But who the expected husband, husband is! Comes in his pale shroud, bleeding after? 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 O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Yet like some sweet beguiling melody, Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink! 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, And who commanded (and the silence came), Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow 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? Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! WINTER-FEBRUARY. 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 MY SHADOW. Mine, spindling into longitude immense, I view the muscular proportioned limb THE JEWELLED MANTLE OF SNOW. The verdure of the plain lies buried deep CATTLE IN WINTER. PATIENCE.-OUT-DOOR FODDERING. Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek, THE WOODMAN GOING TO THE WOOD. HIS DOG.-HIS PIPE. Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught, Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale, 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, FROST-WORKS IN THE STREAMLET'S BANKS. And see where it has hung the embroidered banks And prop the pile they but adorned before. The sunbeam; there, embossed and fretted wild, The likeness of some object seen before. NATURE'S SPORTS OUTDO THE WORKS OF ART.-FREAK OF Thus nature works as if to mock at art, As she with all her rules can never reach. 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. Some seek diversion in the tented field, 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. 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 Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare? Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace, 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! On subjects more mysterious, they were yet By some, whose patriot virtue has prevailed, REVERENCE FOR ANTIQUITY A SNARE. — IRRATIONAL MON- Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone 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 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, |