Select Works of the British Poets, in a Chronological Series from Falconer to Sir Walter Scott with Biographical and Critical Notices

THE AGES OF MAN. Youth, fond youth! to thee in life's gay morning, New and wonderful are heaven and earth; Health the hills, content the fields adorning, Nature rings with melody and mirth; Love invisible, beneath, above, Conquers all things; all things yield to love. Time, swift time, from years their motion stealing, Unperceived hath sober manhood brought: Truth, her pure and humble forms revealing, Peoples fancy's fairy-land with thought; Then the heart, no longer prone to roam, Loves, loves best, the quiet bliss of home. Age, old age, in sickness, pain, and sorrow, Creeps with lengthening shadow o'er the scene; Life was yesterday, 'tis death to-morrow, And to-day the agony between: Then how longs the weary soul for thee, B.ight and beautiful eternity!

I should be loath to fall
Beside the common way,
Weltering in mire, and spurn’d by all,
Till trodden down to clay.
Nor would I choose to die
All on a bed of grass,
Where thousands of my kindred lie,
And idly rot in mass.
Nor would I like to spread
My thin and wither'd face
In hortus siccus, pale and dead,
A mummy of my race.
No,-on the wings of air
Might I be left to fly,
I know not and I heed not where,
A waif of earth and sky!
Or flung upon the stream,
Curl'd like a fairy-boat,
As through the changes of a dream,
To the world's end to float!
Who that hath ever been,
Could bear to be no more?
Yet who would tread again the scene
He trod through life before?
On, with intense desire,
Man's spirit will move on;
It seems to die, yet like Heaven's fire,
It is not quench'd, but gone.

THE ADVENTURE OF A STAR.

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY.

ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTH. HIGHER, higher will we climb Up the mount of glory, That our namnes may live through time In our country's story: Happy, when her welfare calls, He who conquers, he who falls, Deeper, deeper let us toil In the mines of knowledgeNature's wealth and learning's spoil Win from school and college ; Delve we there for richer gems Than the stars of diadems. Onward, onward will we press Through the path of duty ; Virtue is true happiness, Excellence true beauty: Minds are of supernal birth, Let us make a heaven of earth. Close and closer then we knit Hearts and hands together, Where our fireside comforts sit In the wildest weather: 0! they wander wide, who roam For the joys of life, from home. Nearer, dearer bands of love Draw our souls in union, To our Father's house above, To the saints' communion ; Thither every hope ascend, There may all our labours end.

A STAR would be a flower;
So down from heaven it came,
And in a honeysuckle bower
Lit up its little flame.
There on a bank, beneath the shade,
By sprays, and leaves, and blossoms made,
It overlook'd the garden ground,
-A landscape stretching ten yards round;
O what a change of place
From gazing through eternity of space!
Gay plants on every side
Unclosed their lovely blooms,
And scatter'd far and wide
Their ravishing perfumes :
The butterfly, the bce,
And many an insect on the wing,
Full of the spirit of the spring,
Flew round and round in endless glee,
Alighting here, ascending there,
Ranging and revelling everywhere.
Now all the flowers were up, and drest
In robes of rainbow-colour'd light;
The pale primroses look'd their best,
Peonies blush'd with all their might;
Dutch tulips from their beds
Flaunted their stately heads;
Auriculas, like belles and beaux,
Glittering with birth-night splendour, rose ;

THE FALLING LEAF. WERE I a trembling leaf, On yonder stately tree, After a season gay and brief, Condemn’d to fade and flee;

And polyanthuses display'd

Our star, in melancholy state, The brilliance of their gold brocade :

Still sigh'd to find itself alone, Here hyacinths of heavenly blue

Neglected, cold, and desolate, Shook their rich tresses to the morn,

Unknowing and unknown.
While rose-buds scarcely show'd their hue, Lifting at last an anxious eye,
But coyly linger'd on the thorn,

It saw that circlet empty in the sky
Till their loved nightingale, who tarried long, Where it was wont to roll,
Should wake them into beauty with his song. Within a hair-breadth of the pole:
The violets were past their prime,

In that same instant, sore amazed,
Yet their departing breath

On the strange blank all nature gazed; Was sweeter, in the blast of death,

Travellers, bewilderd for their guide, Than all the lavish fragrance of the thyme. In glens and forests lost their way;

And ships, on ocean's trackless tide, Amidst this gorgeous train,

Went fearfully astray. Our truant star shone forth in vain ;

The star, now wiser for its folly, knew
Though in a wreath of periwinkle,

Its duty, dignity, and bliss at home;
Through whose fine gloom it strove to twinkle, So up to heaven again it flew,
It seem'd no bigger to the view

Resolved no more to roam.
Than the light-spangle in a drop of dew.

One bint the humble bard may send - Astronomers may shake their polls,

To her for whom these lines are penn'd: And tell me,-every orb that rolls

-0 may it be enough for her Through heaven's sublime expanse

To shine in her own character ! Is sun or world, whose speed and size

O may she be content to grace,
Confound the stretch of mortal eyes,

On earth, in heaven, her proper place!
In nature's mystic dance:
It may be so
For aught I know,
Or aught indeed that they can show;

MAKE WAY FOR LIBERTY.
Yet till they prove what they aver,
From this plain truth I will not stir,

On the exploit of Arnold Winkelried at the baule or Sem-A star's a star-but when I think

pach, in which the Swiss, fighting for their independ. Of sun or world, the star I sink;

ence, totally defeated the Austrians, in the fourteenth Wherefore in verse, at least in mine,

century. Stars, like themselves, in spite of fate, shall shine.

“MAKE way for liberty !!--he cried;

Made way for liberty, and died !
Now, to return (for Vo? have wanderd far)
To what was nothing but a simple star;

In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
-Where all was jollity around,

A living wall, a human wood! No fellowship the stranger found.

A wall, where every conscious stone Those lowliest children of the earth,

Seem'd to its kindred thousands grown; That never leave their mother's lap,

A rampart all assaults to bear, Companions in their harmless mirth,

Till time to dust their frames should wear; Were smiling, blushing, dancing there,

A wood like that enchanted grove* Feasting on dew, and light, and air,

In which with fiends Rinaldo strove, And fearing no mishap,

Where every silent tree possess'd Save from the hand of lady fair,

A spirit prisond in its breast, Who, on her wonted walk,

Which the first stroke of coming strife Pluck'd one and then another,

Would startle into hideous life, A sister or a brother,

So dense, so still, the Austrians stood, From its elastic stalk;

A living wall, a human wood ! Happy, no doubt, for one sharp pang, to die

Impregnable their front appears, On her sweet bosom, withering in her eye.

All horrent with projected spears,

Whose polish'd points before them shine, Thus all day long that star's hard lot,

From flank to flank, one brilliant line, While bliss and beauty ran to waste,

Bright as the breakers' splendours run Was but to witness on the spot

Along the billows, to the sun. Beauty and bliss it could not taste,

Opposed to these a hovering band
At length the sun went down, and then

Contended for their native land:
Its faded glory came again,
With brighter, bolder, purer light,

Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke

From manly necks th' ignoble yoke,
It kindled through the deepening night,
Till the green bower, so dim by day,

And forged their fetters into swords,

On equal terms to fight their lords: Glow'd like a fairy-palace with its beams;

And what insurgent rage had gain'd, In vain, for sleep on all the borders lay,

In many a mortal fray maintain'd; The flowers were laughing in the land of dreams,

• See Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, canto xviii.

An earthquake could not overthrow A city with a surer blow.

Thus Switzerland again was free: Thus death inade way for liberty!

FOR THE FIRST LEAF OF A LADY'S

ALBUM.

Marshallid once more at freedom's call,
They came to conquer or to fall,
Where he who conquer'd, he who fell,
Was deem'd a dead, or living Tell!
Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
That wheresoe'er his arrows flew,
Heroes in bis own likeness grew,
And warriors sprang from every sod
Which his awakening footstep trod.

And now the work of life and death
Hung on the passing of a breath;
The fire of conflict burnt within,
The battle trembled to begin ;
Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
Point for attack was nowhere found,
Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed,
The unbroken line of lances blazed ;
That line 'twere suicide to meet,
And perish at their tyrants' feet,-
How could they rest within their graves,
And leave their homes, the homes of slaves ?
Would they not feel their children tread
With clanging chains above their head ?

It must not be: This day, this hour,
Annihilates th' oppressor's power ;
All Switzerland is in the field,
She will not fly, she cannot yield-
She must not fall; her better fate
Here gives her an immortal date.
Few were the number she could boast;
But every freeman was a host,
And felt as though himself were he
On whose sole arm hung victory.

It did depend on one, indeed;
Behold him,-Arnold Winkelried !
There sounds not to the trump of fame
The echo of a nobler name.
Unmark'd he stood amid the throng:
In rumination deep and long,
Till you might see, with sudden grace,
The very thought come o'er his face,
And by the motion of his form
Anticipate the bursting storm;
And by th' uplifting of his brow
Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.

But 'twas no sooner thought than done,
The field was in a moment won :

“Make way for liberty !” he cried,
Then ran, with arms extended wide,
As if his dearest friend to clasp ;
Ten spears he swept within his grasp.

“ Make way for liberty !” he cried ;
Their keen points met from side to side :
He bow'd amongst them like a tree,
And thus made way for liberty.

Swift to the breach his comrades fly;
“ Make way for liberty !" they cry,
And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
As rush'd the spears through Arnold's heart;
While, instantaneous as his fall,
Rout, ruin, panic, scatter'd all:

FLOWER after flower comes forth in spring,
Bird after bird begins to sing;
Till copse and field in richest bloom,
Sparkle with dew, and breathe perfume,-
While hill and valley, all day long,
And half the night, resound with song,
So may acquaintance, one by one,
Come like spring-flowers to meet the sun,
And o’er these pages pure and white,
Kind words, kind thoughts, kind prayers indite,
Which sweeter odour shall dispense
Than vernal blossoms to the sense ;
Till woods and streams less fair appear
Than autographs and sketches here:
-Or like the minstrels of the grove,
Pour strains of harmony and love,
The music made by heart to heart,
In which the least can bear a part,
More exquisite than all the notes
Of nightingales' and thrushes' throats.
Thus shall this book, from end to end,
Show in succession friend on friend,
By their own living hands portray'd,
In prose and verse, in light and shade,
By pen and pencil, -till her eye,
Who owns the volume shall descry
On many a leaf some lovely trace,
Reminding of a lovelier face!
With here and there the humbler line,
Recalling such a phiz as mine.

THE FIRST LEAF OF AN ALBUM.

Ut pictura, poesis.- Hor. de Art. Poet.

Two lovely sisters here unite
To blend improvement with delight;
Painting and poetry engage
By turns to deck the Album's page.
Here may each glowing picture be
The quintessence of poesy,
With skill so exquisitely wrought,
As if the colours were pure thought,-
Thought from the bosom's inmost cell,
By magic tints made visible,
That, while the eye admires, the mind
Itself, as in a glass, inay find.
And may the poet's verse, alike,
With all the power of painting strike;
So freely, so divinely trace,
In every line the line of grace;
And beautify, with such sweet art,
The image-chamber of the heart,

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Select Works of the British Poets, in a Chronological Series from Falconer ...