ページの画像
PDF
ePub

SOUTHEY.

SUNRISE.

I MARVEL not, O Sun! that unto thee

In adoration man should bow the knee,

And pour his prayers of mingled awe and love; For like a God thou art, and on thy way

Of glory sheddest with benignant ray,

Beauty, and life, and joyance from above.

No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud,These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day; But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud And cheer the earth once more. The languid flowers

Lie odourless, bent down with heavy rain,

Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers!

O lord of light! put forth thy beams again,

His political opponents have tendered evidence to the estimable character of both his head and heart. One of the harshest arraigners of what he calls the inconsistency of Dr. Southey-as if that were inconsistency which induces to leave a path after it is known to be the wrong one-states, that "in all the relations and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just." He is one of the leading critics of the age; and, although there is abundant proof of his generous zeal in aiding young talent, there has never attached to him the suspicion of depressing it. The career of Southey is the best answer to the absurd, but too generally received opinion, that a critic is of necessity acrimonious or unjust.

Of late years, the prose of Southey has been preferred to his poetry. It rarely happens that there is a preference without a disparagement. No Poet in the present or the past century, has written three such poems as Thalaba, Kehama, and Roderic. Others have more excelled in DELINEATING what they find before them in life; but none have given such proofs of extraordinary power in CREATING. He has been called diffuse, because there is a spaciousness and amplitude about his poetry—as if concentration was the highest quality of a writer. He lays all his thoughts before us; but they never rush forth tumultuously. He excels in unity of design and congruity of character; and never did Poet more adequately express heroic fortitude, and generous affections. He has not, however, limited his pen to grand paintings of epic character. Among his shorter productions will be found some light and graceful sketches, full of beauty and feeling, and not the less valuable because they invariably aim at promoting

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

I MARVEL not, O Sun! that unto thee
In adoration man should bow the knee,

And pour his prayers of mingled awe and love;

For like a God thou art, and on thy way
Of glory sheddest with benignant ray,

Beauty, and life, and joyance from above.

No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud,These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day; But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud And cheer the earth once more. The languid flowers Lie odourless, bent down with heavy rain,

Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers!

O lord of light! put forth thy beams again,

REMEMBRANCE.

MAN hath a weary pilgrimage
As through the world he wends,
On every stage from youth to age
Still discontent attends;

With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,

And still remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.

To school the little exile goes,
Torn from his mother's arms,—
What then shall soothe his earliest woes,
When novelty hath lost its charms?
Condemn'd to suffer through the day
Restraints which no rewards repay,
And cares where love has no concern:
Hope lengthens as she counts the hours
Before his wish'd return.

From hard controul and tyrant rules,
The unfeeling discipline of schools,
In thought he loves to roam,
And tears will struggle in his eye
While he remembers with a sigh
The comforts of his home.

Youth comes; the toils and cares of life Torment the restless mind;

Where shall the tired and harass'd heart
Its consolation find?

Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells,
Life's summer prime of joy?
Ah no! for hopes too long delay'd,
And feelings blasted or betray'd,
The fabled bliss destroy;
And Youth remembers with a sigh
The careless days of Infancy.

Maturer Manhood now arrives,
And other thoughts come on,
But with the baseless hopes of Youth

Cold calculating cares succeed,
The timid thought, the wary deed,
The dull realities of truth;

Back on the past he turns his eye;
Remembering with an envious sigh
The happy dreams of Youth.

So reaches he the latter stage
Of this our mortal pilgrimage, ¡
With feeble step and slow;
New ills that latter stage await,
And old Experience learns too late
That all is vanity below.
Life's vain delusions are gone by,
Its idle hopes are o'er,

Yet Age remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.

HANNAH.

PASSING across a green and lonely lane
A funeral met our view. It was not here
A sight of every day, as in the streets
Of some great city, and we stopt and ask'd
Whom they were bearing to the grave.
A girl,
They answer'd, of the village, who had pined
Through the long course of eighteen painful months
With such slow wasting, that the hour of death
Came welcome to her. We pursued our way
To the house of mirth, and with that idle talk
Which passes o'er the mind and is forgot,
We wore away the time. But it was eve
When homewardly I went, and in the air
Was that cool freshness, that discolouring shade
Which makes the eye turn inward: hearing then
Over the vale the heavy toll of death
Sound slow, it made me think upon the dead;
I question'd more, and learnt her mournful tale.
She bore unhusbanded a mother's pains,
And he who should have cherish'd her, far off
Sail'd on the seas. Left thus a wretched one,
Scorn made a mock of her, and evil tongues

« 前へ次へ »