Then, while the sailor, mid an open sea XIII. TO THE MOON, QUEEN of the stars! (RYDAL.) so gentle, so benign, That ancient fable did to thee assign, When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow Warned thee these upper regions to forego, Alternate empire in the shades below A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail From the close confines of a shadowy vale. Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene, Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen Through cloudy umbrage, well might that fair face, And all those attributes of modest grace, In days when fancy wrought unchecked by fear, Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere, To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear! O still belov'd (for thine, meek Power, are charms That fascinate the very babe in arms, While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright, Spreading his little palms in his glad mother's sight) O still belov'd, once worshipped! Time, that frowns In his destructive flight on earthly crowns, Spares thy mild splendour; still those far-shot beams Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays; And through dark trials still dost thou explore Thy way for increase punctual as of yore, When teeming Matrons-yielding to rude faith In mysteries of birth and life and death And painful struggle and deliverance - prayed Of thee to visit them with lenient aid. What though the rites be swept away, the fanes Extinct that echoed to the votive strains; Yet thy mild aspect does not, cannot, cease Love to promote and purity and peace; And Fancy, unreproved, even yet may trace Faint types of suffering in thy beamless face. Then, silent Monitress! let us - - not blind To worlds unthought of till the searching mind Of science laid them open to mankind Told, also, how the voiceless heavens declare Learn from thy course, where'er their own be tal XIV. How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high A brightening edge will indicate that soon XV. TO LUCCA GIORDANO. GIORDANO, verily thy pencil's skill RYDAL MOUNT, 1846. XVI. Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high, NOTES ΤΟ POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION. Is there not in this concurrence obviously casual SHAKSPEARE SPENSER WORDSWORTH, proof of a trait of the temperament of poetic genius? This simple stanza appears too to have touched a chord in the heart of Coleridge, who in one of his letters thus refers to it: "To have formed the habit of looking at every thing, not for what it is relative to the purposes and associations of men in general, but for the truths which it is suited to represent - to contemplate objects as words and pregnant symbols - the advantages of this are so many, and so important, so eminently calculated to excite and evolve the power of sound and connected reasoning, of distinct and clear conception, and of genial feeling, that there are few of Wordsworth's finest passages and who, of living poets, can lay claim to half the number? - that I repeat so often as that homely quatrain, "O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring; A tale in every thing." Note 2, p. 408. "Devotional Incitements." "Alas! the sanctities combined By art to unsensualize the mind Decay and languish; or as creeds H. R.] And humours change, are spurned like weeds :" [This subject is finely drawn by Daniel: "Sacred Religion! mother of form and fear! How gorgeously sometimes dost thou sit decked! How sweet perfumed thou art; how shining clear! Another time all plain, all quite thread-bare; Either truth, goodness, virtue are not still Or we our actions make them wait upon, Note 3, p. 424. "Lines on a Portrait." "They are in truth the Substance, we the Shadn [This incident is thus narrated by the author or thors of that 'rare' book 'The Doctor,' with one the rich comments, which distinguish the work: "When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at tian's famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Re tory there, an old Jeronimite said to him, 'I have s daily in sight of that picture for now nearly threeso years; during that time my companions have dropt one after another, all who were my Seniors, all w were my contemporaries, and many, or most of the who were younger than myself; more than one ge ration has passed away, and there the figures in t picture have remained unchanged! I look at them I sometimes think that they are the realities, and but shadows!' "I wish I could record the name of the Monk by who that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly pressed. "The shows of things are better than themselves." says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose n also, I could wish had been forthcoming; and the cla sical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles ̔Ομῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλὴν *Ειδωλ, ̓ ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ή κούφην σκιαν. These are reflections which should make us thisk "Of that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayd Upon the pillars of Eternity. That is contraire to mutability; For all that moveth doth in change delight: O that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabbath's sigh SPENSEL The Doctor," Vol. III. p. 235.-H. R. Note 4, p. 368. "Lines on a Portrait." gentle and unassuming. She is endeared too by a more than sisterly devotion, which paused only at his grave, to one of the most winning writers in the language, The following is one of the poems by Mr. Southey, whose intellectual efforts were probably best encourwar are referred to: -ON MY OWN MINIATURE PICTURE TAKEN AT TWO YEARS OF AGE. ⚫ And I was once like this? that glowing cheek To their last home; and some estranged in heart, I march myself in vain, and find no trace That thou didst love each wild and wond'rous tale Stray in the pleasant paths of POESY, And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd, I cannot deny myself the gratification of introducing into this group of poems suggested by paintings anther, also from the pen of one of Mr. Wordsworth's fends-one, to whom I am confident he would dein seeing any tribute paid in connection with his writings. I have therefore less hesitation in inwing here the following lines by Mary Lamb, includad among the poems of her brother, the late Charles laxa and at the same time of using these pages to press a grateful admiration of an individual who has Laited one of the most beautiful examples of the delirary of female authorship to be met with in the records of English literature. In a few unambitious poems minred among her brother's-as indeed her very existence to have been blended with his-and in that most ceful children's classic, Mrs. Leicester's School', there are tokens of a spirit as lofty in its purity as it is 3E aged by her who cheered the loneliness of his hearth. LINES SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF TWO FEMALES, "The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears. "Ode to Duty." "The genial sense of Youth:" [-"diffidence or veneration. Such virtues are the sacred attributes of Youth: its appropriate calling is not to distinguish in the fear of being deceived or degraded, not to analyze with scrupulous minuteness, but to accumulate in genial confidence; its instinct, its safety, its benefit, its glory, is to love, to admire, to feel, and to labour." COLERIDGE: "Th› Friend," Vol. III. p. 62. — H. R.] Note 6, p. 426. "Ode to Duty. "And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!" ["A living Teacher, to be spoken of with gratitude as of a benefactor, having, in his character of philosophical Poet, thought of morality as implying in its essence voluntary obedience, and producing the effect of order, transfers, in the transport of imagination, the law of moral to physical natures, and having contemplated, through the medium of that order, all modes of existence as subservient to one spirit, concludes his address to the power of Duty in the following words: To humbler functions, awful Power! And in the light of Truth thy Bondman let me live!"-W. W 4 37 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. EPISTLE TO SIR GEORGE HOWLAND BEAUMONT, BART. FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet lake, What on the plain we have of warmth and light, Where strength has been the builder's only care, Or, pilgrim-like, on forest moss reclined, What shall I treat of? News from Mona's Isie! On that proud pageant now at hand or past, -This dwelling's inmate more than three weeks' space Soon as the herring-shoals at distance shine And oft a prisoner in the cheerless place, A bridge to copy, or to paint a mill, Tired of my books, a scanty company! Though these dull hours (mine is it, or their shame!) Like beds of moonlight shifting on the brine. Mona from our abode is daily seen, Let more substantial themes the pen engage, |