XI.

IX.

SAMSON AGONISTES.
If I'm designed yon lordling's slave, –

SAMSON.
By Nature's law designed, -
Why was an independent wish

A LITTLE onward lend thy guiding hand
E'er planted in my mind ?

To these dark steps, a little farther on;
If not, why am I subject to .

For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade:
His cruelty or scorn ?

There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Or why has man the will and power

Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
To make his fellow mourn ?

Daily in the common prison else enjoined me,

Where I a prisoner, chained, scarce freely draw X.

The air imprisoned also, close and damp, Yet let not this too much, my son,

Unwholesome draught; but here I feel amends, Disturb thy youthful breast :

The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and This partial view of human-kind

sweet, Is surely not the last !

With day-spring born : here leave me to respire. The poor, oppresséd, honest man

This day a solemn feast the people hold
Had never, sure, been born,

To Dagon, their sea-idol, and forbid
Had there not been some recompense Laborious works : unwillingly this rest
To comfort those that mourn !

Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek

This unfrequented place to find some ease, - ,
O Death! the poor man's dearest friend, Ease to the body some, none to the mind
The kindest and the best !

From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm Welcome the hour my aged limbs

Of hornets armed, no sooner found alone,
Are laid with thee at rest.

But rush upon me thronging, and present
The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow, Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
From pomp and pleasure torn;

0, wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold But 0, a blest relief to those .

Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
That weary-laden mouin !

Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burned,
As in a fiery column, charioting

His godlike presence, and from some great act
LOVE NOT.

Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race ?

Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed LOVE not, love not ! ye hapless sons of clay! | As of a person separate to God, Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flow- Designed for great exploits, if I must die ers, —

Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out, Things that are made to fade and fall away Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze ; Ere they have blossomed for a few short hours. To grind in brazen fetters under task Love not !

With this Heaven-gifted strength ? O glorious

strength, Love not ! the thing ye love may change ; Put to the labor of a beast, debased The rosy lip may cease to smile on you,

Lower than bondslave! Promise was that I The kindly-beaming eye grow cold and strange, Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver ; The heart still warmly beat, yet not be true. | Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Love not!

Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,

Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke !
Love not ! the thing you love may die, -
May perish from the gay and gladsome earth ;

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
The silent stars, the blue and smiling sky,

Blind among enemies, O, worse than chains, Beam o'er its grave, as once upon its birth.

Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age !
Love not!

Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, Love not! O warning vainly said

And all her various objects of delight In present hours as in years gone by!.

Annulled, which mightin part my grief have eased. Love flings a halo round the dear ones' head,

| Inferior to the vilest now become Faultless, immortal, till they change or die.

Of man or worm ; the vilest here excel me:
Love not !

They creep, yet see ; I dark in light exposed
CAROLINE NORTON. (To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,

ROBERT BURNS.

Within doors or without, still as a fool,

And must I never see thee more,
In power of others, never in my own;

My pretty, pretty, pretty lad ?
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. I will be free ! unbar the door !
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, I I am not mad; I am not mad!
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!

0, hark ! what mean those yells and cries? MILTON.

His chain some furious madman breaks ; He comes, — I see his glaring eyes ;

Now, now, my dungeon-grate he shakes. THE MANIAC.

Help! Help!- He's gone!-0, fearful woe,

Such screams to hear, such sights to see ! STAY, jailer, stay, and hear my woe!

My brain, my brain, — I know, I know
She is not mad who kneels to thee;

I am not mad, but soon shall be.
For what I'm now too well I know,
And what I was, and what should be.

Yes, soon ;– for, lo yon ! — while I speak, I'll rave no more in proud despair ;

Mark how yon demon's eyeballs glare ! My language shall be mild, though sad ; He sees me; now, with dreadful shriek, But yet I firmly, truly swear,

He whirls a serpent high in air. I am not mad, I am not mad!

Horror !— the reptile strikes his tooth

Deep in my heart, so crushed and sad; My tyrant husband forged the tale

Ay, laugh, ye fiends; - I feel the truth; Which chains me in this dismal cell ;

Your task is done, - I'M MAD! I'M MAD! My fate unknown my friends bewail,

GEORGE MONK LEWIS.
O jailer, haste that fate to tell !
O, haste my father's heart to cheer !
His heart at once 't will grieve and glad

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.
To know, though kept a captive here,
I am not mad, I am not mad!

Written in the spring of 1819, when suffering from physical de

pression, the precursor of his death, which happened soon after.] He smiles in scorn, and turns the key ;

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains". He quits the grate; I knelt in vain ;

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk ; His glimmering lamp still, still I see, 'T is gone! and all is gloom again.

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains Cold, bitter cold !-- No warmth ! no light!

| One minute past, and Lethe-ward had sunk,

'T is not through envy of thy happy lot, Life, all thy comforts once I had ; Yet here I'm chained, this freezing night,

But being too happy in thy happiness,

That thou, light-wingéd Dryad of the trees, Although not mad; no, no, — not mad!

In some melodious plot "T is sure some dream, some vision vain ; Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

What! 1, the child of rank and wealth, — Singest of Summer in full-throated ease.
Am I the wretch who clanks this chain,
Bereft of freedom, friends, and health ?

O for a draught of vintage
Ah ! while I dwell on blessings fled,

Cooled a long age in the deep-delvéd earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Which nevermore my heart must glad,
How aches my heart, how burns my head ;

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburned

mirth! But 't is not mad; no, 't is not mad!

O for a beaker full of the warm South, Hast thou, my child, forgot, ere this,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, A mother's face, a mother's tongue ?

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
She'll ne'er forget your parting kiss,

And purple-stainéd mouth, —
Nor round her neck how fast you clung;

That I might drink, and leave the world unNor how with her you sued to stay ;

seen, Nor how that suit your sire forbade ;

And with thee fade away into the forest dim. Nor how - I'll drive such thoughts away ; They'll make me mad, they'll make me mad!

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never His rosy lips, how sweet they smiled !

known, His mild blue eyes, how bright they shone ! | The weariness, the fever, and the fret : None ever bore a lovelier child,

Here, where men sit and hear each other And art thou now forever gone?

groan,

dies,

Where palsy shakes a few sad, last gray hairs, | Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hillside ; and now 't is buried deep Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

. In the next valley-glades : And leaden-eyed despairs,

Was it a vision or a waking dream ? Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Fled is that music, — do I wake or sleep? Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

JOHN KEATS. Away ! away! for I will fly to thee! Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

THE PALMER. But on the viewless wings of poesy, · Though the dull brain perplexes and retards ;

FROM "MARMION." Already with thee tender is the night,

WHENAS the Palmer came in hall, And haply the queen-moon is on her throne,

No lord, nor knight, was there more tall, Clustered around by all her starry fays;

Or had a statelier step withal,
But here there is no light,

Or looked more high and keen;
Save what from heaven is with the breezes

For no saluting did he wait, blown

But strode across the hall of state, Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy

And fronted Marmion where he sate, ways,

As he his peer had been. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

But his gaunt frame was worn with toil ; Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs ;

His cheek was sunk, alas the while ! Bat, in embalméd darkness guess each sweet

And when he struggled at a smile, Wherewith the seasonable month endows

His eye looked haggard wild : The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild, —

Poor wretch! the mother that him bare, White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine;

If she had been in presence there,
Fast-fading violets, coyered up in leaves;

In his wan face and sunburned hair
And mid-May's oldest child,

She had not known her child.
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

Danger, long travel, want, or woe, The murmurous haunt of bees on summer eves.

Soon change the form that best we know,

For deadly fear can time outgo, Darkling I listen ; and for many a time

And blanch at once the hair ; I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Hard toil can roughen form and face, Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme, And want can quench the eye's bright grace, To take into the air my quiet breath ;

Nor does old age a wrinkle trace, Now, more than ever, seems it rich to die,

More deeply than despair. To cease upon the midnight, with no pain,

Happy whom none of these befall,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad,

But this poor Palmer knew them all.
In such an ecstasy!

SIR WALTER SCOTT. Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in

vain, — To thy high requiem become a sod.

WOOLSEY'S FALL.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird !

FROM "HENRY VIII."
No hungry generations tread thee down ;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard

FAREWELL, a long farewell, to all my greatness ! In ancient days by emperor and clown :

This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope ; to-morrow blossoms, Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for

or| And bears his blushing honors thick upon him : home,

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ; She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

And-when he thinks, good easy man, full surely The same that ofttimes hath

His greatness is a ripening - nips his root, · Charmed magic casements opening on the foam

And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,

This many summers in a sea of glory; Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell,

But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride To toll me back from thee to my sole self! At length broke under me; and now has left me, Adieu ! the Fancy cannot cheat so well

Weary and old with service, to the mercy As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Tof a rude stream, that must forever hide me.

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