While incense from the altar breathes
Rich fragrance in embodied wreaths;
Or, flung from swinging censer, shrouds
The taper lights, and curls in clouds
Around angelic Forms, the still
Creation of the painter's skill,
That on the service wait concealed
One moment, and the next revealed.
-Cast off your bonds, awake, arise,
And for no transient ecstasies!
What else can mean the visual plea
Of still or moving imagery?
The iterated summons loud,

Not wasted on the attendant crowd,
Nor wholly lost upon the throng
Hurrying the busy streets along?

Alas! the sanctities combined
By art to unsensualise the mind,
Decay and languish; or, as creeds
And humours change, are spurned like
weeds:

The solemn rites, the awful forms,
Founder amid fanatic storms;

The priests are from their altars thrust,
The temples levelled with the dust:
Yet evermore, through years renewed
In undisturbed vicissitude
Of seasons balancing their flight
On the swift wings of day and night,
Kind Nature keeps a heavenly door'
Wide open for the scattered Poor.
Where flower-breathed incense to the skies
Is wafted in mute harmonies;

And ground fresh cloven by the plough
Is fragrant with a humbler vow;
Where birds and brooks from leafy dells
Chime forth unwearied canticles,
And vapours magnify and spread
The glory of the sun's bright head;
Still constant in her worship, still
Conforming to the almighty Will,
Whether men sow or reap the fields,
Her admonitions Nature yields;
That not by bread alone we live,
Or what a hand of flesh can give ;
That every day should leave some part
Free for a sabbath of the heart;
So shall the seventh be truly blest,
From morn to eve, with hallowed rest.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall;
The earth is constant to her sphere;
And God upholds them all:

So blooms this lonely Plant, nor dreads
Her annual funeral.

Here closed the meditative Strain;

But air breathed soft that day,

The hoary mountain-heights were cheered, The sunny vale looked gay;

And to the Primrose of the Rock

I gave this after-lay.

I sang, Let myriads of bright flowers,
Like Thee, in field and grove
Revive unenvied,-mightier far
Than tremblings that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope
Is God's redeeming love:

That love which changed, for wan disease,
For sorrow that had bent

O'er hopeless dust, for withered age,
Their moral element,

And turned the thistles of a curse
To types beneficent.

Sin-blighted though we are, we too,
The reasoning Sons of Men,
From one oblivious winter called
Shall rise, and breathe again;
And in eternal summer lose

Our threescore years and ten.

To humbleness of heart descends
This prescience from on high,
The faith that elevates the Just,
Before and when they die;
And makes each soul a separate heaven,
A court for Deity.

PRESENTIMENTS.

PRESENTIMENTS! they judge not right Who deem that ye from open light Retire in fear of shame;

All heaven-born Instincts shun the touch Of vulgar sense, and, being such,

Such privilege ye claim.

The tear whose source I could not guess,
The deep sigh that seemed fatherless,

Were mine in early days;
And now, unforced by Time to part
With Fancy, I obey my heart,
And venture on your praise.

"Tis said, that warnings ye dispense Emboldened by a keener sense;

That men have lived for whom, With dread precision, ye made clear The hour that in a distant year

Should knell them to the tomb.

Unwelcome Insight! Yet there are
Blest times when mystery is laid bare,
Truth shows a glorious face,
While on that Isthmus which commands
The councils of both worlds she stands,
Sage Spirits! by your grace.

God, who instructs the Brutes to scent
All changes of the element,

Whose wisdom fixed the scale Of Natures, for our wants provides By higher, sometimes humbler, guides, When lights of Reason fail.

SONNETS.

THE POET AND THE CAGED TURTLEDOVE.

As often as I murmur here

My half-formed melodies, Straight from her osier mansion near The Turtledove replies: Though silent as a leaf before,

The captive promptly coos;
Is it to teach her own soft lore,
Or second my weak Muse?

I rather think, the gentle Dove
Is murmuring a reproof,
Displeased that I from lays of love
Have dared to keep aloof;
That I, a Bard of hill and dale,
Have carolled, fancy free,
As if nor dove, nor nightingale,
Had heart or voice for me.

If such thy meaning, O forbear,

Sweet Bird! to do me wrong; Love, blessed Love, is every where The spirit of my song: 'Mid grove, and by the calm fireside, Love animates my lyre; That coo again!-'tis not to chide, I feel, but to inspire.

CHATSWORTH! thy stately mansion, and the pride

Of thy domain, strange contrast do present To house and home in many a craggy rent

Of the wild Peak; where new-born waters glide [abide Through fields whose thrifty Occupants As in a dear and chosen banishment, With every semblance of entire content; So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried! Yet He whose heart in childhood gave her troth [farms,

To pastoral dales, thin set with modest May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth,

That, not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms; Tharms

And, strenuous to protect from lawless The extremes of favoured life, may honour both