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.
A stream is heard, I see it not, but know
By its soft music whence the waters flow:
Wheels and the tread of hoofs are heard no more;
One boat there was, but it will touch the shore
With the next dipping of its slackened oar;
Faint sound, that, for the gayest of the gay,
Might give to serious thoughts a moment's sway,
As a last token of man's toilsome day!
ON A HIGH PART OF THE COAST OF CUMBERLAND (EASTER
SUNDAY, APRIL 7), THE AUTHOR'S
BIRTHDAY.
THE sun, that seemed so mildly to retire,
Flung back from distant climes a streaming fire.
Whose blaze is now subdued to tender gleams,
Prelude of night's approach with soothing dreams.
Look round-of all the clouds not one is moving;
'Tis the still hour of thinking, feeling, loving.
Silent and steadfast as the vaulted sky,
The boundless plain of waters seems to lie :
Comes that low sound from breezes rustling o'er
The grass-crowned headland that conceals the shore?
No; 'tis the earth-voice of the mighty sea,
Whispering how meek and gentle he can be!
Thou Power Supreme! who, arming to rebuke
Offenders, dost put off the gracious look,
And clothe thyself with terrors like the flood
Of ocean roused into his fiercest mood,
Whatever discipline thy Will ordain
For the brief course that must for me remain,
Teach me with quick-eared spirit to rejoice
In admonitions of thy softest voice!
Whate'er the path these mortal feet may trace,
Breathe through my soul the blessing of thy grace,
Glad, through a perfect love, a faith sincere,
Drawn from the wisdom that begins with fear;
Glad to expand; and, for a season, free
From finite cares, to rest absorbed in Thee!
NOT in the lucid intervals of life
That come but as a curse to party strife;
Not in some hour when Pleasure with a sigh
Of languor puts his rosy garland by;
Not in the breathing-times of that poor slave
Who daily piles up wealth in Mammon's cave-
Is Nature felt, or can be; nor do words,
Which practised talent readily affords,
Prove that her hand has touched responsive chords;
Nor has her gentle beauty power to move
With genuine rapture and with fervent love
The soul of Genius, if he dare to take
Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake;
Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent
Of all the truly great and all the innocent.
But who is innocent? By grace divine-
Not otherwise, O Nature!-we are thine,
Through good and evil thine, in just degree
Of rational and manly sympathy.
To all that earth from pensive heart is stealing,
And heaven is now to gladdened eyes revealing,
Add every
charm the universe can show
Through every change its aspects undergo—
Care may be respited, but not repealed;
No perfect cure grows on that bounded field.
Vain is the pleasure, a false calm the peace,
If He through whom alone our conflicts cease,
Our virtuous hopes without relapse advance,
Come not to speed the soul's deliverance;
To the distempered intellect refuse
His gracious help, or give what we abuse.
"Not to the earth confined,
WHERE will they stop, those breathing Powers,
The spirits of the new-born flowers?
They wander with the breeze, they wind
Where'er the streams a passage find;
Up from their native ground they rise
In mute aerial harmonies;
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