Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress, And all his love for gentle Lycid' drown'd; To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel,-an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently. ADDRESSED TO HAYDON. HIGH-MINDEDNESS, a jealousy for good, A loving-kindness for the great man's fame, In noisome alley, and in pathless wood: How glorious this affection for the cause ADDRESSED TO THE SAME. GREAT spirits now on earth are sojourning: The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake: Of mighty workings? Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb. ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. THE poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's-he takes the lead With his delights, for when tired out with fun, On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. December 30, 1816. TO KOSCIUSKO. GOOD Kosciusko! thy great name alone The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing, Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne. When some good spirit walks upon the earth, To where the great God lives for evermore. HAPPY is England! I could be content To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent; Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or worldling meant. Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters; Enough their simple loveliness for me, Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters. THE HUMAN SEASONS. FOUR Seasons fill the measure of the year; ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER. COME hither, all sweet maidens soberly, TO AILSA ROCK. HEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid! Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowl's screams! The last in air, the former in the deep; First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant size. |