BY MISS LANDON, (L. E. L.)
"I would not care, at least so much, sweet Spring,
For the departing colour of thy flowers,
The green leaves early falling from thy boughs,
Thy birds so soon forgetful of their songs,
Thy skies, whose sunshine ends in heavy showers;
But thou dost leave thy memory, like a ghost,
To haunt the ruin'd heart, which still recurs
To former beauty; and the desolate
Is doubly sorrowful when it recalls
It was not always desolate."
HEN those eyes have forgotten the smile they wear
When care shall have shadow'd that beautiful brow,
When thy hopes and thy roses together lie dead,
And thy heart turns back pining to days that are fled,—
Then wilt thou remember what now seems to pass,
Like the moonlight on water, the breath-stain on glass;
O maiden, the lovely and youthful, to thee
How rose-touch'd the page of thy future must be !
By the past, if thou judge it, how little is there
But blossoms that flourish, but hopes that are fair!
And what is thy present? a southern sky's spring,
With thy feelings and fancies like birds on the wing.
As the rose by the fountain flings down on the wave
Its blushes, forgetting its glass is its grave,
So the heart sheds its colour on life's early hour,
But the heart has its fading as well as the flower.
The charmed light darkens, the rose-leaves are gone,
And life, like the fountain, floats colourless on.
Said I, when thy beauty's sweet vision was fled,
How wouldst thou turn pining to days like the dead!
Oh, long ere one shadow shall darken that brow,
Wilt thou weep like a mourner o'er all thou lov'st now;
When thy hopes, like spent arrows, fall short of their mark ;
Or, like meteors at midnight, make darkness more dark;
When thy feelings lie fetter'd like waters in frost,
Or, scatter'd too freely, are wasted and lost:
For aye cometh sorrow when youth has pass'd by!
Ah! what saith the proverb? "Its memory's a sigh."
In the vale of Grasmere, by the side of the highway leading to Ambleside, is a gate which, time out of mind, has been called the Wishing-Gate, from a belief that wishes formed or indulged there have a favourable issue.
HOPE rules a land for ever greet
All powers that serve the bright-eyed queen
Are confident and gay;
Clouds at her bidding disappear:
Points she to aught?—the bliss draws near,
And Fancy smooths the way.
Not such the land of wishes,-there
Dwell fruitless day-dreams, lawless prayer,
And thoughts with things at strife;
Yet how forlorn should ye depart,
Ye superstitions of the heart,
How poor were human life!
When magic lore abjured its might,
Ye did not forfeit one dear right,
One tender claim abate;
Witness this symbol of your sway,
Surviving near the public way,
The rustic Wishing-Gate.
Inquire not if the fairy race
Shed kindly influence on the place,
Ere northward they retired;
If here a warrior left a spell,
Panting for glory as he fell;
Or here a saint expired.
Enough that all around is fair,
Composed with Nature's finest care,
And in her fondest love;
Peace to embosom and content,
To overawe the turbulent,
The selfish to reprove.
Smile if thou wilt, but not in scorn,
If some, by ceaseless pains outworn,
Here crave an easier lot;
If some have thirsted to renew
A broken vow, or bind a true,
With firmer, holier knot.
And not in vain, when thoughts are cast
Upon the irrevocable past,
Some penitent sincere
May for a worthier future sigh,
While trickles from his downcast eye
No unavailing tear.
The worldling, pining to be freed
From turmoil, who would turn or speed
The current of his fate,
Might stop before this favour'd scene
At Nature's call, nor blush to lean
Upon the Wishing-Gate.
The sage who feels how blind, how weak
Is man, though loath such help to seek,
Yet, passing, here might pause,
And yearn for insight to allay
Misgiving, while the crimson day
In quietness withdraws;
Or when the church-clock's knell profound
To Time's first step across the bound
Of midnight makes reply:
Time pressing on, with starry crest,
To filial sleep upon the breast
Of dread Eternity!
IKE flocks adown a newly-bathed steep Emerging from a mist; or like a stream Of music soft that not dispels the sleep,
But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's dream,
Gazed by an idle eye with silent might
The picture stole upon my inward sight.
A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest,
As though an infant's finger touch'd my breast.
And one by one (I know not whence) were brought
All spirits of power that most had stirr'd my thought
In selfless boyhood, on a new world toss'd
Of wonder, and in its own fancies lost;
Or charm'd my youth, that, kindled from above,
Loved ere it loved, and sought a form for love;
Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan
Of manhood, musing what and whence is man!
Wild strain of Scalds, that in the sea-worn caves
Rehearsed their war-spell to the winds and waves;
Or fateful hymn of those prophetic maids,
That call'd on Hertha in deep forest glades;
Or minstrel lay, that cheer'd the baron's feast;
Or rhyme of city pomp, of monk and priest,
Judge, mayor, and many a guild in long array,
To high-church pacing on the great saint's day.
And many a verse which to myself I sang,
That woke the tear, yet stole away the pang,
Of hopes which in lamenting I renew’d.
And last, a matron now, of sober mien,
Yet radiant still, and with no earthly sheen,
Whom as a faery child my childhood woo'd
Even in my dawn of thought-PHILOSOPHY.
Though then unconscious of herself, pardie,
She bore no other name than POESY;
And, like a gift from heaven, in lifeful glee,
That had but newly left a mother's knee,
Prattled and play'd with bird and flower and stone,
As if with elfin playfellows well known,
And life reveal'd to innocence alone.
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