Though few, shall not be evil, by this hope
Supported, and enlightened on the way.
O Reginald! one course

Our studies, and our thoughts,

Our aspirations, held;

Wherein, but mostly in this blessed hope,
We had a bond of union, closely knit
In spirit, though, in this world's wilderness,
Apart our lots were cast.

Seldom we met; but I knew well
That whatsoe'er this never-idle hand
Sent forth would find with thee

Benign acceptance, to its full desert.
For thou wert of that audience fit, though few
For whom I am content

To live laborious days,
Assured that after-years will ratify

Their honorable award.

10.

Hadst thou revisited thy native land,
Mortality and Time

And Change must needs have made
Our meeting mournful. Happy he
Who to his rest is borne,
In sure and certain hope,
Before the hand of age

Hath chilled his faculties,

Or sorrow reached him in his heart of hearts!

Most happy if he leave in his good name

A light for those who follow him,
And in his works a living seed
Of good, prolific still.

11.

Yes, to the Christian, to the Heathen world, Heber, thou art not dead, - thou canst not die! Nor can I think of thee as lost.

A little portion of this little isle

At first divided us; then half the globe:
The same earth held us still; but when,
O Reginald! wert thou so near as now?
"Tis but the falling of a withered leaf, —
The breaking of a shell,-

The rending of a veil!

Oh, when that leaf shall fall,

That shell be burst, that veil be rent,

My spirit be with thine!

KESWICK, 1820.

may then

EPISTLE TO ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

WELL, Heaven be thanked! friend Allan, here I am,
Once more to that dear dwelling-place returned,
Where I have passed the whole mid-stage of life,
Not idly, certes; not unworthily, -

So let me hope; where Time upon my head
Hath laid his frore and monitory hand;
And when this poor, frail, earthly tabernacle
Shall be dissolved, - - it matters not how soon

Or late, in God's good time, where I would fain Be gathered to my children, earth to earth.

Needless it were to say how willingly

I bade the huge metropolis farewell,

Its din and dust and dirt and smoke and smut, Thames' water, paviors' ground, and London sky; Weary of hurried days and restless nights, Watchmen whose office is to murder sleep

When sleep might else have weighed one's eyelids down,

Rattle of carriages, and roll of carts,

And tramp of iron hoofs; and, worse than all,
Confusion being worse confounded then,

With coachmen's quarrels and with footmen's

shouts,

My next-door neighbors, in a street not yet
Macadamized, (me miserable!) at home;
For then had we, from midnight until morn,
House-quakes, street-thunders, and door-batteries.
O Government! in thy wisdom and thy want,
Tax knockers ; · in compassion to the sick,
And those whose sober habits are not yet
Inverted, topsy-turvying night and day,

Tax them more heavily than thou hast charged
Armorial bearings and bepowdered pates.
And thou, O Michael, ever to be praised,
Angelic among Taylors! for thy laws
Antifuliginous, extend those laws

Till every chimney its own smoke consume,
And give thenceforth thy dinners unlampooned.
Escaping from all this, the very whirl

Of mail-coach wheels, bound outward from Lad

Lane,

Was peace and quietness. Three hundred miles

Of homeward way seemed to the body rest,
And to the mind repose.

Donne

did not hate

More perfectly that city. Not for all

This poet begins his second Satire thus:

"Sir, though (I thank God for it) I do hate
Perfectly all this town, yet there's one state
In all ill things so excellently best,

That hate towards them breeds pity towards the rest.”

Its social, all its intellectual joys,

Which having touched, I may not condescend
To name aught else the Demon of the place
Might for his lure hold forth; - not even for these
Would I forego gardens and green-field walks,
And hedge-row trees, and stiles, and shady lanes,
And orchards, were such ordinary scenes
Alone to me accessible as those

Wherein I learnt in infancy to love

The sights and sounds of Nature; wholesome
sights,
Gladdening the eye that they refresh; and sounds
Which, when from life and happiness they spring,
Bear with them to the yet unhardened heart
A sense that thrills its cords of sympathy;
Or, when proceeding from insensate things,
Give to tranquillity a voice wherewith
To woo the ear and win the soul attuned;
Oh! not for all that London might bestow,
Would I renounce the genial influences,

And thoughts and feelings, to be found where'er
We breathe beneath the open sky, and see
Earth's liberal bosom. Judge, then, by thyself,
Allan, true child of Scotland,

thou who art

So oft in spirit on thy native hills,

And yonder Solway shores,

a poet thou,

Judge by thyself how strong the ties which bind

A poet to his home; when making thus

Large recompense for all that haply else
Might seem perversely or unkindly done -