Now let us, as we float along, The evening darkness gathers round XX. IF Thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, Though half a sphere be conscious of its brightness, No purer essence, than the One that burns, Like an untended watch-fire, on the ridge Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps, Among the branches of the leafless trees. XXI. WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF MACPHERSON'S OSSIAN. OFT have I caught, upon a fitful breeze, Fragments of far-off melodies, With ear not coveting the whole, A part so charmed the pensive soul: While a dark storm before my sight Nor felt a wish that Heaven would show What need, then, of these finished Strains? An abbey in its lone recess, A temple of the wilderness, Wrecks though they be, announce with feeling The majesty of honest dealing. Spirit of Ossian! if im bound In language thou may'st yet be found, Or floating on the tongues of men, In concert with memorial claim Of old grey stone, and high-born name, And for presumptuous wrongs atone; Time is not blind;-yet He, who spares Hath preyed with ruthless appetite Of the poetic ecstasy Into the land of mystery. No tongue is able to rehearse One measure, Orpheus! of thy verse; Have sunk, at Nature's call; or strayed Hail, Bards of mightier grasp! on you Dropped from the lenient cloud of years. Brothers in Soul! though distant times Produced you, nursed in various climes, Ye, when the orb of life had waned, A plenitude of love retained; Hence, while in you each sad regret By corresponding hope was met, Ye lingered among human kind, Such to the tender-hearted Maid XXII. VERNAL ODE. "Rerum Natura tota est nusquam magis quam in minimis." 1. Plin. Nat. Hist. BENEATH the concave of an April sky, When all the fields with freshest green were dight, Appeared, in presence of that spiritual eye That aids or supersedes our grosser sight, The form and rich habiliments of One Whose countenance bore resemblance to the sun, When it reveals, in evening majesty, 'Features half lost amid their own pure light. Poised like a weary cloud, in middle air Till he had reached a summit sharp and bare, Where oft the venturous heifer drinks the noon-tide breeze. Upon the apex of that lofty cone Alighted, there the Stranger stood alone; Fair as a gorgeous Fabric of the East Suddenly raised by some Enchanter's power, Where nothing was; and firm as some old Tower Of Britain's realm, whose leafy crest Waves high, embellished by a gleaming shower! 2. Beneath the shadow of his purple wings Poured through the echoing hills around, He sang 66 "No wintry desolations, Scorching blight or noxious dew, "Affect my native habitations; "Buried in glory, far beyond the scope "Of man's inquiring gaze, but imaged to his hope "(Alas, how faintly!) in the hue "Profound of night's ethereal blue; "And in the aspect of each radiant orb; "Some fixed, some wandering with no timid curb; |