British melodies, extracts from the modern poets [signed J.H.R.].

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Page 41 - ON Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. But Linden saw another sight, When the drum beat, at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery.
Page 222 - The picture of the mind revives again : While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years.
Page 222 - For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all. — I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80 That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page 240 - Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Page 28 - We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him — But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
Page 96 - Nelson and the North Sing the glorious day's renown, When to battle fierce came forth All the might of Denmark's crown, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand In a bold determined hand, And the Prince of all the land Led them on.
Page 99 - Tis a note of enchantment ; what ails her ? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail ; And a single small Cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.
Page 42 - Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun, Where furious Frank and fiery Hun Shout in their sulphurous canopy. The combat deepens. On, ye brave, Who rush to glory, or the grave ! Wave, Munich ! all thy banners wave, And charge with all thy chivalry. Few, few shall part where many meet ! The snow shall be their winding-sheet ; And every turf beneath their feet Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.
Page 225 - And these my exhortations ! Nor, perchance, If I should be, where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence, wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together ; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came, Unwearied in that service : rather say With warmer love, oh ! with far deeper zeal Of holier love.
Page 2 - By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain, At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw; And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

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