Blind dreamer! Thinkest thou Fancy e'er
Could frame a form so real and dear?
No goddess this, with zone and star,
A baptized beauty-nobler far:
A wife a word that's much to me,
A mother-what can brighter be?
Can Fancy, in her happiest mood,
Like Nature work in flesh and blood?
Create those fair ones who preside

In household state and matron pride;
Who lull-in that dear duty blest,
The baby, happy at the breast?

Or when man's chafed, can smile to flight
Wrath's darkness, and restore his light?
Or when he's sick, can sit and shed
All wedlock's comfort round his bed?
Or rise-should glory gild his name,
And share his love and feel his fame?
Or live-should fortune frown, as one
Who ne'er had wealth or splendour known:
And trim his home and gently share
His woes and make his peace her prayer?

Woe worth thee, Fancy! who shall meet
Of thine aught so supremely sweet:
O'er others spread thy splendid wings,
I'm earthly, and love mortal things.

ED.

THE WARRIOR.

His foot's in the stirrup,

His hands on the mane

He is up and away,

Shall we see him again? He thinks on his ladye-love,

Little he heeds

The levelling of lances

Or rushing of steeds:

He thinks on his true love,

And rides in an armour

Of proof woven sure

By the spells of his charmer.

How young and how comely— Lo! look on him now,

How stedfast his eye

And how tranquil his brow;

The gift of his ladye-love

Glitters full gay,

As down, like the eagle,

He pours on his prey.

Go, sing it in song;

And go, tell it in story— He went in his strength

And returned in his glory.

EPISTLE FROM ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.

TO ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

WELL, Heaven be thanked! friend Allan, here I am,
Once more, to that dear dwelling place returned,
Where I have passed the whole mid stage of life,
Not idly, certes, .. not unworthily,..

So let me hope; where Time upon my head
Hath laid his frore and monitory hand;

And when this poor frail earthly tabernacle
Shall be dissolved. . (it matters not how soon

Or late, in God's good time ;) . . where I would fain
Be gathered to my children, earth to earth.

Needless it were to say how willingly

I bade the huge metropolis farewell;

Its dust and dirt and din and smoke and smut,
Thames' water, paviours' ground, and London sky!

Weary of hurried days and restless nights;

Watchmen, whose office is to murder sleep,

When sleep might else have "weighed one's eyelids down;"

Rattle of carriages, and roll of carts,

And tramp of iron hoofs; and worse than all,

(Confusion being worse confounded then

With coachmen's quarrels, and with footmen's shouts)

My next door neighbours, in a street not yet
Macadamized (me miserable!) at home !

For then had we, from midnight until morn,
House-quakes, street thunders, and door batteries.
(0 Government, in thy wisdom and thy wants,
Tax knockers! in compassion to the sick
And those whose sober habits are not yet
Inverted, topsy-turvying night and day,

Tax them more heavily than thou hast charged
Armorial bearings and bepowdered pates!)

Escaping from all this, the very whirl

Of mail-coach wheels, bound outwards from Lad Lane, Was peace and quietness; three hundred miles

Of homeward way, seemed to the body rest,

And to the mind repose.

Donne did not hate

More perfectly that city. Not for all

Its social, all its intellectual joys,

(Which having touched, I may not condescend
To name aught else the demon of the place,
Might as his lure hold forth); not even for these
Would I forego gardens and green field walks,
And hedgerow trees and stiles and shady lanes,
And orchards, . . were such ordinary scenes
Alone to me accessible, as those

Wherein I learnt in infancy to love

The sights and sounds of Nature; wholesome sights, Gladdening the eye that they refresh; and sounds,

Which when from life and happiness they spring,
Bear with them to the yet unhardened heart
A sense that thrills its cords of sympathy;
Or, if proceeding from insensate things,
Give to tranquillity a voice wherewith
To woo the ear and win the soul attuned.
Oh not for all that London might bestow,
Would I renounce the genial influences
And thoughts and feelings, to be found where'er
We breathe beneath the open sky, and see
Earth's liberal bosom. Judge then from thyself,
Allan, true child of Scotland; thou who art

So oft in spirit on thy native hills,

And yonder Solway shores; a poet thou,
Judge from thyself how strong the ties which bind
A poet to his home, when.. making thus
Large recompense for all that, haply, else

Might seem perversely or unkindly done,. .
Fortune hath set his happy habitacle

Among the ancient hills, near mountain streams

And lakes pellucid; in a land sublime

And lovely, as those regions of romance,

Where his young fancy in its day dreams roamed,

Expatiating in forests wild and wide,

Loegrian, or of dearest Faery land.

Yet, Allan, of the cup of social joy

No man drinks freelier; nor with heartier thirst,

Nor keener relish, where I see around

Faces which I have known and loved so long,