You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme ;-in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps ;-or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining the 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

66

Which Calderon over the desert flung

Of 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 aerial way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast

Out of the forest of the pathless past

These recollected pleasures?

You are now

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
Your old friend Godwin, greater none than he ;
Though fallen on evil times, yet will he stand,
Among the spirits of our age and land,

Before the dread tribunal of To-come

The foremost, whilst rebuke stands pale and dumb. 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 lustre 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 whom
This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;
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 learned 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 duns
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 said in book,
Except in Shakspeare's wisest tenderness.
You will see H—, 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,
And wisdom, you '11 cry out when you are bit.
He is a pearl within an oyster-shell,
One of the richest of the deep.

And there

Is English P- 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
Matched with his camelopard; his fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots;-let his page,
Which charms the chosen spirits of the age,
Fold itself up for a 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,
Are all combined in Horace Smith.-And these,
With some exceptions, which I need not teaze
Your patience by descanting on, are all

You and I know in London.

I recall

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,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,

And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast.
All this is beautiful in every land.

But what see you beside? A shabby stand

Of hackney-coaches-a brick house or wall

Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl

Of our unhappy politics;- -or worse-
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade,
You must accept in place of serenade—
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
To Henry, some unutterable thing.

I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root

Of the living stems who feed them; in whose bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance
Pale in the open moonshine; but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the Milky-way.
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,

Rude, but made sweet by distance ;—and a bird
Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet

I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour;-and then all is still :-
Now Italy or London, which you will!

Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have My house by that time turned into a grave Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care, And all the dreams which our tormentors are. O that Hunt and were there, With everything belonging to them fair!— We will have books; Spanish, Italian, Greek, And ask one week to make another week

As like his father, as I'm unlike mine.

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,-

Feasting on which we will philosophise.

And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we 'll talk;-what shall we talk about?
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant; as to nerves—
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me, when you are with me there.
And they shall never more sip laudanum
From Helicon or Himeros ;*—well, come,
And in spite of *** and of the devil,
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time;-till buds and flowers
Warn the obscure inevitable hours

Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew:

66

"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

* "Iuegos, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonyme of Love.