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"When stubborn Russ, and metal'd Swede, "On the warp'd wave their death-game play'd;

"Or that, where Vengeance and Affright "Howl'd round the father of the fight,

"Who snatch'd, on Alexandria's sand,

"The conqueror's wreath with dying hand.

"Or, if to touch such chord be thine, "Restore the ancient tragic line,

"And emulate the notes that rung

"From the wild harp, which silent hung

"By silver Avon's holy shore,

"Till twice an hundred years roll'd o'er; "When she, the bold Enchantress, came,

"With fearless hand and heart on flame!

"From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure, "And swept it with a kindred measure,

"Till Avon's swans, while rung the

grove

"With Monfort's hate and Basil's love,

66

Awakening at the inspired strain,

"Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again."

Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging,

With praises not to me belonging,

In task more meet for mightiest powers,
Would'st thou engage my thriftless hours.
But say, my Erskine, hast thou weigh'd
That secret power by all obey'd,
Which warps not less the passive mind,
Its source conceal'd or undefined;

Whether an impulse, that has birth
Soon as the infant wakes on earth,
One with our feelings and our powers,
And rather part of us than ours;
Or whether fitlier term'd the sway

Of habit, form'd in early day?
Howe'er derived, its force confest
Rules with despotic sway the breast,
And drags us on by viewless chain,
While taste and reason plead in vain.
Look east, and ask the Belgian why,

Beneath Batavia's sultry sky,

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He seeks not eager to inhale

The freshness of the mountain gale,

Content to rear his whiten'd wall

Beside the dank and dull canal?

He'll say, from youth he loved to see
The white sail gliding by the tree.
Or see yon weather-beaten hind,

Whose sluggish herds before him wind,
Whose tatter'd plaid and rugged cheek

His northern clime and kindred speak;
Through England's laughing meads he goes,
And England's wealth around him flows;
Ask, if it would content him well,

At ease in these gay plains to dwell,

Where hedge-rows spread a verdant screen,

And spires and forests intervene,

And the neat cottage peeps between ?

No! not for these will he exchange

His dark Lochaber's boundless

range;

Nor for fair Devon's meads forsake

Bennevis grey, and Garry's lake.

Thus, while I ape the measure wild Of tales that charm'd me yet a child,

Rude though they be, still with the chime
Return the thoughts of early time;

And feelings, roused in life's first day,
Glow in the line, and prompt the lay.

Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,
Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour.
Though no broad river swept along,

To claim, perchance, heroic song;
Though sigh'd no groves in summer gale,
To prompt of love a softer tale;

Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed,
Claim'd homage from a shepherd's reed;
Yet was poetic impulse given,

By the green hill and clear blue heaven.

It was a barren scene, and wild,

Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;

But ever and anon between

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,

And honey-suckle loved to crawl

Up the low crag and ruin'd wall.

I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all its round survey'd ;

And still I thought that shatter'd tower

The mightiest work of human power;

And marvell'd as the aged hind

With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind,

Of forayers, who, with headlong force,

Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse,

Their southern rapine to renew,

Far in the distant Cheviots blue,

And, home returning, fill'd the hall

With revel, wassell-route, and brawl.

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