III.

ON HEARING THE SHOUTS OF THE PEOPLE AT THE
READING ELECTION IN THE SUMMER 1826,
AT A DISTANCE.

HARK! from the distant town the long acclaim
On the charm'd silence of the evening breaks
With startling interruption;-yet it wakes
Thought of that voice of never-dying fame
Which on my boyish meditation came
Here, at an hour like this;-my soul partakes
A moment's gloom, that yon fierce contest slakes
Its thirst of high emprise and glorious aim:
Yet wherefore? Feelings that from Heaven are shed
Into these tenements of flesh, ally

Themselves to earthly passions, lest, unfed
By warmth of human sympathies, they die;
And shall earth's fondest aspirations dead-
Fulfil their first and noblest prophecy.

IV.

VIEW OF THE VALLEY OF READING.

FROM TILEHURST, AT THE CLOSE OF THE SAME ELECTION.

Too long have I regarded thee, fair vale,
But as a scene of struggle which denies

All pensive joy; and now with childhood's eyes
In old tranquillity, I bid thee hail;

And welcome to my soul thy own' sweet gale,
Which wakes from loveliest woods the melodies
Of long-lost fancy-Never may there fail
Within thy circlet, spirits born to rise
In honour-whether won by Freedom rude
In her old Spartan majesty, or wrought
With partial, yet no base regard, to brood
O'er usages by time with sweetness fraught;
Be thou their glory-tinted solitude,

The cradle and the home of generous thought!

V.

TO THE THAMES AT WESTMINSTER,

IN RECOLLECTION OF THE BANKS OF THE SAME RIVER AT CAVERSHAM, NEAR READING.

With no cold admiration do I gaze

Upon thy pomp of waters, matchless stream!
But home-sick fancy kindles with the beam
That on thy lucid bosom faintly plays;
And glides delighted through thy crystal ways,
Till on her eye those wave-fed poplars gleam,
Beneath whose shade her first ethereal maze
She fashion'd; where she traced in clearest dream
Thy mirror'd course of wood-enshrined repose
Besprent with island haunts of spirits bright;
And widening on-till, at the vision's close,
Great London, only then a name of might
For childish thought to build on, proudly rose
A rock-throned city clad in heavenly light.

VI.

TO THE SAME RIVER.

I MAY not emulate their lofty aim,
Who, in divine imagination, bold,

With mighty hills and streams communion hold,
As living friends; and scarce I dare to claim
Acquaintance with thee in thy scenes of fame,
Wealthiest of Rivers! though in days of old
I loved thee where thy waters sylvan roll'd,
And in some sense would deem thee yet the same.
So love perversely cleaves to some old mate
Estranged by fortune; in his very pride
Seems lifted; waxes in his greatness great;
And silent hails the lot it prophesied,-
Content to think in manhood's palmy state
Some lingering traces of the child abide.

VII.

TO MR. MACREADY,

ON HIS PERFORMANCE OF WERNER, IN LORD BYRON'S TRAGEDY OF THAT NAME.

O LEARNED in Affection's thousand ways!

I thought thy art had proved its happiest power,
When thou didst bend above the opening flower
Of sweet Virginia's beauty, and with praise
Measured in words but fineless in the gaze
Of the proud sire, her gentle secret won:
Or when the Patriot Archer's hardy Son
Was school'd by doting sternness for the hour
Of glorious peril; but the just designs
Were ready; now thy soul's affections glow
By thy own genius train'd, through frigid lines,
And make a scorner's bloodless fancy show,
When love disdain'd round its cold idol twines,
How mighty are its weakness and its woe!