THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON.

ADVERTISEMENT.

In the June of 1797, some long-expected Friends paid a visit to the author's cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the garden-bower.

ELL, they are gone, and here must I re

main,

This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost

Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance, even when age
Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, mean-
while,

Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
And only speckled by the mid-day Sun;
Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge;-that branchless ash,
Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fanned by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,*

Of long lank weeds.] The Asplenium Scolopendrium, called in some countries the Adder's Tongue, in others the Hart's Tongue: but Withering gives the Adder's Tongue as the trivial name of the Ophioglossum only.

That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the blue clay-stone.

Now, my Friends emerge

Beneath the wide wide Heaven-and view again
The many-steepled track magnificent

Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,

With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles
Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hungered after Nature, many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my Friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when He makes
Spirits perceive His presence.

:

A delight

Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
This little lime-tree bower, have I not marked
Much that has soothed me. Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage; and I watched

Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree
Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps

Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass
Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue
Through the late twilight: and though now the bat
Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,
Yet still the solitary humble bee

Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure,
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to love and beauty! and sometimes
"Tis well to be bereft of promised good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming, its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had crossed the mighty orb's dilated glory,
While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,
Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of life.

*Flew creaking.] Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleasure to observe that Bartram had observed the same circumstance of the Savanna Crane. "When these birds move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate and regular; and even when at a considerable distance or high above us, we plainly hear the quillfeathers; their shafts and webs upon one another creak as the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea."

TO A FRIEND

WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION OF WRITING

NO MORE POETRY.

EAR Charles! whilst yet thou wert a
babe, I ween

That Genius plunged thee in that wizard
fount

Hight Castalie; and (sureties of thy faith)
That Pity and Simplicity stood by,

And promised for thee, that thou shouldst renounce
The world's low cares and lying vanities,

Stedfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse,
And washed and sanctified to Poesy.
Yes-thou wert plunged, but with forgetful hand
Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior son:
And with those recreant unbaptized heels
Thou'rt flying from thy bounden ministeries-
So sore it seems and burthensome a task

To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed!
For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed Boy,

*

And I have arrows mystically dipt,

Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead?
And shall he die unwept, and sink to earth
"Without the meed of one melodious tear?"
Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved bard,
Who to the "" Illustrious+ of his native Land
So properly did look for Patronage."

* Vide Pind. Olym. ii. 1. 150.

† Verbatim from Burns's dedication of his Poem to the Nobility and Gentry of the Caledonian Hunt.

Ghost of Mæcenas! hide thy blushing face!
They snatched him from the sickle and the plough—
Το guage ale-firkins.

Oh! for shame return!

On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian mount,
There stands a lone and melancholy tree,
Whose aged branches to the midnight blast
Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,
Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled,
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's tomb.
Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,
Pick the rank henbane and the dusky flowers
Of night-shade, or its red and tempting fruit.
These with stopped nostril and glove-guarded hand
Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine
The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility.

1796.

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION

OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN

INDIVIDUAL MIND.

RIEND of the wise! and teacher of the good!

Into my heart have I received that lay More than historic, that prophetic lay Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright) Of the foundations and the building up

Of a Human Spirit, thou hast dared to tell