Or dost thou fancy, as many have done,
That, because the hill-top is nearest the sun,
The sun loves better the unthaw'd ice,
That does nothing but say that he is bright,
And dissect, like a prism, his braided light-
Than the gardens of bloom and the fields of spice? Didst thou think that the bright orb his mystery
In a comfortless mantle of sleet-driving clouds?
Alas! he never loved this place;
It bears no token of his grace;
But many a mark of the tempest's lash,
And many a brand of the sulphurous flash.
'Tis better to dwell amid corn-fields and flowers, Or even the weeds of this world of ours,
Than to leave the green vale and the sunny slope,
To seek the cold cliff with a desperate hope.
Flutter he, flutter he, high as he will,
A butterfly is but a butterfly still.
And 'tis better for us to remain where we are,
In the lowly valley of duty and care,
Than lonely to stray to the heights above,
Where there's nothing to do, and nothing to love.
A MIGHTY bard there was, in joy of youth,
That wont to rove the vernal groves among,
When the green oak puts forth its scallop'd tooth,
And daisies thick the darkening fallows throng.
He listen'd oft, whene'er he sought to soothe
A fancied sorrow with a fancied song,
For Philomela's ancient tale of ruth,
And never heard it, all the long night long;
But heard, instead, so glad a strain of sound,
So many changes of continuous glee,
From lowest twitter, such a quick rebound,
To billowy height of troubled ecstasy-
Rejoice! he said, for joyfully had he found
That mighty poets may mistaken be.*
* See Coleridge's Poems, Vol. i., p. 211.
THOU indefatigable cuckoo! still
Thy iteration says the self-same thing,
And thou art still an utterance of the spring
As constant as a self-determined will.
The quiet patience of a murmuring rill
Had no beginning and will have no ending;
But thou art aye beginning, never blending
With thrush on perch, or lark upon the wing.
Methinks thou art a type of some recluse
Whose notes of adoration never vary:
Who of the gift of speech will make no use
But ever to repeat her Ave Mary.—
Two syllables alone to thee were given,
What mean they in the dialect of heaven?
WHO would have thought a thing so slight,
So frail a birth of warmth and light,
A thing as weak as fear or shame,
Bearing thy weakness in thy name,—
Who would have thought of finding thee,
Thou delicate Anemone,
Whose faintly tinted petals may
By any wind be torn away,
many anthers with their dust,
And the dark purple dome their centre,
When winter strikes, soon as it likes,
Will quit their present rest, and must
Hurry away on wild adventure?
What power has given thee to outlast
The pelting rain, the driving blast;
To sit upon thy slender stem,
A solitary diadem,
Adorning latest autumn with
A relic sweet of vernal pith?
Oh Heaven! if,-as faithful I believe,
Thou wilt the prayer of faithful love receive,
Let it be so with me! I was a child
Of large belief, though froward, wild :
Gladly I listen'd to the holy word,
And deem'd my little prayers to God were heard.
All things I loved, however strange or odd,
As deeming all things were beloved by God.
In youth and manhood's careful sultry hours,
The garden of my youth bore many flowers
That now are faded; but my early faith,
Though thinner far than vapour, spectre, wraith,
Lighter than aught the rude wind blows away,
Has yet outlived the rude tempestuous day,
And may remain, a witness of the spring,
A sweet, a holy, and a lovely thing;
The promise of another spring to me,
My lovely, lone, and lost Anemone !
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