II.

If with mists of evening dew

Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

SUMMER AND WINTER.

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, Towards the end of the sunny month of June, When the north wind congregates in crowds. The floating mountains of the silver clouds From the horizon-and the stainless sky Opens beyond them like eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds, The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds; The willow-leaves that glanced in the light

breeze,

And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests, and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas then for the homeless beggar old!

LINES TO A REVIEWER.

ALAS, good friend, what profit can you see In hating such a hateless thing as me?

There is no sport in hate when all the rage
Is on one side: in vain would you assuage
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile,
In which not even contempt lurks to beguile
Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate.
O, conquer what you cannot satiate;
For to your passion I am far more coy
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy
In winter noon. Of your antipathy,
If I am the Narcissus, you are free
To pine into a sound with hating me.

FRAGMENT OF A SATIRE ON SATIRE.

IF gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,
And racks of subtle torture, if the pains
Of shame, of fiery Hell's tempestuous wave,
Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,
Hurling the damned into the murky air

While the meek bless'd sit smiling; if Despair
And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which
Terror

Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,

Are the true secrets of the commonweal

To make men wise and just;

...

And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,
Bloodier than is revenge.

...

10

Then send the priests to every hearth and

home

To preach the burning wrath which is to come, In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw The frozen tears...

If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds

Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,
The leprous scars of callous infamy;
If it could make the present not to be,
Or charm the dark past never to have been,
Or turn regret to hope; who that has seen
What Southey is and was, would not exclaim,
Lash on!
be the keen verse dipped in

flame;

20

Follow his flight with wingèd words, and urge The strokes of the inexorable scourge

Until the heart be naked, till his soul

See the contagion's spots

foul;

And from the mirror of Truth's sunlike

shield,

From which his Parthian arrow

Flash on his sight the spectres of the past,
Until his mind's eye paint thereon-

Let scorn like

yawn below,

And rain on him like flakes of fiery snow.

This cannot be, it ought not, evil still

30

Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow

ill.

Rough words beget sad thoughts,

beside,

Men take a sullen and a stupid pride

In being all they hate in others' shame,
By a perverse antipathy of fame.

and,

40

"Tis not worth while to prove, as I could, how From the sweet fountains of our Nature flow These bitter waters; I will only say,

If

any friend would take Southey some day, And tell him, in a country walk alone,

Softening harsh words with friendship's gentle tone,

How incorrect his public conduct is,

And what men think of it, 'twere not amiss.

Far better than to make innocent ink

ODE TO NAPLES.1

EPODE I. a.

I STOOD within the city disinterred,2

And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls

Of spirits passing through the streets, and heard

The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood; I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spokeI felt, but heard not :-through white columns glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, A plane of light between two Heavens of azure: Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; But every living lineament was clear

As in the sculptor's thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded

snow,

Seemed only not to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

20

1 The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiæ with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event. 2 Pompeii.

Weighed on their life; even as the Power

divine

Which then lulled all things brooded upon

mine.

EPODE II. a.

Then gentle winds arose

With many a mingled close

Of wild Eolian sound and mountain-odour

keen ;

And where the Baian ocean

Welters with air-like motion,

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,

Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere 30
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm;

I sailed, where ever flows
Under the calm Serene
A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of Melody.'

Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal æther; heaven stripped bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime,

40

There streamed a sunlight vapour, like the standard

Of some ætherial host;

Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered

1 Homer and Virgil.