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On thee I rest my only hope at last,

And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear, I may look back on every sorrow past, And meet life's peaceful evening with a smileAs some lone bird, at day's departing hour, Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while:Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endure, Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!

SONNET.

LANGUID, and sad, and slow, from day to day
I journey on, yet pensive turn to view
(Where the rich landscape gleams with softer hue)
The streams, and vales, and hills, that steal away.
So fares it with the children of the earth:

For when life's goodly prospect opens round,
Their spirits beat to tread that fairy ground,
Where every vale sounds to the pipe of mirth.
But them vain hope and easy youth beguiles,

And soon a longing look, like me, they cast Back on the pleasing prospect of the past: Yet fancy points where still far onward smiles Some sunny spot, and her fair colouring blends, Till cheerless on their path the night descends.

SONNET.

ON A DISTANT VIEW OF ENGLAND.

AH! from mine eyes the tears unbidden start,
As thee, my country, and the long-lost sight
Of thy own cliffs, that lift their summits white
Above the wave, once more my beating heart
With eager hope and filial transport hails!

Scenes of my youth, reviving gales ye bring,
As when erewhile the tuneful morn of spring
Joyous awoke amidst your blooming vales,
And fill'd with fragrance every painted plain:

Fled are those hours, and all the joys they gave! Yet still I gaze, and count each rising wave That bears me nearer to your haunts again; If haply, 'mid those woods and vales so fair, Stranger to peace, I yet may meet her there.

Of solace, that may bear me on serene,
Till eve's last hush shall close the silent scene.

PART II.

SONNET.

As one who, long by wasting sickness worn, Weary has watch'd the lingering night, and

heard

Heartless the carol of the matin bird Salute his lonely porch, now first at morn Goes forth, leaving his melancholy bed;

He the green slope and level meadow views, Delightful bathed with slow-ascending dews; Or marks the clouds, that o'er the mountain's head In varying forms fantastic wander white;

Or turns his ear to every random song, Heard the green river's winding marge along, The whilst each sense is steep'd in still delight. With such delight, o'er all my heart I feel, Sweet hope thy fragrance pure and healing incense steal!

SONNET.

OCTOBER, 1792.

Go then, and join the roaring city's throng!
Me thou dost leave to solitude and tears,
To busy fantasies, and boding fears,
Lest ill betide thee: but 'twill not be long,
And the hard season shall be past: till then
Live happy; sometimes the forsaken shade
Remembering, and these trees now left to fade;
Nor 'mid the busy scenes and "hum of men,"
Wilt thou my cares forget: in heaviness

To me the hours shall roll, weary and slow, Till, mournful autumn past, and all the snow Of winter pale! the glad hour I shall bless, That shall restore thee from the crowd again, To the green hamlet in the peaceful plain.

SONNET.

TO THE RIVER CHERWELL, Oxford.

CHERWELL! how pleased along thy willow'd hedge
Erewhile I stray'd, or when the morn began
To tinge the distant turret's gleamy fan,
Or evening glimmer'd o'er the sighing sedge!
And now reposing on thy banks once more,
I bid the pipe farewell, and that sad lay
Whose music on my melancholy way
I woo'd: amid thy waving willows hoar
Seeking a while to rest-till the bright sun

Of joy return, as when heaven's beauteous bow Beams on the night-storm's passing wings below: Whate'er betide, yet something have I won

SONNET.

NOVEMBER, 1792.

THERE is strange music in the stirring wind, When lowers the autumnal eve, and all alone To the dark wood's cold covert thou art gone, Whose ancient trees on the rough slope reclined Rock, and at times scatter their tresses sear.

If in such shades, beneath their murmuring,
Thou late hast pass'd the happier hours of spring,
With sadness thou wilt mark the fading year;
Chiefly if one, with whom such sweets at morn
Or eve thou'st shared, to distant scenes shall
stray.

O, spring, return! return, auspicious May!
But sad will be thy coming, and forlorn,
If she return not with thy cheering ray,
Who from these shades is gone, gone far away.

SONNET.

APRIL, 1793.

WHOSE was that gentle voice, that whispering
sweet,

Promised methought long days of bliss sincere?
Soothing it stole on my deluded ear,

Most like soft music, that might sometimes cheat
Thoughts dark and drooping! 'Twas the voice of
hope.

Of love, and social scenes, it seem'd to speak,
Of truth, of friendship, of affection meek;
That, O! poor friend, might to life's downward
slope

Lead us in peace, and bless our latest hours.

Ah me! the prospect sadden'd as she sung;
Loud on my startled ear the death-bell rung;
Chill darkness wrapt the pleasurable bowers,
Whilst horror, pointing to yon breathless clay,
"No peace be thine," exclaim'd; "away, away!"

SONNET.

MAY, 1793.

As o'er these hills I take my silent rounds,
Still on that vision which is flown I dwell!
On images I loved (alas, how well!)
Now past, and but remember'd like sweet sounds
Of yesterday! yet in my breast I keep

Such recollections, painful though they seem,
And hours of joy retrace, till from my dream
I wake, and find them not: then I could weep
To think that time so soon each sweet devours;
To think so soon life's first endearments fail,
And we are still misled by hope's smooth tale!
Who, like a flatterer, when the happiest hours
Are past, and most we wish her cheering lay,
Will fly as faithless and as fleet as they!

SONNET.

NETLEY ABBEY.

FALL'N pile! I ask not what has been thy fate; But when the weak winds, wafted from the main,

SONNET.

O HARMONY! thou tenderest nurse of pain,
If that thy note's sweet magic e'er can heal
Griefs which the patient spirit oft may feel,
O! let me listen to thy songs again,

Till memory her fairest tints shall bring,
Hope wake with brighter eye, and listening seem
With smiles to think on some delightful dream,

That waved o'er the charm'd sense its gladsome

wing:

For when thou leadest all thy soothing strains
More smooth along, the silent passions meet
In one suspended transport, sad and sweet,

And naught but sorrow's softest touch remains,
That, when the transitory charm is o'er,
Just wakes a tear, and then is felt no more.

SONNET.

MAY, 1793.

How shall I meet thee, summer, wont to fill
My heart with gladness, when thy pleasant tide
First came, and on each coomb's romantic side
Was heard the distant cuckoo's hollow bill?
Fresh flowers shall fringe the wild brink of the
stream,

As with the songs of joyance and of hope
The hedge-rows shall ring loud, and on the slope
The poplars sparkle in the transient beam;
The shrubs and laurels which I loved to tend,

Thinking their May-tide fragrance might delight,
With many a peaceful charm, thee, my best friend,
Shall put forth their green shoot, and cheer the
sight!

But I shall mark their hues with sickening eyes,
And weep for her who in the cold grave lies!

SONNET.

How blest with thee the path could I have trod
Of quiet life, above cold want's hard fate,
(And little wishing more,) nor of the great
Envious, or their proud name! but it pleased God
To take thee to his mercy: thou didst go

In youth and beauty, go to thy death-bed;
E'en whilst on dreams of bliss we fondly fed,
Of years to come of comfort!-Be it so.

Through each rent arch, like spirits that com- Ere this I have felt sorrow; and e'en now

plain,

Come hollow to my ear, I meditate

On this world's passing pageant, and the lot
Of those who once full proudly in their prime
And beauteous might have stood, till bow'd by
time

Or injury, their early boast forgot,

They may have fall'n like thee: Pale and forlorn,
Their brow, besprent with thin hairs, white as
snow,

They lift, majestic yet; as they would scorn
This short-lived scene of vanity and wo;
Whilst on their sad looks smilingly they bear
The trace of creeping age, and the dim hue of
care!

(Though sometimes the unbidden thought must
start,

And half unman the miserable heart)
The cold dew I shall wipe from my sad brow,
And say, since hopes of bliss on earth are vain,
"Best friend, farewell, till we do meet again ?"

SONNET.

ON REVISITING OXFORD.

I NEVER hear the sound of thy glad bells,
Oxford! and chime harmonious, but I say
(Sighing to think how time has worn away,)
"Some spirit speaks in the sweet tone that swells

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Didst soothe me, bidding my poor heart rejoice, Though smitten sore: O, I did little think That thou, my friend, wouldst the first victim fall To the stern king of terrors! thou didst fly, By pity prompted, at the poor man's cry; And soon thyself wert stretch'd beneath the pall, Livid infection's prey. The deep distress

Of her, who best thy inmost bosom knew, To whom thy faith was vow'd, thy soul was true, What powers of faltering language shall express As friendship bids, I feebly breathe my own, And sorrowing say, "Pure spirit, thou art gone!"

SONNET.

ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. WILLIAM BENWELL.

THOU camest with kind looks, when on the brink Almost of death I strove, and with mild voice

The following elegant inscription to the memory of this amiable and excellent young man is prefixed to the chancel of Caversham church, near Reading, and does merely justice to the many valuable qualifications of him whose virtues and graces it records :

Near this Chancel are deposited The Remains of the REV. WILLIAM BENWELL, Late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, Who died of a contagious fever, the consequence of his charitable endeavours to relieve and comfort the inhabitants of the village in which he resided. From early youth

He was remarkable for correctness of taste,
and variety of knowledge;
Simple, modest, and retired;

In manners and conversation he possessed a natural grace; a winning courtesy, truly expressive of the heavenly serenity of his mind, and of the meekness, lowliness and benevolence of his heart.

To his Relations, and to his Companions whom he loved, he was most tenderly and consistently affectionate: To the poor a zealous friend, a wise and patient instructer; By his mildness cheering the sorrowful;

And, by the pure and amiable sanctity which beamed in his countenance, repressing the licentious. Habitually pious,

He appeared in every instance of life
to act, to speak, and to think,

as in the sight of God.

He died Sept. 6th, 96, in his 32d year: His soul pleased the LORD, therefore hasted He to take

him away. This Tablet was erected to his Memory, with heartfelt grief, and the tenderest affection,

By PENELOPE, eldest daughter of JOHN LOVEDAY, Esq.; and PENELOPE his wife,

Who, after many years of the most ardent friendship, became his wife and his widow in the course of eleven weeks!"

SONNET.

WRITTEN AT MALVERN, JULY 11, 1793.

I SHALL behold far off thy towering crest,
Proud mountain! from thy heights as slow I stray
Down through the distant vale my homeward way,
I shall behold, upon thy rugged breast,
The parting sun sit smiling: me the while
Escaped the crowd, thoughts full of heaviness
May visit, as life's bitter losses press
Hard on my bosom: but I shall "beguile
The thing I am," and think, that e'en as thou
Dost lift in the pale beam thy forehead high,
Proud mountain! (whilst the scatter'd vapours fly
Unheeded round thy breast,) so, with calm brow,
The shades of sorrow I may meet, and wear
The smile unchanged of peace, though prest by care!

SONNET.

ON REVIEWING THE FOREGOING. SEPT. 21, 1797. TURN these leaves with thronging thoughts, and say,

"Alas! how many friends of youth are dead, How many visions of fair hope have fled, Since first, my muse, we met:"-So speeds away Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing, Stretch'd in the noontide bower, as if the day Declined not, and we yet might trill our lay

Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing That fans us, while aloft the gay clouds shine! O, ere the coming of the long cold night, RELIGION, may we bless thy purer light, That still shall warm us, when the tints decline O'er earth's dim hemisphere, and sad we gaze On the vain visions of our passing days!

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

A perusal of Bowles's Sonnets appears to have first inspired him with a taste for poetry, of which his earliest specimen was given to the public in a small volume, published previously to the foregoing incident, in which publication a monody on the death of the unfortunate Chatterton was universally admired. In 1795, he published some antiministerial pamphlets; and in the following year, made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a periodical paper, called The Watchman, at the persua sion, he says, of sundry philanthropists and antipolemists. His next publication was a poem on the prospect of peace; he shortly afterwards accompanied Sir Alexander Ball, governor of Malta, as his secretary; and, on his return from this employment, became entitled to a pension. This so far improving his circumstances as to leave him at full liberty to pursue his literary designs, he engaged in the publication of a variety of works, and delivered two public courses of lectures, one on the plays of Shakspeare, and another on poetry and the belles lettres, which gained him a reputation for considerable oratorical powers. In 1813, he pub

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born at Bris- | maps with which he was reported to have supplied tol, about 1770, where he received the earliest por- the French government, in aid of their plans of intion of his education. He was afterwards sent to vasion. Christ's Hospital, London, where, he says, in his Biographia Literaria, "I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though, at the same time, a very severe master, the Rev. James Bowyer, who early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid, &c." From Christ's Hospital he was sent to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he obtained the Sir William Brown's gold medal, for the best Greek ode, in 1792. About the same time, he became acquainted with Southey, then a student of Baliol College, Oxford, and, like himself, imbued with ardent predilections for poesy and liberty. With him and some other young men, he entered into a scheme, which want of means alone prevented them from putting into execution, for settling on the Susquehannah river, in North America, under a pantisocratic form of society. About 1794, he retired to Alforton, in Somersetshire, where he was joined by his friend Wordsworth, with whom he passed his time in literary pursuits, and in wandering about the Quantock hills, with such an air of mystery, that they became objects of suspicion to the neigh-lished Remorse, a tragedy; followed, in 1817, by bourhood. A spy was set upon their conduct, and Sibylline Leaves; A Collection of Poems; his an examination actually appears to have taken Biographia Literaria, or biographical sketches of his place, by the village authorities, of a poor rustic life and opinions; and other works, poetical and who was supposed to have discovered their dan-political. In 1818, he commenced The Friend, a gerous designs. Our author has given a ludicrous account of this in the work before quoted from, and the conclusion is worth extracting, as developing somewhat of his habits and character. "Has not this Mr. Coleridge been wandering on the hills towards the channel, and along the shore, with books and papers in his hand, taking charts and maps of the country ?"-" Why, as to that, your honour," was the rustic's reply; "I am sure I would not wish to say ill of anybody; but it is certain that I have heard-" "Speak out, man!rary friends, and passed his time in reading, and don't be afraid: you are doing your duty to your king and government. What have you heard?" "Why, folks do say, your honour, as how that he is a poet; and that he is going to put Quantock, and all about here, in print; and as they (Wordsworth and Coleridge) be so much together, I suppose that the strange gentleman (Wordsworth) has some consarn in the business." The business which engaged him was the composition of a poem, to be called The Brook, which, had he finished, it was his intention to have dedicated to the committee of public safety, as containing the charts and

series of essays, that extended to three volumes; and in the tenth and eleventh numbers of which, he says, he has left a record of his principles. In 1825, he published Aids to Reflection, in the formation of a manly character, &c.; and, in 1830, his Treatise on the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the idea of each: with aids towards a right judgment of the late Catholic bill. Mr. Coleridge towards the close of life resided at Highgate, where he occasionally received his lite

the amusements of his garden. He was said to excel all his contemporaries in powers of argument; and, when once fairly launched on any favourite topic, to be possessed of the faculty of riveting for hours, the attention of his audience by the charm of his eloquence alone. He died July 25th, 1834.

In addition to the works already mentioned, he wrote, during the peace of Amiens, essays for The Morning Post and Courier. Mr. Fox is said to have pointed his allusion to these contributions, when he declared, that the war, which fol520

lowed the above treaty, was a war raised by The Morning Post. Whilst Mr. Coleridge was staying at Rome, Bonaparte is said to have sent an order for his arrest, from which he was rescued, partly, by the forbearance of the late pope, Pius the Seventh. Our poet, however, has never displayed any evidence of his having been guided by any fixed political creed; and he altogether disowns, as was hinted by The Morning Chronicle, that he ever bettered his fortune by his labours as a political writer. Indeed, it is as a poet only that he will be known by posterity; however zealously his friends may labour to procure a reputation for him as the founder of a sect in morals or philosophy. The chief fault of Coleridge's poetry lies in the style, which has been justly objected to on account of its obscurity, general turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new-coined double epithets. With regard to its obscurity, he says, in the preface to a late edition of his poems, that where he appears unintelligible," the deficiency is in the reader." This is nothing more or less than to suppose his readers endowed with the powers of divination; for we defy any one who is not in the confidence of the au

thor upon this subject, to solve the riddle which is appended as a conclusion to Christabel. He might as well attribute deficiency of capacity to a beholder of his countenance, who should fail, in its workings, to discover the exact emotions of his mind; for Mr. Coleridge has afforded no clearer clue to the generality of his poetical arcana. This is particularly manifest in his singularly wild and striking poem of The Ancient Mariner, on which he is said to have written the following epigram, addressed to himself:

"Your poem must eternal be, Dear sir! it cannot fail; For, 'tis incomprehensible,

And without head or tail."

Mr. Coleridge is unquestionably at the head of the Lake school of poetry, and excels all his fraternity of that class in feeling, fancy, and sublimity. Some of his minor poems will bear comparison with those of the bards of this or any other age or country; and his verses on Love appear to us the most touching, delicate, and beautiful delineation of that passion that ever was penned.

SIBYLLINE LEAVES.

I. POEMS OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS OR FEELINGS CONNECTED WITH THEM.

When I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for legers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my country! Am I to be blamed?

But, when I think of thee, and what thou art,
Verily, in the bottom of my heart,
Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
But dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark of the cause of men;
And I by my affection was beguiled.
What wonder if a poet, now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a lover or a child.

Wordsworth.

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who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1790; having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the kings combined against France. The first and second antistrophe describe the image of the departing year, etc. as in a vision. The second epode prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of this country.

SPIRIT who sweepest the wild harp of time!
It is most hard with an untroubled ear
Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fix'd on heaven's unchanging clime,
Long when I listen'd, free from mortal fear,

With inward stillness, and submitted mind;
When lo! its folds far waving on the wind,

I saw the train of the departing year!

Starting from my silent sadness,

Then with no unholy madness,

Ere yet the enter❜d cloud foreclosed my sight,

I raised th' impetuous song, and solemnized his

flight.

II.

Hither, from the recent tomb,

From the prison's direr gloom,

From distemper's midnight anguish ;

And thence, where poverty doth waste and languish,
Or where, his two bright torches blending,
Love illumines manhood's maze;

Or where, o'er cradled infants bending,
Hope has fix'd her wishful gaze,
Hither, in perplexed dance,

Ye woes! ye young-eyed joys! advance!
By time's wild harp, and by the hand
Whose indefatigable sweep

Raises its fateful strings from sleep,

I bid you haste, a mix'd, tumultuous band!
From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,
Haste for one solemn hour;
2 x 2

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