Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course?, So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake, Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale! O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink!
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered, and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded-and the silence came-
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!

Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element !
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,

Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain ! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low

In adoration, upward from thy base,

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise;

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

But when I told the cruel scorn
Which crazed this bold and lovely knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;

But sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once,

In green and sunny glade,

There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a fiend,
This miserable knight!

And that, unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The lady of the land;

And how she wept and clasped his knees,
And how she tended him in vain-
And ever strove to expiate

The scorn that crazed his brain.

And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest leaves
A dying man he lay;

His dying words-but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve-
The music and the doleful tale,

The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng;
And gentle wishes long subdued,

Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,

She blushed with love and virgin shame; And like the murmur of a dream

I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved, she stept aside;
As conscious of my look she stept-
Then suddenly, with timorous eye,

She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms, She pressed me with a meek embrace, And bending back her head, looked up

And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly 'twas a bashful art, That I might rather feel than see

The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears; and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride; And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous bride!

[From 'Frost at Midnight.']

Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings heard in this deep calm Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and, by giving, making it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the evedrops fall,
Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon,

Love, Hope, and Patience in Education.
O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule,
And sun thee in the light of happy faces;

Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces,
And in thine own heart let them first keep school.
For as old Atlas on his broad neck places
Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it, so
Do these upbear the little world below
Of education-Patience, Love, and Hope.
Methinks I see them grouped in seemly show,
The straitened arms upraised, the palms aslope,
And robes that touching as adown they flow,
Distinctly blend, like snow embossed in snow.
O part them never! If Hope prostrate lie,
Love too will sink and die.
But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive
From her own life that Hope is yet alive;
And bending o'er, with soul-transfusing eyes,
And the soft murmurs of the mother-dove,
Woos back the fleeting spirit, and half supplies;
Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love.
Yet haply there will come a weary day,

When overtasked at length
Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way.
Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength,
Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loath,
And both supporting, does the work of both.

Youth and Age.

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding like a bee-
Both were mine! Life went a-Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young? Ah, woful when!
Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er airy cliffs and glittering sands,
How lightly then it flashed along :
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide,

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind or weather, When Youth and I lived in 't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O! the joys that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah, woful ere,

Which tells me Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known that thou and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond conceit-
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled,
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size;
But springtide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought; so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.

Dewdrops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve!
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve,
When we are old:

That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking leave;
Like some poor nigh-related guest,
That may not rudely be dismissed,
Yet hath outstayed his welcome while,
And tells the jest without the smile.

REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.

The REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES enjoys the distinction of having 'delighted and inspired' the genius of Coleridge. His first publication was a small volume of sonnets published in 1789, to which additions were made from time to time, and in 1805 the collection had reached a ninth edition. Various other poetical works proceeded from the pen of Mr Bowles: Coombe Ellen and St Michael's Mount, 1798; Battle of the Nile, 1799; Sorrows of Switzerland, 1801; Spirit of Discovery, 1805; The Missionary of the Andes, 1815; Days Departed, 1828; St John in Patmos, 1833; &c. None of these works can be said to have been popular, though all of them contain passages of fine descriptive and meditative verse. Mr Bowles had the true poetical feeling and imagination, refined by classical taste and acquirements. Coleridge was one of his earliest and most devoted admirers. A volume of Mr Bowles's sonnets falling into the hands of the enthusiastic young poet, converted him from some 'perilous errors' to the love of a style of poetry at once tender and manly. The pupil outstripped his master in richness and luxuriance, though not in elegance or correctness. Mr Bowles, in 1806, edited an edition of Pope's works, which, being attacked by Campbell in his Specimens of the Poets, led to a literary controversy, in which Lord Byron and others took a part. Bowles insisted strongly on descriptive poetry forming an indispensable part of the poetical character; 'every rock, every leaf, every diversity of hue in nature's variety.' Campbell, on the other hand, objected to this Dutch minuteness and perspicacity of colouring, and claimed for the poet (what Bowles never could have denied) nature, moral as well as external, the poetry of the passions, and the lights and shades of human manners. In reality, Pope occupied a middle position, inclining to the artificial side of life. Mr

Bremhill Rectory, in Wiltshire.

which George Herbert and Norris of Bemerton had also been incumbents), and from 1828 till his death in 1850, he was a canon residentiary of Salisbury Cathedral.

Sonnets. To Time.

O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay
Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence-
Lulling to sad repose the weary sense-
The faint pang stealest, unperceived, away;
On thee I rest my only hope at last,

And think when thou hast dried the bitter tear
That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,
I may look back on every sorrow past,
And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile-

As some lone bird, at day's departing hour, Sings in the sunbeam of the transient shower, Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while : Yet, ah! how much must that poor heart endure Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!

Winter Evening at Home.

Fair Moon! that at the chilly day's decline

Of sharp December, through my cottage pane Dost lovely look, smiling, though in thy wane; In thought, to scenes serene and still as thine, Wanders my heart, whilst I by turns survey Thee slowly wheeling on thy evening way; And this my fire, whose dim, unequal light,

Just glimmering bids each shadowy image fall Sombrous and strange upon the darkening wall, Ere the clear tapers chase the deepening night! Yet thy still orb, seen through the freezing haze, Shines calm and clear without; and whilst I gaze, I think around me in this twilight gloom,

I but remark mortality's sad doom;
Whilst hope and joy, cloudless and soft, appear
In the sweet beam that lights thy distant sphere.

Hope.

As one who, long by wasting sickness worn,
Weary has watched the lingering night, and heard,
Heartless, the carol of the matin bird
Salute his lonely porch, now first at morn
Goes forth, leaving his melancholy bed;

He the green slope and level meadow views,
Delightful bathed in slow ascending dews;
Or marks the clouds that o'er the mountain's head,
In varying forms, fantastic wander white;

Or turns his ear to every random song
Heard the green river's winding marge along,
The whilst each sense is steeped in still delight:
With such delight o'er all my heart I feel

Sweet Hope! thy fragrance pure and healing incense steal.

[South American Scenery.]

Beneath aërial cliffs and glittering snows,
The rush-roof of an aged warrior rose,
Chief of the mountain tribes; high overhead,
The Andes, wild and desolate, were spread,
Where cold Sierras shot their icy spires,
And Chillan trailed its smoke and smouldering fires.
A glen beneath-a lonely spot of rest-
Hung, scarce discovered, like an eagle's nest.

Summer was in its prime; the parrot flocks
Darkened the passing sunshine on the rocks;
The chrysomel and purple butterfly,

Amid the clear blue light, are wandering by;
The humming-bird, along the myrtle bowers,
With twinkling wing is spinning o'er the flowers;
The woodpecker is heard with busy bill,
The mock-bird sings-and all beside is still.
And look! the cataract that bursts so high,
As not to mar the deep tranquillity,
The tumult of its dashing fall suspends,
And, stealing drop by drop, in mist descends;
Through whose illumined spray and sprinkling dews,
Shine to the adverse sun the broken rainbow hues.

Checkering, with partial shade, the beams of noon,
And arching the gray rock with wild festoon,
Here, its gay network and fantastic twine,
The purple cogul threads from pine to pine,
And oft, as the fresh airs of morning breathe,
Dips its long tendrils in the stream beneath.

There, through the trunks, with moss and lichens white
The sunshine darts its interrupted light,
And 'mid the cedar's darksome bough, illumes,
With instant touch, the lori's scarlet plumes.

Sun-dial in a Churchyard.

So passes, silent o'er the dead, thy shade,

Brief Time! and hour by hour, and day by day, The pleasing pictures of the present fade,

And like a summer vapour steal away.

And have not they, who here forgotten lie-
Say, hoary chronicler of ages past-
Once marked thy shadow with delighted eye,
Nor thought it fled-how certain and how fast?

Since thou hast stood, and thus thy vigil kept,
Noting each hour, o'er mouldering stones beneath
The pastor and his flock alike have slept,
And dust to dust' proclaimed the stride of death.

Another race succeeds, and counts the hour, Careless alike; the hour still seems to smile, As hope, and youth, and life, were in our power; So smiling, and so perishing the while.

I heard the village-bells, with gladsome soundWhen to these scenes a stranger I drew nearProclaim the tidings of the village round,

While memory wept upon the good man's bier.

Even so, when I am dead, shall the same bells Ring merrily when my brief days are gone; While still the lapse of time thy shadow tells, And strangers gaze upon my humble stone!

Enough, if we may wait in calm content

The hour that bears us to the silent sod; Blameless improve the time that Heaven has lent, And leave the issue to thy will, O God.

The Greenwich Pensioners.

When evening listened to the dripping oar,
Forgetting the loud city's ceaseless roar,

By the green banks, where Thames, with conscious pride,

Reflects that stately structure on his side,

Within whose walls, as their long labours close,
The wanderers of the ocean find repose,

We wore in social ease the hours away,
The passing visit of a summer's day.

Whilst some to range the breezy hill are gone,

I lingered on the river's marge alone;
Mingled with groups of ancient sailors gray,
And watched the last bright sunshine steal away.

As thus I mused amidst the various train
Of toil-worn wanderers of the perilous main,
Two sailors-well I marked them (as the beam
Of parting day yet lingered on the stream,
And the sun sunk behind the shady reach)-
Hastened with tottering footsteps to the beach.
The one had lost a limb in Nile's dread fight;
Total eclipse had veiled the other's sight
For ever! As I drew more anxious near,
I stood intent, if they should speak, to hear;
But neither said a word! He who was blind
Stood as to feel the comfortable wind
That gently lifted his gray hair: his face
Seemed then of a faint smile to wear the trace.

The other fixed his gaze upon the light
Parting; and when the sun had vanished quite,
Methought a starting tear that Heaven might bless,
Unfelt, or felt with transient tenderness,
Came to his aged eyes, and touched his cheek!
And then, as meek and silent as before,
Back hand-in-hand they went, and left the shore.

As they departed through the unheeding crowd,
A caged bird sung from the casement loud;
And then I heard alone that blind man say,
"The music of the bird is sweet to-day!'
I said, 'O Heavenly Father! none may know
The cause these have for silence or for woe!'
Here they appear heart-stricken or resigned
Amidst the unheeding tumult of mankind.

There is a world, a pure unclouded clime,
Where there is neither grief, nor death, nor time!
Nor loss of friends! Perhaps, when yonder bell
Beat slow, and bade the dying day farewell,
Ere yet the glimmering landscape sunk to night,
They thought upon that world of distant light;
And when the blind man, lifting light his hair,
Felt the faint wind, he raised a warmer prayer;
Then sighed, as the blithe bird sung o'er his head,
'No morn will shine on me till I am dead!'

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

One of the most voluminous and learned authors of this period was ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D., the poet-laureate. A poet, scholar, antiquary, critic, and historian, Mr Southey wrote more than even Scott, and he is said to have burned more verses

Robert Southey

between his twentieth and thirtieth year than he published during his whole life. His time was entirely devoted to literature. Every day and hour had its appropriate and select task; his library was his world within which he was content to range, and his books were his most cherished and constant companions. In one of his poems, he says:

My days among the dead are passed;
Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,

The mighty minds of old:

My never-failing friends are they,

With whom I converse night and day.

It is melancholy to reflect, that for nearly three years preceding his death, Mr Southey sat among his books in hopeless vacuity of mind, the victim of disease. This distinguished author was a native of Bristol, the son of a respectable linen-draper of the same name, and was born on the 12th of August 1774. He was indebted to a maternal uncle for most of his education. In his fourteenth year he was placed at Westminster School, where he remained between three and four years, but having in conjunction with several of his school-associates set on foot a periodical entitled The Flagellant, in which a sarcastic article on corporal punishment appeared, the head-master, Dr Vincent, commenced a prosecution against the publisher, and Southey was compelled to leave the school. This harsh exercise of authority probably had considerable effect in disgusting the young enthusiast with the institutions of his country, against which he soon arrayed

himself. In November 1792 he was entered of Baliol College, Oxford. He had then distinguished himself by poetical productions, and had formed literary plans enough for many years or many lives. In political opinions he was a democrat; in religious, a Unitarian; consequently he could not take orders in the church, or look for any official appointment. He fell in with Coleridge, as already related, and joined in the plan of emigration. His academic career was abruptly closed in 1794. The same year, he published a volume of poems in conjunction with Mr Robert Lovell, under the names of Moschus and Bion. About the same time he composed his poem of Wat Tyler, a revolutionary brochure, which was long afterwards published surreptitiously by a knavish bookseller to annoy its author. 'In my youth,' he says, 'when my stock of knowledge consisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Roman history, as is acquired in the course of a scholastic education; when my heart was full of poetry and romance, and Lucan and Akenside were at my tongue's end, I fell into the political opinions which the French revolution was then scattering throughout Europe; and following those opinions with ardour wherever they led, I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to the inequalities of property, and those more fearful distinctions which the want of moral and intellectual culture occasions between man and man. At that time, and with those opinions, or rather feelings (for their root was in the heart, and not in the understanding), I wrote Wat Tyler, as one who was impatient of all the oppressions that are done under the sun. The subject was injudiciously chosen, and it was treated, as might be expected, by a youth of twenty in such times, who regarded only one side of the question.' The poem, indeed, is a miserable production, and was harmless from its very inanity. Full of the same political sentiments and ardour, Southey, in 1793, had composed his Joan of Arc, an epic poem, displaying fertility of language and boldness of imagination, but at the same time diffuse in style, and in many parts wild and incoherent. In imitation of Dante, the young poet conducted his heroine in a dream to the abodes of departed spirits, and dealt very freely with the 'murderers of mankind,' from Nimrod the mighty hunter, down to the hero conqueror of Agincourt:

A huge and massy pile-
Massy it seemed, and yet in every blast
As to its ruin shook. There, porter fit,
Remorse for ever his sad vigils kept.
Pale, hollow-eyed, emaciate, sleepless wretch,
Inly he groaned, or, starting, wildly shrieked,
Aye as the fabric, tottering from its base,
Threatened its fall-and so, expectant still,
Lived in the dread of danger still delayed.

They entered there a large and lofty dome,
O'er whose black marble sides a dim drear light
Struggled with darkness from the unfrequent lamp.
Enthroned around, the Murderers of Mankind-
Monarchs, the great! the glorious! the august!
Each bearing on his brow a crown of fire-
Sat stern and silent. Nimrod, he was there,
First king, the mighty hunter; and that chief
Who did belie his mother's fame, that so
He might be called young Ammon. In this court
Cæsar was crowned-accursed liberticide;
And he who murdered Tully, that cold villain
Octavius-though the courtly minion's lyre
Hath hymned his praise, though Maro sung to him,
And when death levelled to original clay
The royal carcass, Flattery, fawning low,
Fell at his feet, and worshipped the new god.