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Departing Year! 'twas on no earthly shore
My soul beheld thy vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits; thy robe inscribed with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan

Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued,

Deep silence o'er the ethereal multitude,

Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone. Then, his eye wild ardours glancing,

From the choired gods advancing,

The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet,
And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat.

The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs;
My ears throb hot; my eyeballs start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of Death!
No stranger agony confounds

The Soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds,
Death-like he dozes among heaps of dead!

(The strife is o'er, the day-light fled,

And the night-wind clamours hoarse!

See! the starting wretch's head,

Lies pillowed on a brother's corse!)

Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
O Albion! O my mother isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;
(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells,
Proudly ramparted with rocks ;)
And Ocean, 'mid his uproar wild,
Speaks safety to his Island Child!

M2

Hence for many a fearless age

Has social Quiet loved thy shore;
Nor ever proud Invader's rage,

Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore.

COLERIDGE.

28. THE NYMPH LAMENTING THE DEATH OF HER FAWN.

THE wanton troopers riding by

Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
Ungentle men! they cannot thrive
Who killed thee. Thou ne'er didst alive
Them any harm; alas! nor could
Thy death yet do them any good.
I'm sure I never wished them ill;
Nor do I for all this; nor will:
But if my simple prayers may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will join my tears
Rather than fail. But, O my fears!
It cannot die so, Heaven's king
Keeps register of every thing;
And nothing may we use in vain,
Ev'n beasts must be with justice slain,
Else men are made their deodands.

Though they should wash their guilty hands
In this warm life-blood, which doth part
From thine, and wound me to the heart,
Yet could they not be clean; their stain
Is dyed in such a purple grain,

There is not such another in
The world to offer for their sin.
With sweetest milk and sugar first,
I it at mine own fingers nursed;
And as it grew, so every day

It waxed more white and sweet than they.

It had so sweet a breath! and oft

I blushed to see its foot more soft

And white, shall I say, than my hand?

Nay, any lady's of the land.

It is a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet,

With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race;
And when't had left me far away,
'Twould stay, and run again and stay.
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;
And all the springtime of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies, I

Have sought it oft where it should lie,
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes;
For in the flaxen lilies' shade

It like a bank of lilies laid.
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips ev'n seemed to bleed;
And then to me 't would boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip;
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill;
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
Had it lived long it would have been
Lilies without, roses within.

Now my sweet fawn is vanished to
Whither the swans and turtles go;

In fair Elysium to endure

With milk white lambs and ermines pure.
Oh! do not run too fast, for I

Will but bespeak thy grave and die.

29.-SUING FOR COURT Favour.

FULL little knowest thou, that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide;
To lose good days that might be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;

MARVELL.

To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow,
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers,
To have thy asking, yet wait many years;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart with comfortless despairs,
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to wait, to be undone.

SPENSER.

30.-OLD AGE AND DEATH.

THE seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more,
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal the emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new lights through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

WALLER,

31. THE BENEDICITE PARAPHRASED.

YE works of God, on him alone,
In earth his footstool, heaven his throne,
Be all your praise bestowed;
Whose hand the beauteous fabric made,
Whose eye the finished work surveyed,
And saw that all was good.

Ye angels, that with loud acclaim,
Admiring viewed the new-born frame,
And hailed the Eternal King,
Again proclaim your Maker's praise;
Again your thankful voices raise,

And touch the tuneful string.

Praise him, ye blessed ethereal plains,
Where, in full majesty, he deigns

To fix his awful throne:

Ye waters that about him roll
From orb to orb, from pole to pole,
O make his praises known!

Ye mountains, that ambitious rise,
And heave your summits to the skies,
Revere his awful nod;

Think how you once affrighted fled,
When Jordan sought his fountain-head,
And owned the approaching God.

Ye sons of men, his praise display,
Who stampt his image on your clay,
And gave it power to move:
Ye that in Judah's confines dwell,
From age to age successive tell
The wonders of his love.

Let Levi's tribe the lay prolong,
Till angels listen to the song,

And bend attentive down;

Let wonder seize the heavenly train,

Pleased while they hear a mortal strain
So sweet, so like their own.

MERRICK.

32.-CONVERSATION.

THE emphatic speaker dearly loves to oppose,
In contact inconvenient, nose to nose;
As if the gnomon on his neighbour's phiz,
Touched with the magnet, had attracted his.
His whispered theme, dilated and at large,
Proves after all a wind-gun's airy charge.
He walked abroad, o'ertaken in the rain,
Called on a friend, drank tea, stepp'd home again,
Resumed his purpose, had a world of talk
With one he stumbled on, and lost his walk.
I interrupt him with a sudden bow,

Adieu, dear Sir! lest you should lose it now.

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