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Released from fear and doubt; And the bright landscape too must lie, By this blank wall, from every eye,

Relentlessly shut out.

Bear witness ye who seldom passed
That opening-but a look ye cast
Upon the lake below,
What spirit-stirring power it gained
From faith which here was entertained,
Though reason might say no.

Blest is that ground, where, o'er the springs
Of history, Glory claps her wings,

Fame sheds the exulting tear; Yet earth is wide, and many a nook Unheard of is, like this, a book

For modest meanings dear.

It was in sooth a happy thought
That grafted, on so fair a spot,

So confident a token

Of coming good :-the charm is fled;
Indulgent centuries spun a thread,

Which one harsh day has broken.
Alas! for him who gave the word:
Could he no sympathy afford,

Derived from earth or heaven, To hearts so oft by hope betrayed; Their very wishes wanted aid

Which here was freely given?
Where, for the love-lorn maiden's wound,
Will now so readily be found

A balm of expectation?
Anxious for far-off children, where
Shall mothers breathe a like sweet air
Ot home-felt consolation?

And not unfelt will prove the loss
'Mid trivial care and petty cross

And each day's shallow grief, Though the most easily beguiled Were oft among the first that smiled

At their own fond belief.

If still the reckless change we mourn,
A reconciling thought may tnrn

To harm that might lurk here,
Ere judgment prompted from within
Fit aims, with courage to begin,

And strength to persevere.

Not Fortune's slave is Man: our state
Enjoins, while firm resolves await

On wishes just and wise,
That strenuous action follow both,
And life be one perpetual growth
Of heavenward enterprise.

So taught, so trained, we boldly face
All accidents of time and place :

Whatever props may fail,
Trust in that sovereign law can spread
New glory o'er the mountain's head,
Fresh beauty through the vale.
That truth informing mind and heart,
The simplest cottager may part,

Ungrieved, with charm and spell; And yet, lost Wishing-gate, to thee The voice of grateful memory

Shall bid a kind farewell!

XLIII.

THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK.
A Rock there is whose homely front
The passing traveller slights;

Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,
Like stars, at various heights:
And one coy Primrose to that rock
The vernal breeze invites.

What hideous warfare hath been waged,
What kingdoms overthrown,
Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft
And marked it for my own;
A lasting link in Nature's chain.
From highest heaven let down!

The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
Their fellowship renew;

The stems are faithful to the root,

That worketh out of view;

And to the rock the root adheres
In every fibre true.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall;
The earth is constant to her sphere;
And God upholds them all:

So blooms this lonely plant, nor dreads
Her annual funeral.

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That love which changed-for wan disease,
For sorrow that had bent
O'er hopeless dust, for withered age-
Their moral element,
And turned the thistles of a curse
To types beneficent.

Sin-blighted though we are, we too,
The reasoning Sons of Men,
From one oblivious winter called
Shall rise, and breathe again;
And in eternal summer lose

Our threescore years and ten.
To humbleness of heart descends
This prescience from on high,
The faith that elevates the just,
Before and when they die;
And makes each soul a separate heaven,
A court for Deity.

1831.

XLIV.

PRESENTIMENTS.

PRESENTIMENTS! they judge not right Who deem that ye from open light

Retire in fear of shame;

All heaven-born Instincts shun the touch
Of vulgar sense,-and, being such,
Such privilege ye claim.

The tear whose source I could not guess,
The deep sigh that seemed fatherless,
Were mine in early days;

now,

And unforced by time to part
With fancy, I obey my heart,

And venture on your praise.

What though some busy foes to good,
Too potent over nerve and blood,

Lurk near you-and combine
To taint the health which ye infuse;
This hides not from the moral Muse
Your origin divine.

How oft from you, derided Powers!
Comes Faith that inauspicious hours
Builds castles, not of air:
Bodings unsanctioned by the will
Flow from your visionary skill,

And teach us to beware.

The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift, That no philosophy can lift,

Shall vanish, if ye please,

Like morning mist: and, where it lay
The spirits at your bidding play
In gayety and ease.

Star-guided contemplations move Through space, though calm, not raised above

Prognostics that ye rule;

The naked Indian of the wild,
And haply, too, the cradled Child,
Are pupils of your school.

But who can fathom your intents,
Number their signs or instruments?
A rainbow, a sunbeam,

A subtle smell that Spring unbinds,
Dead pause abrupt of midnight winds,
An echo, or a dream.

The laughter of the Christmas hearth
With sighs of self-exhausted mirth
Ye feelingly reprove;

And daily, in the conscious breast,
Your visitations are a test

And exercise of love.

When some great change gives boundless

scope

To an exulting Nation's hope,

Oft, startled and made wise

By your low-breathed interpretings,
The simply-meek foretaste the springs
Of bitter contraries.

Ye daunt the proud array of war,
Pervade the lonely ocean far

As sail hath been unfurled;
For dancers in the festive hall
What ghastly partners hath your call

Fetched from the shadowy world! 'Tis said that warnings ye dispense, Emboldened by a keener sense;

That men have lived for whom, With dread precision, ye made clear The hour that in a distant year

Should knell them to the tomb.

Unwelcome insight! Yet there are
Blest times when mystery is laid bare,
Truth shows a glorious face,
While on that isthmus which commands
The councils of both worlds, she stands,
Sage Spirits! by your grace.

God, who instructs the brutes to scent
All changes of the element,

Whose wisdom fixed the scale

Of natures, for our wants provides
By higher, sometimes humbler, guides,
When lights of reason fail
1830.

XLV.

Blended in absolute serenity,

VERNAL ODE.

And free from semblance of decline;Fresh as if Evening brought their natal hour,

Rerum Natura tota est nusquam magis quam Her darkness splendor gave, her silence

in minimis.PLIN. NAT. HIST.

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power,

enchanter's

power,

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The melancholy gates of Death
Though all that feeds on nether air,
Respond with sympathetic motion;
Howe'er magnificent or fair,
Grows but to perish, and entrust
Its ruins to their kindred dust:
Yet, by the Almighty's ever-during care,
Her procreant vigils Nature keeps
Amid the unfathomable deeps;

Where nothing was: and firm as some old And saves the peopled fields of earth

Tower

Of Britain's realm, whose leafy crest Waves high, embellished by a gleaming shower.

II.

Beneath the shadow of his purple wings Rested a golden harp;-he touched the strings;

And, after prelude of unearthly sound Poured through the echoing hills around, He sang

"No wintry desolations, Scorching blight or noxious dew, Affect my native habitations; Buried in glory, far beyond the scope Of man's inquiring gaze, but to his hope Imaged, though faintly, in the hue Profound of night's ethereal blue; And in the aspect of each radiant orb;Some fixed, some wandering with no timid curb;

But wandering star and fixed, to mortal

eye,

From dread of emptiness or dearth.

Thus, in their stations, lifting tow'rd the sky

The foliaged head in cloud-like majesty,
The shadow-casting race of trees survive :
Thus, in the train of Spring arrive
Sweet flowers-what living eye hath
viewed

Their myriads?-endlessly renewed,
Wherever strikes the sun's glad ray;
Where'er the subtle waters stray;
Wherever sportive breezes bend

Their course, or genial showers descend!
Mortals, rejoice! the very Angels quit
Their mansions unsusceptible of change,
Amid your pleasant bowers to sit,
And through your sweet vicissitudes to
range!"

IV.

O, nursed at happy distance from the cares Of a too-anxious world, mild pastoral Muse! That, to the sparkling crown Urania wears, And to her sister Clio's laurel wreath,

Prefer'st a garland culled from purple heath,

Or blooming thicket moist with morning dews;

Was such bright Spectacle vouchsafed to me?

And was it granted to the simple ear
Of thy contented Votary

Such melody to hear!

Him rather suits it, side by side with thee,
Wrapped in a fit of pleasing indolence,
While thy tired lute hangs on the hawthorn-
tree,

To lie and listen-till o'er-drowsèd sense
Sinks, hardly conscious of the influence--
To the soft murmur of the vagrant Bee.
--A slender sound! yet hoary Time
Doth to the Soul exalt it with the chime
Of all his years :--a company
Of ages coming, ages gone;
(Nations from before them sweeping,
Regions in destruction steeping,)
But every awful note in unison
With that faint utterance, which tells
Of treasure sucked from buds and bells,
For the pure keeping of those waxen cells;
Where She--a statist prudent to confer
Upon the common weal; a warrior bold,
Radiant all over with unburnished gold,
And armed with living spear for mortal
fight;

A cunning forager

The seeds of malice were not sown; All creatures met in peace, from fierceness free,

And no pride blended with their dignity.
-Tears had not broken from their source;
Nor Anguish strayed from her Tartarean
den;

The golden years maintained a course
Not undiversified though smooth and even;
We were not mocked with glimpse and
shadow, then,

Bright Seraphs mixed familiarly with men; And earth and stars composed a universal heaven!

1817.

XLVI.

DEVOTIONAL INCITEMENTS.

"Not to the earth confined,

Ascend to heaven."

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 aërial harmonies;

From humble violet--modest thyme-
Exhaled, the essential odors climb,

That spreads no waste; a social builder; As if no space below the sky

one

In whom all busy offices unite

With all fine functions that afford delightSafe through the winter storm in quiet dwells!

V.

And is She brought within the power
Of vision?--o'er this tempting flower
Hovering until the petals stay
Her flight, and take its voice away!--
Observe each wing a tiny van!
The structure of her laden thigh,
How fragile! yet of ancestry
Mysteriously remote and high;
High as the imperial front of man;
The roseate bloom on woman's cheek;
The soaring eagle's curvèd beak;
The white plumes of the floating swan;
Old as the tiger's paw, the lion's mane
Ere shaken by that mood of stern disdain
At which the desert trembles.-Humming
Bee!

Thy sting was needless then, perchance unknown,

Their subtle flight could satisfy: Heaven will not tax our thoughts with pride

If like ambition be their guide.

Roused by this kindliest of May-showers, The spirit-quickener of the flowers, That with moist virtue softly cleaves The buds, and freshens the young leaves, The birds pour forth their souls in notes Of rapture from a thousand throatsHere checked by too impetuous haste, While there the music runs to waste, With bounty more and more enlarged, Till the whole air is overcharged; Give ear, O Man! to their appeal And thirst for no inferior zeal, Thou, who canst think, as well as feel.

Mount from the earth; aspire! aspire! So pleads the town's cathedral quire, In strains that from their solemn height Sink, to attain a loftier flight; While incense from the altar breathes Rich fragrance in embodied wreaths;

Or, flung from swinging censer, shrouds
The taper-lights, and curls in clouds
Around angelic Forms, the still
Creation of the painter's skill,
That on the service wait concealed
One moment, and the next revealed
--Cast off your bonds, awake, arise,
And for no transient ecstasies!
What else can mean the visual plea
Of still or moving imagery--
The iterated summons loud,
Not wasted on the attendant crowd,
Nor wholly lost upon the throng
Hurrying the busy streets along?
Alas! the sanctities combined
By art to unsensualize the mind
Decay and languish; or, as creeds

And humors change, are spurned like weeds:

The priests are from their altars thrust; Temples are levelled with the dust; And solemn rites and awful forms Founder amid fanatic storms, Yet evermore, through years renewed In undisturbed vicissitude Of seasons balancing their flight On the swift wings of day and night, Kind Nature keeps a heavenly door Wide open for the scattered Poor. Where flower-breathed incense to the skies Is wafted in mute harmonies; And ground fresh-cloven by the plough Is fragrant with a humbler vow; Where birds and brooks from leafy dells Chime forth unwearied canticles, And vapors magnify and spread The glory of the sun's bright headStill constant in her worship, still Conforming to the eternal Will, Whether men sow or reap the fields, Divine monition Nature yields, That not by bread alone we live, Or what a hand of flesh can give ; That every day should leave some part Free for a sabbath of the heart: So shall the seventh be truly blest, From morn to eve, with hallowed rest. 1832.

XLVII.

THE CUCKOO-CLOCK. WOULDST thou be taught, when sleep has taken flight,

By a sure voice that can most sweetly tell, How far-off yet a glimpse of morning light, And if to lure the truant back be well,

Forbear to covet a Repeater's stroke, That, answering to thy touch, will sound the hour;

Better provide thee with a Cuckoo-clock For service hung behind thy chamber-door; And in due time the soft spontaneous shock,

The double note, as if with living power, Will to composure lead-or make thee blithe as bird in bower.

List, Cuckoo-Cuckoo!-oft tho' tempests howl,

Or nipping frost remind thee trees are bare, How cattle pine, and droop the shivering fowl,

Thy spirits will seem to feed on balmy air: I speak with knowledge,-by that Voice beguiled,

Thou wilt salute old memories as they throng

Into thy heart; and fancies, running wild Through fresh green fields, and budding groves among,

Will make thee happy, happy as a child: Of sunshine wilt thou think, and flowers, and song,

And breathe as in a world where nothing can go wrong.

And know-that, even for him who shuns the day

And nightly tosses on a bed of pain; Whose joys, from all but memory swept

away,

Must come unhoped for, if they come again : Know that, for him whose waking thoughts, severe

As his distress is sharp, would scorn my theme,

The mimic notes, striking upon his ear
In sleep, and intermingling with his dream,
Could from sad regions send him to a dear
Delightful land of verdure, shower and
gleam,

To mock the wandering Voice beside some haunted stream.

O bounty without measure! while the grace Of Heaven doth in such wise, from humblest springs,

Pour pleasure forth, and solaces that trace
A mazy course along familiar things,
Well may our hearts have faith that bless-
ings come,

Streaming from founts above the starry sky, With angels when their own untroubled home

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