"WRITE me a song for Betsy," said thy sire :
Lady! it is already written-here,
On the charged brain, in tears, and gloom, and fire : Read it when I am dust. My waning year
Is shaking down its leaves.
I soon shall be Safe, even from myself, where pain and fear Disturb not him who sleepeth. Then to thee The buried dead shall speak, and thou shalt hear A spirit's voiceless words. He shall appear To thee when awe is silence in thy soul— Yea, thou with him shalt go withersoe'er
His feet have been. The lifeless shall control
The living and, though worlds between us roll,
Dwell with thee in my thoughts, or linger near.
Then, lady! gaze with me o'er Wharncliffe lone;
Or stand, in thought, on Kinder's crest sublime;
Or hear a prophet's voice, from Grina stone,
Denounce thy country's tyrants, in my rhyme.
O that Peronnet Thompson's mental might,
Or thy stern lyre, John Milton, were my own;
Or that my voice were mountain thunders, blown,
As from a trumpet, in the dead of night!
Then would I do the poor of Britain right;
Then should my song, like Russia's winter, freeze
Abaddon's host, guilt-petrified in flight;
And the roused spirit of Demosthenes,
Strong as heaven's flame from tempests ranged for fight,
Fulmine o'er darkened lands a storm of light.
"My voice," men say, "is like a convent bell,
Rung by red light'nings, at the midnight hour,
While, crashing from the tempest-shaken tower,
Its moss-grown fragments mingle with the yell
Of winds that howl o'er graves." But if I swell
The fire-toned thunder's hymn, I have no power
To shake to-morrow's rain-drop from a flower,
No wish to bring the deluge I foretell.
Yet, while the bell of ages tolls in vain
O'er buried tyrants, may I not be heard
By tyrants living, sinning, hated, fear'd;
And, like the midnight cannon's friendly roar,
Flash'd through the portals of the wind and rain,
Warn haughty navies from a fatal shore?
WHY, shower-loved Derwent! have the rainbows left thee?
Mam-Tor! Win-Hill! a single falcon sails
Between ye; but no airy music wails.
Who, mountains! of your soft hues hath bereft ye,
And stolen the dewy freshness of your dales?
Dove-stone! thy cold drip-drinking fountain fails ;
Sun-darken'd shadows, motionless, are on ye;
Silence to his embrace of fire hath won ye;
And light, as with a shroud of glory, veils
The Peak and all his marvels. Slowly trails
One streak of silver o'er the deep dark blue
Its feathery stillness, while of whispered tales
The ash, where late his quivering shade he threw,
Dreams o'er the thoughtful plant that hoards its
drops of dew.
NOON ON GREAT KINDER.
WHEN last I look'd on thee, thy brow was black
With trouble, and beneath it flames flashed out;
While on thine awful face the heav'ns flung back
The red glare of thy lightnings, Kinderscout!
And all thy brethren answered with a shout
Their monarch's voice, that spake from sea to sea,
O'er all their cataracts. But now the trout
Sleeps in thy voiceless runlets. Now the bee
Alone is restless here: he sings to thee
An ode of praise, where, reddening like the rose,
Amid the hoof-marks of the thunder, glows
The cloud-fed berry; and the clouds, to me,
(While blusheth wide around the purple flower,)
Seem mute, in honour of thy noontide hour.
Mountains! ye awe and tire me. Fare ye
And let the tempests love ye. But, below,
The happy homed-and-hearth'd affections dwell.
Amid yon floral sea, where daisies blow
And children gather them, the village bell
Saith that the young are married; while the old
Talk of glad yesterdays, or fondly tell
Of buried loves. For joy is grief foretold!
And there young widows' hearts grow deadly cold,
And the poor orphan's smile is faint and brief,
When marriage chimes are heard o'er grange and
Yet comfort there I seek, and joy in grief;
For man, by feelings strong as death controll'd,
Gives heart for heart, and knows that hearts are never
"POETRY," critics say, "is dead or dying."
Is life then dead, or can religion die?
She whose broad pinions gather strength by flying
O'er new-made graves, or manless halls, where sighs
The wind of midnight to the clouded sky,
And hurrying stars! E'en as the skylark flies,
Poetry lives and still will soar, while flows
A daughter's tear because her mother dies;
While on a child's grave grass or daisy grows;
Or o'er his coffin'd son a father bows
His locks of snow. Yes, Bard of Ovenden, (c)
Poetry lives! for, lo! with thee she goes
Where leaps the streamlet down the breezy glen;
With me, where God bids law cursed slaves be men!
I DREAM'D that, tired with travel, I return'd
To Blacklow's (a) summit, and stood there with God Alone, at midnight. Side by side we trod
The heath; and while around us rock'd and burn'd
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