XVII.

CAPTIVITY.

"As the cold aspect of a sunless way

Strikes through the Traveller's frame with deadlier chill, Oft as appears a grove, or obvious hill,

Glistening with unparticipated ray,

Or shining slope where he must never stray;
So joys, remembered without wish or will,
Sharpen the keenest edge of present ill, —
On the crushed heart a heavier burthen lay.
Just Heaven, contract the compass of my mind
To fit proportion with my altered state!
Quench those felicities whose light I find
Reflected in my bosom all too late! —
O be my spirit, like my thraldom, strait;
And, like mine eyes that stream with sorrow,

blind!"

XVIII.

BROOK! whose society the Poet seeks
Intent his wasted spirits to renew ;

And whom the curious Painter doth pursue
Through rocky passes, among flowery creeks,
And tracks thee dancing down thy water-breaks;
If wish were mine some type of thee to view,
Thee, - and not thee thyself, I would not do
Like Grecian Artists, give thee human cheeks,
Channels for tears; no Naiad should'st thou be,
Have neither limbs, feet, feathers, joints nor hairs;
It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee
With purer robes than those of flesh and blood,
And hath bestowed on thee a better good;
Unwearied joy, and life without its cares.

XIX.

COMPOSED ON THE BANKS OF A ROCKY STREAM.

DOGMATIC Teachers, of the snow-white fur!
Ye wrangling Schoolmen, of the scarlet hood!
Who, with a keenness not to be withstood,

Press the point home, or falter and demur,

-

Checked in your course by many a teasing burr; These natural council-seats your acrid blood

Might cool; and, as the Genius of the flood

Stoops willingly to animate and spur

Each lighter function slumbering in the brain,
Yon eddying balls of foam- these arrowy gleams,
That o'er the pavement of the surging streams
Welter and flash a synod might detain

With subtle speculations, haply vain,

But surely less so than your far-fetched themes !

XX.

THIS, AND THE TWO FOLLOWING, WERE SUGGESTED BY MR. W. WESTALL'S VIEWS OF THE CAVES, ETC. IN YORKSHIRE.

PURE element of waters! wheresoe'er

Thou dost forsake thy subterranean haunts,

Green herbs, bright flowers, and berry-bearing plants,
Rise into life and in thy train appear:

And, through the sunny portion of the year,
Swift insects shine, thy hovering pursuivants :
And, if thy bounty fail, the forest pants;
And hart and hind and hunter with his

spear,

Languish and droop together. Nor unfelt
In man's perturbed soul thy sway benign;
And, haply, far within the marble belt

Of central earth, where tortured Spirits pine

For grace and goodness lost, thy murmurs melt

Their anguish, and they blend sweet songs with thine.*

* Waters (as Mr. Westall informs us in the letter-press prefixed to his admirable views) are invariably found to flow through these caverns.

XXI.

MALHAM COVE.

WAS the aim frustrated by force or guile,
When giants scooped from out the rocky ground
-Tier under tier- this semicirque profound?

(Giants the same who built in Erin's isle

That Causeway with incomparable toil!)
O, had this vast theatric structure wound
With finished sweep into a perfect round,

No mightier work had gained the plausive smile
Of all-beholding Phoebus! But, alas,

Vain earth!-false world!-Foundations must be laid

In Heaven; for, mid the wreck of is and was,
Things incomplete and purposes betrayed

Make sadder transits o'er truth's mystic glass

Than noblest objects utterly decayed.