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But who the expected husband, husband is!
His hands, methinks, are bathed in slaughter.
Ah, me! what ghastly spectre's yon,

Comes in his pale shroud, bleeding after?
Pale as he is, here lay him, lay him down,
O, lay his cold head on my pillow;
Take aff, take aff these bridal weeds,

And crown my care-full head with willow. Pale though thou art, yet best, yet best beloved, O, could my warmth to life restore thee!

Ye'd lie all night between my breasts, No youth lay ever there before thee. Pale, pale indeed, O lovely, lovely youth, Forgive, forgive so foul a slaughter, And lie all night between my breasts, No youth shall ever lie there after. A. Return, return, O mournful, mournful bride, Return and dry thy useless sorrow : Thy lover heeds naught of thy sighs, He lies a corpse on the Braes of Yarrow.

Hymn of Praise for January.

COLERIDGE'S "MONT BLANC."

A HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale!
O, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink!
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, O, wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,

Forever shattered, and the same forever?

Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living

flowers

Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements !
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing
peaks,

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WINTER-FEBRUARY.

Cowper's "Winter Walks."

"WINTER MORNING WALK."

ARGUMENT.

A frosty morning. The foddering of cattle. The woodman and his dog. The poultry. Whimsical effects of frost at a waterfall. The Empress of Russia's palace of ice. Amusements of monarchs. War, one of them. Wars, whence. And whence monarchy. The evils of it. English and French loyalty contrasted. The Bastile, and a prisoner there. Liberty the chief recommendation of this country. Modern patriotism questionable, and why. The perishable nature of the best human institutions. Spiritual liberty not perishable. The slavish state of man by nature. Deliver him, Deist, if you can. Grace must do it. The respective merits of patriots and martyrs stated. Their different treatment. Happy freedom of the man whom grace makes free. His relish of the works of God. dress to the Creator.

SUNRISE IN WINTER.

"Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds, That crowd away before the driving wind, More ardent as the disk emerges more, Resemble most some city in a blaze,

Ad

Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From every herb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.

MY SHADOW.

Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance

I view the muscular proportioned limb
Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,
As they designed to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plastered wall,
Preposterous sight! the legs without the man

THE JEWELLED MANTLE OF SNOW.

The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,
And, fledged with icy feathers, nod superb.

CATTLE IN WINTER. PATIENCE.-OUT-DOOR FODDERING.
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,

Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging, oft,
His broad, keen knife into the solid mass;
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.

THE WOODMAN GOING TO THE WOOD. HIS DOG.-HIS PIPE.

Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned
The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe
And drive the wedge, in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears,
And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now,
with many a frisk
Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl

Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught,
But now and then with pressure of his thumb
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,
That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
FEEDING OF POULTRY IN A WINTER'S MORNING. SPARROWS.
-THE COCK.

Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale,
Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing,
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Conscious, and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves,
To seize the fair occasion; well they eye
The scattered grain, and, thievishly resolved
To escape the impending famine, often scared,
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned
To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut; and, wading at their head
With well-considered steps, seems to resent
His altered gait and stateliness retrenched.

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The long-protracted rigor of the year

Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,

As instinct prompts; self-buried ere they die.

ROOKS AND DAWS IN WINTER.

The very rooks and daws forsake the fields, Where neither grub, nor root, nor earth-nut, now Repays their labor more; and perched aloft By the wayside, or stalking in the path, Lean pensioners upon the traveller's track, Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them, Of voided pulse, or half-digested grain.

THE FROZEN STREAM; THE MILL-DAM.

The streams are lost amid the splendid blank,
O'erwhelming all distinction. On the flood,
Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight
Lies undissolved; while silently beneath,
And unperceived, the current steals away.
Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps
The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel,
And wantons in the pebbly gulf below:
No frost can bind it there; its utmost force
Can but arrest the light and smoky mist,
That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.

FROST-WORKS IN THE STREAMLET'S BANKS.

And see where it has hung the embroidered banks
With forms so various, that no powers of art,
The pencil or the pen, may trace the scene!
Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high
(Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof
Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees
And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops,
That trickle down the branches, fast congealed,
Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,

And prop the pile they but adorned before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies

The sunbeam; there, embossed and fretted wild,
The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes
Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain

The likeness of some object seen before.

NATURE'S SPORTS OUTDO THE WORKS OF ART.-FREAK OF
THE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA.

Thus nature works as if to mock at art,
And in defiance of her rival powers;
By these fortuitous and random strokes
Performing such inimitable feats,

As she with all her rules can never reach.
Less worthy of applause, though more admired,
Because a novelty, the work of man,
Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ,
Thy most magnificent and mighty freak,
The wonder of the north.

THE PALACE OF ICE.ARISTEUS, CYRENE. No forest fell, When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods, And make thy marble of the glassy wave.

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Some seek diversion in the tented field,
And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.
But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at. Nations would do well
Textort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

GOD ASSIGNED THE NATIONS THEIR PLACES.

When Babel was confounded, and the great Confederacy of projectors wild and vain Was split into diversity of tongues, Then, as a shepherd separates his flock, These to the upland, to the valley those, God drave asunder, and assigned their lot To all the nations. Ample was the boon He gave them, in its distribution fair And equal; and He bade them dwell in peace. Peace was a while their care: they ploughed, and

sowed,

And reaped their plenty without grudge or strife.
But violence can never longer sleep
Than human passions please.

THE WAR-PASSION.CAIN. TUBAL.

In every heart Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war ; Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze. Cain had already shed a brother's blood: The Deluge washed it out; but left unquenched The seeds of murder in the breast of man. Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his descending progeny was found The first artificer of death; the shrewd Contriver, who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unbloodied steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war. Him, Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times, The sword and falchion their inventor claim; And the first smith was the first murderer's son.

COVETOUSNESS THE MOTHER OF WAR.

His art survived the waters; and ere long, When man was multiplied, and spread abroad In tribes and clans, and had begun to call These meadows and that range of hills his own, The tasted sweets of property begat Desire of more; and industry in some, To improve and cultivate their just demesne, Made others covet what they saw so fair. Thus war began on earth: these fought for spoil, And those in self-defence.

ORIGIN OF MILITARY CHIEFTAINSHIP.

Savage at first

The onset, and irregular. At length
One eminent above the rest for strength,
For stratagem, for courage, or for all,
Was chosen leader; him they served in war,
And him in peace, for sake of warlike deeds

Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare?
Or who so worthy to control themselves,
As he, whose prowess had subdued their foes?
Thus war, affording field for the display

Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace,
Which have their exigencies too, and call
For skill in government, at length made king.

HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE INVENTION OF KINGS TYRANTS.

King was a name too proud for man to wear With modesty and meekness; and the crown, So dazzling in their eyes, who set it on, Was sure t' intoxicate the brows it bound. It is the abject property of most, That, being parcel of the common mass, And destitute of means to raise themselves, They sink, and settle lower than they need. They know not what it is to feel within A comprehensive faculty, that grasps Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields, Almost without an effort, plans too vast For their conception, which they cannot move.

AND

THE BASENESS OF THE MANY INVITES THE DESPOTISM OF ONE. MAN-WORSHIP.

Conscious of impotence, they soon grow drunk With gazing when they see an able man Step forth to notice and, besotted thus, Build him a pedestal, and say, 'Stand there, And be our admiration and our praise.' They roll themselves before him in the dust, Then most deserving in their own account, When most extravagant in his applause, As if exalting him they raised themselves. Thus, by degrees, self-cheated of their sound And sober judgment, that he is but man, They demi-deify and fume him so, That in due season he forgets it too.

THE FULL-FLEDGED AUTOCRAT.-CONQUERORS.

Inflated and astrut with self-conceit, He gulps the windy diet; and, ere long, Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks The world was made in vain, if not for him. Thenceforth they are his cattle; drudges, born To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears, And sweating in his service, his caprice Becomes the soul that animates them all. He deems a thousand or ten thousand lives, Spent in the purchase of renown for him, An easy reckoning; and they think the same. Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings Were burnished into heroes, and became The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp; Storks among frogs, that have but croaked and died.

KING AND HERO-WORSHIP; ITS PREVALENCE STRANGE.

Strange, that such folly, as lifts bloated man To eminence fit only for a god, Should ever drivel out of human lips,

Even in the cradled weakness of the world!
Still stranger much, that when at length mankind
Had reached the sinewy firmness of their youth,
And could discriminate and argue well

On subjects more mysterious, they were yet
Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear
And quake before the gods themselves had made:
But above measure strange, that neither proof
Of sad experience, nor examples set

By some, whose patriot virtue has prevailed,
Can even now, when they are grown mature
In wisdom, and with philosophic deeds
Familiar, serve to emancipate the rest!

REVERENCE FOR ANTIQUITY A SNARE. — IRRATIONAL MON-
STROUSNESS OF SLAVERY.

Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To reverence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational discussion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust
And folly in as ample measure meet,
As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules,
Should be a despot absolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land?
Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will
Wage war, with any or with no pretence
Of provocation given, or wrong sustained,
And force the beggarly last doit, by means
That his own humor dictates, from the clutch
Of poverty, that thus he may procure
His thousands, weary of penurious life,
A splendid opportunity to die?

FALSE LOYALTY.

Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old Jotham ascribed to his assembled trees

In politic convention) put your trust

In the shadow of a bramble, and recline
In fancied peace beneath his dangerous branch,
Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway,
Where find ye passive fortitude? Whence springs
Your self-denying zeal, that holds it good
To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang
His thorns with streamers of continual praise?

TRUE LOYALTY. THE KING OF ENGLAND. TREASON.

We too are friends to loyalty. We love The king, who loves the law, respects his bounds, And reigns content within them: him we serve Freely and with delight, who leaves us free; But, recollecting still that he is man, We trust him not too far. King though he be, And king in England too, he may be weak And vain enough to be ambitious still; May exercise amiss his proper powers,

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