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FROM "AUTUMN."

Now, by the cool declining year condensed,
Descend the copious exhalations, check'd
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime,
Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides,
And high between contending kingdoms rears
The rocky long division, fills the view
With great variety; but in a night

Of gathering vapour, from the baffled sense
Sinks dark and dreary. Thence expanding far,
The huge dusk, gradual, swallows up the plain:
Vanish the woods; the dim-seen river seems
Sullen, and slow, to roll the misty wave.
Even in the height of noon opprest, the sun
Sheds weak, and blunt, his wide-refracted ray;
Whence glaring oft, with many a broaden'd orb,
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen through the turbid air, beyond the life
Objects appear; and, wilder'd, o'er the waste
The shepherd stalks gigantic. Till at last
Wreath'd dun around, in deeper circles still,
Successive closing, sits the general fog
Unbounded o'er the world; and, mingling thick,
A formless grey confusion covers all:

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As when of old (so sung the Hebrew Bard)
Light, uncollected, through the chaos urged
Its infant way; nor Order yet had drawn
His lovely train from out the dubious gloom.

Gray.

ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE.

'Ανθρωπος ἱκανὴ πρόφασις εἰς τὸ δυσυχεῖν.—MENANDER.

YE distant spires, ye antique towers,

That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful science still adores

Her Henry's* holy shade!

And ye that from the stately brow

Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among,
Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way!

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!

Ah, fields beloved in vain,

Where once my careless childhood stray'd,

A stranger yet to pain!

* King Henry VI., founder of the college.

I feel the gales that from ye blow,
A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing.
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames-for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margin green,
The paths of pleasure trace-
Who foremost now delights to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?

The captive linnet which inthral !
What idle progeny succeed

To chase the rolling circle's speed,

Or urge the flying ball?

While some, on earnest business bent,

Their murm'ring labours ply

'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint

To sweeten liberty;

Some bold adventurers disdain

The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dare descry: Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind,

And snatch a fearful joy.

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