Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair

As is the smile upon thy face;

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And fragrance in thy footing treads;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh

and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh! let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give;

And, in the light of truth, thy bondman let me live!

[graphic]

WORDSWOrth.

TO LYCORIS.

Dated May, 1817.

A

N age hath been when earth was proud
Of lustre too intense

To be sustained; and mortals bowed
The front in self-defence.

Who, then, if Dian's crescent gleamed,
Or Cupid's sparkling arrow streamed,
While on the wing the urchin played,
Could fearlessly approach the shade?
Enough for one soft vernal day,
If I, a bard of ebbing time,
And nurtured in a fickle clime,
May haunt this hornèd bay;
Whose amorous water multiplies
The flitting halcyon's vivid dyes;
And smooths her liquid breast-to show
These swan-like specks of mountain snow,
White as the pair that slid along the plains
Of heaven when Venus held the reins !

In youth we love the darksome lawn
Brushed by the owlet's wing;

Then, twilight is preferred to dawn,
And autumn to the spring.

Sad fancies do we then affect,

In luxury of disrespect

To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness.
Lycoris (if such name befit

Thee, thee, my life's celestial sign!)
When nature marks the year's decline,
Be ours to welcome it;

Pleased with the harvest hope that runs

Before the path of milder suns,

Pleased while the sylvan world displays

Its ripeness to the feeding gaze;

Pleased when the sullen winds resound the knell

Of the resplendent miracle.

But something whispers to my heart

That, as we downward tend
Lycoris life requires an art
To which our souls must bend;
A skill-to balance and supply ;
And ere the flowing fount be dry,
As soon it must, a sense to sip,
Or drink with no fastidious lip.

Then welcome, above all, the guest

Whose smiles diffused o'er land and sea, Seem to recall the Deity

Of youth into the breast!

May pensive autumn ne'er present

A claim to her disparagement !
While blossoms and the budding spray
Inspire us in our own decay ;

Still as we nearer draw to life's dark goal,
Be hopeful spring the favourite of the soul.

[graphic]

Coleridge.

FRANCE.

Composed at Stowey, in Somerset, in February, 1797, and printed with "Fear in Solitude" of 1798.

E Clouds! that far above me float and pause,

YE

Whose pathless march no mortal may control !
Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!

Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing,
Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
Save when your own imperious branches swinging
Have made a solemn music of the wind!
Where, like a man beloved of God,
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,

My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,
Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,

By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound!
O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high!

And O ye Clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
Yea, every thing that is and will be free!

« ElőzőTovább »