By fortune crush'd or tamed by grief;
Appears, on Morven's lonely shore,
Dim-gleaming through imperfect lore
The Son of Fingal; such was blind
Mæonides of ampler mind;
Such Milton, to the fountain head
Of glory by Urania led!
From The Prelude. [1799-1805
BESIDE the pleasant Mill of Trompington
I laugh'd 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 call'd 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,
Soul awful-if the earth has ever lodged
An awful soul-I seemed to see him here
Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress
Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth—
A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks
Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
And conscious step of purity and pride.
SCORN not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frown'd,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlock'd his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoëns sooth'd an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains-alas, too few !
Inscription for a Seat in the Groves of
Cole-Orton.
[1808
BENEATH yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,
Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground
Stand yet, but, Stranger! hidden from thy view,
The ivied ruins of forlorn Grace-Dieu;
Erst a religious House, which day and night
With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite :
And when those rites had ceased, the Spot gave
birth
To honourable Men of various worth:
There, on the margin of a streamlet wild,
Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child;
There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks,
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks;
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes,
Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams
Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage,
With which his genius shook the buskin'd stage.
Communities are lost, and empires die,
And things of holy use unhallow'd lie;
They perish; but the Intellect can raise,
From airy words alone, a Pile that ne'er decays.
To the Poet, John Dyer. [1810-15
BARD of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made
That work a living landscape fair and bright;
Nor hallow'd less with musical delight
Than those soft scenes through which thy child-
hood stray'd,
Those southern tracts of Cambria, 'deep embay'd,
With green hills fenced, with ocean's murmur
Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet cull'd
For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,
A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
O'er naked Snowdon's wild aerial waste;
Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!
IN a deep vision's intellectual scene,
Such earnest longings and regrets as keen
Depress'd the melancholy Cowley, laid
Under a fancied yew-tree's luckless shade;
A doleful bower for penitential song,
Where Man and Muse complain'd of mutual wrong;
While Cam's ideal current glided by,
And antique towers nodded their foreheads high,
Citadels dear to studious privacy.
But Fortune, who had long been used to sport
With this tried Servant of a thankless Court,
Relenting met his wishes; and to you
The remnant of his days at least was true;
You, whom, though long deserted, he loved best;
You, Muses, books, fields, liberty, and rest!
Remembrance of Collins.
GLIDE gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream! for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
Vain thought!-Yet be as now thou art,
That in thy waters may be seen
How bright, how solemn, how serene!
The image of a poet's heart,
Such as did once the Poet bless,
Who murmuring here a later ditty,
Could find no refuge for distress
But in the milder grief of pity.
Now let us, as we float along,
For him suspend the dashing oar;
And pray that never child of song
May know that Poet's sorrows more.
How calm! how still! the only sound,
The dripping of the oar suspended!
-The evening darkness gathers round
By virtue's holiest powers attended.
From Resolution and Independence.
I THOUGHT of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perish'd in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side :
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and
madness.
At the Grave of Burns,
Seven years after his death. [1803
I SHIVER, Spirit fierce and bold,
At thought of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.
And have I then thy bones so near,
And thou forbidden to appear?
As if it were thyself that's here
I shrink with pain;
And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.
Off weight-nor press on weight !—away
Dark thoughts !—they came, but not to stay;
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