Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content ;-
I sit and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them-Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound;
I heed him more than them-the thundersmoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloke
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean ;—and the vines
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast ;-the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain,
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of
Love
On the unquiet world;-while such things are, How could one worth your friendship heed the
Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion 130
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
You are not here! the quaint witch Memory
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should
But are not.-I demand if ever we
Shall meet as then we met; and she replies, Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;—
I know the past alone-but summon home
My sister Hope, she speaks of all to come.'
But I, an old diviner, who knew well
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion-how on the sea-shore
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;1
How I ran home through last year's thunder-
storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek-and how we often made
Feasts for each other, where good will out-
weighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be ;-and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not, or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world :-and then anatomize 160
• The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years;-or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are—
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;-or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,-in joy and pain
1 In Epipsychidion the same line, with a difference of one word, occurs with the same rhyme :
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather.-ED.
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps ;-or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought 171
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady! then indued
The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and
majesty,
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud, And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud, "My name is Legion !"—that majestic tongue, Which Calderon over the desert flung
ages and of nations; and which found An echo in our hearts, and with the sound Startled oblivion;-thou wert then to me As is a nurse when inarticulately
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the ætherial
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see That which was Godwin,-greater none than he Though fallen-and fallen on evil times-to
Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of to-come
while Rebuke cowers pale and
You will see Coleridge-he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind
Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
Flags wearily through darkness and despair-
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls.
You will see Hunt-one of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without
This world would smell like what it is- -a
Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,'
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
The gifts of the most learn'd among some
dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like
Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever read in book,
Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness.-
You will see Hogg, and I cannot express
His virtues, though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades the gate
Within which they inhabit ;-of his wit
1 Robert Shout, statuary, of 18 High Holborn, from whom, presumably, Hunt purchased his plaster casts. -ED.
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. 230 He is a pearl within an oyster-shell,
One of the richest of the deep;
and there Is English Peacock with his mountain fair Turned into a Flamingo ;-that shy bird That gleams i' the Indian air-have you not heard,
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him?--but you
Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope 239
Matched with this cameleopard:-his fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learnèd for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots, let his page,
Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
Fold itself up for the serener clime
Of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation.-Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight, 249
Are all combined in Horace Smith.-And these,
With some exceptions, which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on,—are all
You and I know in London.
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight
Fills the void, hollow, universal air:
What see you?-unpavilioned heaven is fair
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep;
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep, 261
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
And the rare stars rush through them dim and
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