And in His judgments God remembering love:
And we will learn to praise God evermore,
For these "glad tidings of great joy," revealed
By that sooth messenger, sent from above.
WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT, BY THE SEA-SIDE AFTER A
VOYAGE.
O, I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,
That, rushing on its way with careless sweep,
Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep
Like to a child. For now to my raised mind
On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy,
And her rude visions give severe delight.
O winged bark! how swift along the night
Pass'd thy proud keel; nor shall I let go by
Lightly of that drear hour the memory,
When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood,
Unbonneted, and gazed upon the flood,
Even till it seem'd a pleasant thing to die,-
To be resolved into th' elemental wave,
Or take my portion with the winds that rave.
1795.
As when a child on some long winter's night
Affrighted clinging to its grandame's knees
With eager wondering and perturb'd delight
Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees
Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell;
Or of those hags, who at the witching time
Of murky midnight ride the air sublime,
And mingle foul embrace with fiends of hell:
Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear
More gentle starts, to hear the beldame tell
Of pretty babes, that loved each other dear,
Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell :
Even such the shivering joys thy tones impart,
Even so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!
TO SARA AND HER SAMUEL.
WAS it so hard a thing?—I did but ask
A fleeting holiday. One little week,
Or haply two, had bounded my request.
What if the jaded steer, who all day long
Had borne the heat and labour of the plough,
When evening came, and her sweet cooling hour,
Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse,
Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams
Invited him to slake his burning thirst?
That man were crabbed, who should say him nay:
That man were churlish who should drive him thence.
A blessing light upon your heads, ye good,
Ye hospitable pair! I may not come,
To catch on Clifden's heights the summer gale;
I may not come, a pilgrim, to the banks
Of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave
Which Shakspeare drank, our British Helicon !
Or with mine eye intent on Redcliffe towers,
To muse in tears on that mysterious youth,
Cruelly slighted, who to London walls,
In evil hour, shaped his disastrous course.
Complaint begone: begone, unkind reproof:
Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain,
Forget again, and lo! from Avon's vales
Another "minstrel" cometh! Youth endeared,
God and good angels guide thee on thy way,
And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.
TO THE POET COWPER.
COWPER, I thank my God that thou art healed!
Thine was the sorest malady of all;
And I am sad to think that it should light
Upon the worthy head! But thou art healed,
And thou art yet, we trust, the destined man
Born to reanimate the lyre, whose chords
Have slumbered, and have idle lain so long;
To the immortal sounding of whose strings
Did Milton frame the stately paced verse;
Among whose wires with light finger playing,
Our elder bard, Spenser, a gentle name,
The lady Muses' dearest darling child,
Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard
In hall or bower, taking the delicate ear
Of Sidney and his peerless maiden Queen.
Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain,
Cowper, of England's Bards the wisest and the best.
In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse
Upon the days gone by; to act in thought
Past seasons o'er, and be again a child;
To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope
Down which the child would roll; to pluck gay flowers,
Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand
(Childhood offended soon, soon reconciled,)
Would throw away, and straight take up again,
Then fling them to the winds, and o'er the lawn
Bound with so playful and so light a foot,
That the pressed daisy scarce declined her head.
TRANSLATIONS. From the Latin of Vincent Bourne
On a Sepulchral Statue of an Infant Sleeping
To David Cook, of the Parish of St. Margaret's,
THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW (A
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