A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A sliding car indebted to no wheels,
But urged by storms along its slippery way; I love thee, all uplovely as thou seem'st,
And dreaded as thou art! Thon hold'st the sun A prisoner in the yet undawning east, Shortening his journey between morn and noon, And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, Down to the rosy west; but kindly still Compensating his loss with added hours Of social converse and instructive ease, And gathering, at short notice, in one group The family dispersed, and fixing thought Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
Come, Evening, once again, season of peace; Return, sweet Evening, and continue long Methinks I see thee in the streaky west, With matron-step, slow-moving while the night Treads on thy sweeping train; one haud employed In letting fall the curtain of repose
On bird and beast, the other charged for man With sweet oblivion of the cares of day: Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid, Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems, A star or two just twinkling on thy brow Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine No less than hers: not worn indeed on high With ostentations pageantry, but set With modest grandeur in thy purple zone, Resplendent less, but of an ampler round. Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm, Or make me so. Composure is thy gift; And whether I devote thy gentle hours To books, to music, or the poet's toil;
To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit;
Or twining silken threads round ivory reels,
When they command whom man was born to please,
I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still."
Love of Nature.-From the same.
"Tis born with all: the love of Nature's works Is an ingredient in the compound, man, Infused at the creation of the kind.
And, though the Almighty Maker has throughout Discriminated each from each, by strokes
And touches of his hand, with so much art
Diversified, that two were never found
Twins at all points-yet this obtains in all,
That all discern a beauty in his works.
And all can taste them: minds that have been formed
And tutored, with a relish more exact,
But none without some relish, none unmoved.
It is a flame that dies not even there,
Where nothing feeds it: neither business, crowds,
Nor habits of luxurious city life,
Whatever else they smother of true worth
In human bosoms, quench it or abate. The villas with which London stands begirt, Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads, Prove it. A breath of unadulterate air,
The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer The citizen, and brace his languid frame! Even in the stifling bosom of the town,
A garden in which nothing thrives, has charms That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint, Of nightshade or valerian, grace the wall He cultivates. These serve him with a hint That Nature lives; that sight-refreshing green Is still the livery she delights to wear,
Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole. What are the casements lined with creeping herbs, The prouder sashes fronted with a range
Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed,
The Frenchman's darling?* Are they not all proofs That man, immured in cities, still retains
His inborn inextinguishable thirst
Of rural scenes, compensating his loss
By supplemental shifts the best he may?
The most unfurnished with the means of life, And they that never pass their brick-wall bounds To range the fields, and treat their lungs with air, Yet feel the burning instinct; overhead Suspend their crazy boxes, planted thick, And watered duly. There the pitcher stands A fragment, and the spoutless tea-pot there; Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets The country, with what ardour he contrives A peep at nature, when he can no more.
English Liberty.-From the same.
The king who loves the law, respects his bounds, And reigns content within them; him we serve i Freely and with delight, who leaves us free: But recollecting still that he is man,
We trust him not too far. King though he be, And king in England too, he may be weak, And vain enough to be ambitious still; May exercise amiss his proper powers, Or covet more than freemen choose to grant: Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours To administer, to guard, to adorn the state, But not to warp or change it. We are his To serve him nobly in the common cause, True to the death, but not to be his slaves. Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love Of kings, between your loyalty and ours. We love the man, the paltry pageant you; We the chief patron of the commonwealth, You the regardless author of its woes; We, for the sake of liberty, a king,
You chains and bondage for a tyrant's sake; Our love is principle, and has its root
In reason, is judicious, manly, free;
Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod, And licks the foot that treads it in the dust. Were kingship as true treasure as it seems, Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish, I would not be a king to be beloved
Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise, Where love is mere attachment to the throne, Not to the man who fills it as he ought. "Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes
Their progress in the road of science, blinds The eysight of discovery, and begets
In those that suffer it a sordid mind, Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit
To be the tenant of man's noble form.
Thee therefore still, blameworthy as thou art, With all thy loss of empire, and though squeezed By public exigence, till annual food
Fails for the craving hunger of the state, Thee I account still happy, and the chief Among the nations, seeing thou art free. My native nook of earth! thy clime is rude, Replete with vapours, and disposes much All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine Thine unadulterate manners are less soft And plausible than social life requires, And thou hast need of discipline and art To give thee what politer France receives From nature's bounty-that humane address And sweetness, without which no pleasure is In converse, either starved by cold reserve, Or, flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl. Yet being free, I love thee: for the sake Of that one feature can be well content, Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art, To seek no sublunary rest beside.
But once enslaved, farewell! I could endure Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home, Where I am free by birthright, not at all. Then what were left of roughness in the grain Of British natures, wanting its excuse That it belongs to freemen, would disgust
And shock me. I should then with double pain Feel all the rigour of thy fickle clime;
And, if I must bewail the blessing lost,
For which our Hampdens and our Sidneys bled, I would at least bewail it under skies
Milder, among a people less austere ;
In scenes which, having never known me free,
Would not reproach me with the loss I felt,
Do I forebode impossible events,
And tremble at vain dreams? Heaven grant I may !!
But the age of virtuous politics is past,
And we are deep in that of cold pretence.
Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere,
And we too wise to trust them. He that takes
Deep in his soft credulity the stamp
Designed by loud declaimers on the part
Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust,
Incurs derision for his easy faith,
And lack of knowledge, and with cause enough: For when was public virtue to be found Where private was not? Can he love the whole Who loves no part?-he be a nation's friend, Who is in truth the friend of no man there? Can he be strenuous in his country's cause Who slights the charities, for whose dear sake That country, if at all, must be beloved?
From Yardley Oak.'*
Relic of ages!-could a mind, imbued
With truth from heaven, created thing adore, I might with reverence kneel and worship thee.. Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay, Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down The yet close-folded latitude of boughs, And all thy embryo vastness, at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains, Beneath thy parent tree, mellowed the soil Designed thy cradle; and a skipping deer, With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared The soft receptacle in which, secure,
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.. Who lived when thou wast such? Oh, couldst thou speak, As in Dodona once thy kindred trees Oracular, I would not curious ask The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past. By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, The clock of history, facts and events Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts. Recovering, and misstated setting right- Desperate attempt, till trees shall speak again! What exhibitions various hath the world Witnessed of mutability in all
That we account most durable below! Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them. Skies uncertain, now the heat Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds- Calm and alternate storm, moisture and drought, Invigorate by turns the springs of life
In all that live, plant, animal, and man, And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads, Fine passing thought, even in her coarsest works, Delight in agitation, yet sustain
The force that agitates, not unimpaired;
But worn by frequent impulse, to the cause Of their best tone their dissolution owe.
Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still The great and little of thy lot, thy growth From almost nullity into a state
Of matchless grandeur. and declension thence, Slow, into such magnificent decay.
Time was, when, settling on thy leaf, a fly
A tree in Yardley Chace, near Olney, said to have been planted by Judith, daughter
of William the Conqueror, and wife of Earl Waltheof.
Could shake thee to the root-and time has been When tempest could not. At thy firmest age Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents,
That might have ribbed the sides and planked the deck Of some flagged admiral; and tortuous arms, The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present To the four-quartered winds, robust and bold, Warped into tough knee-timber, many a load! But the axe spared thee. In those thriftier days Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply The bottomless demands of contest waged For senatorial honours. Thus to time The task was left to whittle thee away With his sly scythe, whose ever-nibbling edge, Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more, Disjoining from the rest, has, unobserved, Achieved a labour, which had, far and wide, By man performed, made all the forest ring. Embowelled now, and of thy ancient self Possessing nought but the scooped rind-that seems An huge throat calling to the clouds for drink, Which it would give in rivulets to thy root- Thou temptest none, but rather much forbiddest The feller's toil, which thou couldst ill requite. Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock, A quarry of stout spurs and knotted fangs, Which crooked into a thousand whimsies, clasp The stubborn soil, and hold thee still erect.
So stands a kingdom, whose foundation yet Fails not, in virtue and in wisdom laid, Though all the superstructure, by the tooth Pulverized of venality, a shell
Stands now, and semblance only of itself!
The Diverting History of John Gilpin.-Showing how he went farther than he intended, and came safe home again.
John Gilpin was a citizen
Of credit and renown,
A train-band captain eke was he Of famous London town.
John Gilpin's spouse said to her dear; "Though wedded we have been These twice ten tedious years, yet we No holiday have seen.
To-morrow is our wedding-day, And we will then repair Unto the Bell at Edmonton All in a chaise and pair.
'My sister, and my sister's child, Myself and children three,
Will fill the chaise; so you must ride On horseback after we.'
He soon replied: 'I do admire Of womankind but one,
And you are she, my dearest dear; Therefore it shall be done.
'I am a linen-draper bold, As all the world doth know, And my good friend the calender Will lend his horse to go.'
Quoth Mrs. Gilpin: That's well said; And for that wine is dear,
We will be furnished with our own, Which is both bright and clear.'
John Gilpin kissed his loving wife; O'erjoyed was he to find.
That, though on pleasure she was bent She had a frugal mind.
The morning came, the chaise was brought,
But yet was not allowed
To drive up to the door, lest all Should say that she was proud.
So three doors off the chaise was stayed, Where they did all get in;
Six precious souls, and all agog To dash through thick and thin.
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