a He saw a LAWYER killing a Viper CONSTANCY TO AN IDEAL OBJECT. And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind SINCE all, that beat about in Nature's range, Of Cain and his brother, Abel. Or veer or vanish, why shouldst thou remain The only constant in a world of changeA POTRECARY on a white horse O yearning THOUGHT, that livest but in the brain? Rode by on his vocations, Call to the hours, that in the distance play, And the Devil thought of his old Friend The fairy people of the future dayDeath in the Revelations. Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath, He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm, A cottage of gentility! Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death! And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see, Is pride that apes humility. She is not thou, and only thou art she, Some living love before my eyes there stood, He went into a rich bookseller's shop, With answering look a ready ear to lend, Quoth he! we are both of one college; I mourn to thee and say—“Ah! loveliest friend! For I myself sate like a cormorant once That this the meed of all my toils might be, Fast by the tree of knowledge.* To have a home, an English home and thee! Vain repetition! Home and thou art one. Down the river there plied with wind and tide, The peacefull'st cot the moon shall shine upon, A pig, with vast celerity; Lulld by the thrush and wakend by the lark, And the Devil look'd wise as he saw how the while, Without thee were but a becalmed Bark, It cut its own throat. There! quoth he, with a smile, Whose helmsman on an ocean waste and wide Goes “ England's commercial prosperity.” Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside. And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when As he went through Cold-Bath Fields, he saw The woodman winding westward up the glen A solitary cell, At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze, For improving his prisons in Hell. Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An imaget with a glory round its head; Nor knows, he makes the shadow he pursues ! General 's burning face He saw with consternation, THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT. ERE the birth of my life, if I wish'd it or no If the life was the question, a thing sent to try, * And all amid them stood the Tree of Life High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit And to live on be YES; what can No be? to die. NATURE'S ANSWER. WERE! I gave you innocence, I gave you hope, Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope. Sat like a cormorant.-Par. Lost, IV. Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair? The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various Make out the Invent'ry ; inspect, compare ! readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to Then die-if die you dare ! find it noted, that for "Life" Cod. quid habent, “ Trade." Though indeed the trade, i. e. the bibliopolic, so called, edi' cbxny, may be regarded as Life sansu eminentiori: a sucreation, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, he might have boen mistaken, and most certainly he did not who on bearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, hear any names mentioned. In simple verity, the Author never country houses, etc. of the trade, exclaimed, “Ay! that's meant any one, or indeed any thing but to put a concluding what I call Life now!"-This " Life, our Death," is thus stanza to his doggerel. kappily contrasted with the fruits of Authorship.--Sic nos non This phenomenon, which the Author has himself expeof this poem, with which the Fire, Famine and Slaughter of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Trans rienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one first appeared in the Morning Post, the three tirat stanzas, which actions, is applied figuratively in the following passage of the are worth all the rest, and the ninth, were dictated by Mr. Aids to Reflection: Southey. Between the ninth and the concluding stanza, two or three are omitted as grounded on subjects that have lost their on different characters, holds equally true of Genius : as mang "Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music If any one should nusk, who General - meant, the Author The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. bere leave to inform him, that he did once see a red-faced per- Being that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or Usa in a dream whom by the dress he took for a General; but) recoils from it as a spectro." --Aids to Reflection, p. 220. 2 D * nobis mellificamus Apes. interest and for better reasons. à Or call my destiny niggard ? O no! no! It is her largeness, and her overflow, Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so! 4. For never touch of gladness stirs my heart, But tim'rously beginning to rejoice I seem to have an indistinct recollection of having read either Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice. other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew Writers.. an Beloved ! 'tis not thine; thou art not there! Apologue or Rabbinical Tradition to the following purpose: While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, Then melts the bubble into idle air, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's And wishing without hope I restlessly despair. ear, the guilesul false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character 5. of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: "Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so ! for the Man The mother with anticipàted glee was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once Smiles o'er the child, that standing by her chair, to the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise." And And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee, the word of the Most High answered Satan: The tender Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Fiend ! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to have the heart To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its She hears her own voice with a new delight; counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes have been inflicted on thyself.” aright, 6. [The title of the following poem was suggested by a faet mentioned by Linnæus, of a Date-tree in a nobleman's garden, Then is she tenfold gladder than before! which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, But should disease or chance the darling take, but never produced fruit, till a branch from a Date-tree had What then avail those songs, which sweet of fore been conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the Ms. from which the poem has been were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake! transcribed, and which contained the two or three introduc- Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee tory stanzas, is wanting: and the author has in vain taxed Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee: his memory to repair the loss. But a rude draught of the Why was I made for love, and love denied to me ? poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and the reader is requested to receive it as the substitute. It is not impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed those of the author at the time the poem was written, may find a pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integ. FANCY IN NUBIBUS, rity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite Metre. S. T.C. OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS. 0! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, 1. Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, BENEATH the blaze of a tropical sun the moun. To make the shifting clouds be what you please, tain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, through the Or let the easily persuaded eyes absence of objects to reflect the rays. “What no Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould one with us shares, seems scarce our own." The Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low presence of a ONE, And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold "Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go is for the heart, what the supporting air from within From mount to mount through CLOUDLAND, gor is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight, buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand a burthen, and crushes it into flatness. By those deep sounds possess'd, with inward light 2. Beheld the Iliad and the ODYSSEY The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel THE TWO FOUNTS. the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER RECOVERY, it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS, FROM A SEVERE AT graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them? 'Twas my last waking thought, how it could be 3. That thou, sweet friend, such anguish shouldst endure: Imagination; honorable Aims; When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he Free Commune with the choir that cannot die; Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure. Science and Song; Delight in little things, The buoyant child surviving in the man; Methought he fronted me, with peering look Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky, Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game With all their voices-0 dare I accuse The loves and griefs therein, as from a book : My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen, And utter'd praise like one who wish'd to blame geous land! TACK OF PAIN. In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin, Her father's love she bade me gain ; I went and shook like any reed ! We had exchanged our hearts indeed. Of Pleasure only will to all dispense, SONNET, To make the shifting clouds be what you please ; To each quaint image issuing from the mould a Even so, Eliza! on that face of thine, From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous On that benignant face, whose look alone land! (The soul's translucence through her crystal shrine ! Or listening to the tide, with closed sight, Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own. Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possess’d, with inward light A beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey But with a silent charm compels the stern Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea ! And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn. Who then needs wonder, if (no outlet found EPIGRAMS. I. I ASK'd my fair, one happy day, What I should call her in my lay, Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam By what sweet name from Rome, or Greece, On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile, Neara, Laura, Daphne, Chloris, Had pass'd: yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile, Carina, Lalage, or Doris, Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream : Dorimene, or Lucrece? Till audibly at length I cried, as though II. Thon hadst indeed been present to my eyes, “Ah," replied my gentle fair; O sweet, sweet sufferer! if the case be so, “Dear one, what are names but air ? I pray thee, be less good, less sweet, less wise! Choose thou whatever suits the line; Call me Laura, call me Chloris, In every look a barbed arrow send, Call me Lalage, or Doris, Only-only-call me thine !" Sly Belzebub took all occasions To try Job's constancy, and patience. He took his honor, took his health ; He took his children, took his wealth, RESEMBLES life what once was held of light, His servants, oxen, horses, cows, But cunning Satan did not take his spouse. But Heaven, that brings out good from evil, And loves to disappoint the devil, Had predetermined to restore His servants, horses, oxen, cows THE EXCHANGE. I in my arms the maiden clasping; But, oh! I trembled like an aspen. HOARSE Mævius reads his hobbling verse But folks say Mævius is no ass; THERE comes from old Avaro's grave Last Monday all the papers said, Pity, indeed, 't is píty!" the "Fortunate Isles" of the Muses: and then other and more Eocinctured with a twine of leaves, The night is more beloved than day. That beauteous Boy, to linger bere? Has he no friend, no loving Mother near ? YOUR poem must eternal be, Swans sing before they die-'t were no bad thing S.T.C. CANTO II. PREFATORY NOTE. : THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN. “A LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight." Their road was through a forest of fir-trees; at its entrance the trees stood at distances from each other, and the A prose composition, one not in metre at least, seems prima facie to require explanation or apology. It was written in the path was broad, and the moonlight, and the moonlight year 1798, near Nether Stowoy in Somersetshiro, at which place shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to in (sanctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and habit that solitude. But soon the path winded and recollections) the Author had taken up his residonce in order became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimet to enjoy the society and close neighborhood of a dear and hon speckled, but never illumined it, and now it was ored friend, T. Poole. Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within dark as a cavern. the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connex. "It is dark, O my father!" said Enos ; * but the ion with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were sug- soon come out into the open moonlight." gested by anyself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the contents for each of the three books or cantoes, of which the little child!" And the innocent little child clasped a "Lead on, my child!” said Cain: " guide me, work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook finger of the hand which had murdered the righteous the first canto : I the second : and whichever had done first, was Abel, and he guided his father. “ The fir branches to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by ; get drip upon thee, my son." moot the question which of the two things was the more im- and the cake, and my body is not yet cool, How at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile for I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the pitcher “ Yea, pleasantly, father , practicable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir trees! simple to imitate the Death of Abel ? Methinks I see his grand they leap from bough to bough, and the old squirrels and noble countenance as at the moment when having dispatch play round their young ones in the nest. I clomba tree ed my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened to him with my manuscript—that look of humorous despond- yesterday at noon, O my father, that I might play ency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its with them; but they leapt away from the branches , silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme - moment I beheld them on another tree. Why, O my which broke up in a laugh: and the Ancient Mariner was writ- father, would they not play with me? I would be Years afterward, howover, the draft of the Plan and propo- good to them as thou art good to me: and I groaned sed Incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favor in the to them even as thou groanest when thou givest me eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic to eat, and when thou coverst me at evening, and as work could not but have weighed with me, even though no pa- often as I stand at thy knee and thine eyes look at rental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a me." Then Cain stopped, and stiffing his grðars he make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the sealizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off darkness beside him. ten instead. And Cain lifted up his voice and cried bitterly, ed from its point, and between its point and the and said, * The Mighty One that persecuteth me is sands a tall man might stand upright. It was here on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like that Enos had found the pitcher and cake, and to the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; this place he led his father. But ere they had reachhe is around me even as the air! O that I might be ed the rock they beheld a human shape : his back utterly no more! I desire to die-yea, the things was towards them, and they were advancing unperthat never had life, neither move they upon the ceived, when they heard him smite his breast and earth---behold! they seem precious to mine eyes. O cry aloud, “Woe is me! woe is me! I must never die that a man might live without the breath of his nos- again, and yet I am perishing with thirst and huntrils! So I might abide in darkness, and blackness, ger." and an empty space! Yea, I would lie down, I would Pallid, as the reflection of the sheeted lightning on not rise, neither would I stir my limbs till I became the heavy-sailing night-cloud, became the face of as the rock in the den of the lion, on which the Cain; but the child Enos took hold of the shaggy young lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For skin, his father's robe, and raised his eyes to his the torrent that roareth far off hath a voice, and the father, and listening whispered, “ Ere yet I could clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty speak, I am sure, O my father! that I heard that One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the voice. Have not I often said that I remembered a cedar grove; and in silence am I dried up.” Then sweet voice? O my father! this is it." and Cain Enos spake to his father: “Arise, my father, arise, trembled exceedingly. The voice was sweet indeed, we are but a little way from the place where I found but it was thin and querulous like that of a feeble the cake and the pitcher.” And Cain said, “ How slave in misery, who despairs altogether, yet cannot krowest thou?" and the child answered—“ Behold, refrain himself from weeping and lamentation. And, the bare rocks are a few of thy strides distant from behold! Enos glided forward, and creeping softly the forest; and while even now thou wert lifting up round the base of the rock, stood before the stranger, thy voice, I heard the echo.” Then the child took and looked up into his face. And the Shape shriekhold of his father, as if he would raise him: and ed, and turned round, and Cain beheld him, that his Cain being faint and feeble, rose slowly on his knees limbs and his face were those of his brother Abel and pressed himself against the trunk of a fir, and whom he had killed! And Cain stood like one who stood upright, and followed the child. struggles in his sleep because of the exceeding terThe path was dark till within three strides' length ribleness of a dream. of its termination, when it turned suddenly; the Thus as he stood in silence and darkness of soul, thick black trees formed a low arch, and the moon- the Shape fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, light appeared for a moment like a dazzling portal. and cried out with a bitter outcry, - Thou eldestEnos ran before and stood in the open air; and when born of Adam, whom Eve, my mother, brought forth, Cain, his father, emerged from the darkness, the cease to torment me! I was feeding my flocks in child was affrighted. For the mighty limbs of Cain green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou were wasted as by fire; his hair was as the matted killedst me; and now I am in misery.” Then Cain curls on the Bison's forehead, and so glared his fierce closed his eyes, and hid them with his hands; and and sullen eye beneath: and the black abundant again he opened his eyes, and looked around him, locks on either side, a rank and tangled mass, were and said to Enos, “ What beholdest thou? Didst thou stained and scorched, as though the grasp of a hear a voice, my son ?" “ Yes, my father, I beheld burning iron hand had striven to rend them; and his a man in unclean garments, and he uttered a sweet countenance told in a strange and terrible language voice, full of lamentation.” Then Cain raised up of agonies that had been, and were, and were still the Shape that was like Abel, and said :-" The io continue to be. Creator of our father, who had respect unto thee, The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye and unto thy offering, wherefore hath he forsaken could reach it was desolate: the bare rocks faced thee ?'' Then the Shape shrieked a second time, and each other, and left a long and wide interval of thin rent his garment, and his naked skin was like the white sand. You might wander on and look round white sands beneath their feet; and he shrieked yet and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks, a third time, and threw liimself on his face upon the and discover nothing that acknowledged the influ- sand that was black with the shadow of the rock, ence of the seasons. There was no spring, no sum- and Cain and Enos sate beside him; the child by his mer, no autumn: and the winter's snow, that would right hand, and Cain by his left. They were all have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and three under the rock, and within the shadow. The scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised Shape that was like Abel raised himself up, and himself over this desert; but the huge serpent often spake to the child : " I know where the cold waters hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and are, but I may not drink; wherefore didst thou then the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within take away my pitcher ?" But Cain said, “ Didst thou the coils of the serpent. The pointed and shattered not find favor in the sight of the Lord thy God ?” summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude The Shape answered, “The Lord is God of the tirgicry of human concerns, and seemed to proph- living only, the dead have another God.” Then esy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, the child Enos lifted up his eyes and prayed; but and battlements, and ships with naked masts. As far Cain rejoiced secretly in his heart. Wretched shall from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the they be all the days of their mortal life," exclaimed brook, there was one rock by itself at a small dis- the Shape, “who sacrifice worthy and acceptable tance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated sacrifices to the God of the dead; but after death there perhaps by the groan which the Earth uttered their toil ceaseth. Woe is me, for I was well beloved when our first father fell. Before you approached, it by the God of the living, and cruel wert thou, o appeared to lie flat on the ground, but its base slant- my brother, who didst snatch me away from his : |
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