's friends; nnd others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance. The death of Charles Lamb himself was doubtless battened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom he had been attached fvun the time of their being school-fellows at Christ's Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin echolar, and probably would have gone to college upon one of the school fouudationi

'i, for the impediment in Uifl speech. — Authors Xuten, 1818.

With a keen eye and overflowing heart:

So genins trinmph'd over seeming wrong,

And pour'd out truth in works by thoughtful love

Inspired, — works potent over smiles and tears.

And, as round mountain-tops the lightning plays,

Thus innocently sported, breaking forth

As from a cloud of some grave sympathy,

Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all

The vivid flashes of his spoken words.

From the most gentle ereature nursed in fields

Had been derived the name he bore, — a name,

Wherever Christian altars have been raised,

Hallow'd to meekness and to innocence;

And if in him meekness at times gave way,

Provoked out of herself by troubles strange,

Many and strange, that hung about his life;

Still, at the centre of his being, lodged

A soul by resignation sanctified:

And if too often, self-reproach'd, he felt

That innocence belongs not to our kind,

A power that never ceased to abide in him,

Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins

That she can cover, left not his exposed

To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven.

O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived!

From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart

Those simple lines flow'd with an earnest wish,

Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve

Fitly to guard the precious dust of him

Whose virtues call'd them forth. That aim is miss'd;

For much that truth most urgently required

Had from a faltering pen been ask'd in vain :

Yet, haply, on the printed page received,

Th' imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed

As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air

Of memory, or see the light of love.

Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, But more in show than truth; and from the fields, And from the mountains, to thy rural grave Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er Its green untrodden turf and blowing flowers; And taking up a voice shall speak (though still Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity Which words less fres presumed not even to touch) Of that fraternal love whose Heaven-lit lamp

From infancy, through manhood, to the last
Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour,
Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined
Within thy bosom.

"Wonderful" hath been
The love establish'd between man and man,
"Passing the love of women;" and between
Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock join'd
Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love
Without whose blissful influence Paradise
Had been no Paradise; and Earth were now
A waste where ereatures bearing human form,
Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear,
Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;
And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve,
That he hath been an Elm withont his Vine,
And her bright dower of clustering charities,
That round his trunk and branches might have clung,
Enriching and adorning. Unto thee,
Not so enrich'd, not so adorn'd, to thee
Was given (say rather thou of later birth
Wert given to her) a Sister, — 'tis a word
Timidly ntter'd, for she lives, the meek,
The self-restraining, and the ever-kind,—
In whom thy reason and intelligent heart
Found — for all interests, hopes, and tender cares,
All softening, humanising, hallowing powers,
Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought —
More than sufficient recompense !* — Her love
(What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here ?)
Was as the love of mothers; and when years,
Lifting the boy to man's estate, had call'd
The long-protected to assume the part
Of a protector, the first filial tie
Was nndissolved ; and, in or ont of sight,
Remain'd impcrishably interwoven
With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world,
Did they together testify of time
And season's difference, — a double tree
With two collateral stems sprung from one root; —
Such were they; such thro' life they might have been
In union, in partition only such ;
Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High;
Yet, through all visitations and all trials,

9 Wordsworth hero delicately hints tliat Lamb refrained from matrimonial ties on account of his sister, whose sad inflrmHy seemed to him to invest her cluiun —:' 'i peculiar eucralness. And each, l believe, was the fact.