THE WISHING-GATE DESTROYED.

"Tis gone-with old belief and dream
That round it clung, and tempting scheme
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
Of 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 turn

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 heaven-ward 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.

Here closed the meditative strain;

But air breathed soft that day,

The hoary mountain-heights were cheered, The sunny vale looked gay,

And to the Primrose of the Rock

I

sang-Let myriads of bright flowers,
Like Thee, in field and grove

Revive unenvied ;-mightier far,
Than tremblings that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope,
Is God's redeeming love;

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;
And now, 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 gaiety and ease.

Star-guided contemplations move

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.

When it reveals, in evening majesty,
Features half lost amid their own pure light.
Poised like a weary cloud, in middle air
He hung, then floated with angelic ease

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;

Till he had reached a summit sharp and bare, Where oft the venturous heifer drinks the noon

ocean,

The melancholy gates of Death
Respond with sympathetic motion;
Though all that feeds on nether air,
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;
And saves the peopled fields of earth
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

That spreads no waste; a social builder; 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 curvéd 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 un-

known,

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 aèrial harmonies;

From humble violet-modest thyme-
Exhaled, the essential odours climb,
As if no space below the sky
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 throats-
Here 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 unsensualise the mind
Decay and languish; or, as creeds

And humours 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 vapours magnify and spread
The glory of the sun's bright head-
Still 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,

ARMY of Clouds! ye winged Host in troops
Ascending from behind the motionless brow
Of that tall rock, as from a hidden world,
O whither with such eagerness of speed?
What seek ye, or what shun ye? of the gale
Companions, fear ye to be left behind,
Or racing o'er your blue ethereal field
Contend ye with each other? of the sea
Children, thus post ye over vale and height
To sink upon your mother's lap-and rest?
Or were ye rightlier hailed, when first mine eyes
Beheld in your impetuous march the likeness
Of a wide army pressing on to meet
Or overtake some unknown enemy?-
But your smooth motions suit a peaceful aim;

hour;

Better provide thee with a Cuckoo-clock
For service hung behind thy chamber-door;
And in due time the soft spontanecus shock,
The double note, as if with living power,
Will to composure lead-or make thee blithe as
bird in bower.

Your squadrons to an endless flight of birds
Aerial, upon due migration bound
To milder climes; or rather do ye urge
In caravan your hasty pilgrimage
To pause at last on more aspiring heights
Than these, and utter your devotion there
With thunderous voice? Or are ye jubilant,