O Nymph reserv'd, while now the bright-hair'd sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed:

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing;
Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid compos'd,

To breathe some soften'd strain,

Whose numbers, stealing through thy dark'ning vale,
May not unseemly with its stillness suit;
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial lov'd return!

For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves
Who slept in buds the day;

And many a nymph who wreaths her brows with sedge,
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,

The pensive Pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shadowy car.

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene;
Or find some ruin, midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.

Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That, from the mountain's side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires;
And hears their simple bell; and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light:

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,

Affrights thy shrinking train,
And rudely rends thy robes;

So long, regardful of thy quiet rule,

Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace,
Thy gentlest influence own,

And love thy favourite name!

DIRGE IN CYMBELINE, SUNG BY GUIDERIUS AND ARVIRAGUS Over FIDELE, SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD.

To fair Fidele's grassy tomb

Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing spring.

No wailing ghost shall dare appear
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove,
But shepherd lads assemble here,

And melting virgins own their love.

No wither'd witch shall here be seen,
No goblins lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew;

The red-breast oft, at evening hours,
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gather'd flowers,
To deck the ground where thou art laid.

When howling winds, and beating rain,
In tempests shake thy sylvan cell,
Or midst the chase, on every plain,

The tender thought on thee shall dwell:

Each lonely scene shall thee restore;
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Belov'd, till life can charm no more,
And mourn'd, till Pity's self be dead.

ODE ON THE DEATH OF MR. THOMSON.

The scene of the following stanzas is supposed to lie on the Thames, near Richmond.

IN yonder grave a Druid lies,

Where slowly winds the stealing wave!
The year's best sweets shall duteous rise,
To deck its Poet's sylvan grave!

In yon deep bed of whispering reeds
His airy harp shall now be laid;
That he, whose heart in sorrow bleeds,
May love through life the soothing shade.

The maids and youths shall linger here;
And, while its sounds at distance swell,
Shall sadly seem in Pity's ear

To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell.

Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest; And oft suspend the dashing oar,

To bid his gentle spirit rest!

And, oft as ease and health retire
To breezy lawn or forest deep,

The friend shall view yon whitening spire,
And mid the varied landscape weep.

But thou, who own'st that earthly bed,
Ah! what will every dirge avail!
Or tears which love and pity shed,

That mourn beneath the gliding sail!

Yet lives there one whose heedless eye
Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering near?
With him, sweet bard! may Fancy die;
And Joy desert the blooming year.

But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide
No sedge-crown'd Sisters now attend,
Now waft me from the green hill's side
Whose cold turf hides the buried friend!

And see, the fairy vallies fade;

Dun Night has veil'd the solemn view!
Yet once again, dear parted shade,
Meek Nature's Child, again adieu!

The genial meads, assign'd to bless
Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom;
There hinds and shepherd-girls shall dress,
With simple hands, thy rural tomb.

Long, long thy stone and pointed clay
Shall melt the musing Briton's eyes:
O! vales, and wild woods, shall he say,
In yonder grave your Druid lies!

FROM AN ODE ON THE POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE
HIGHLANDS; CONSIDERED AS THE SUBJECT OF POETRY.
ADDRESSED TO MR. JOHN HOME.

THESE, too, thou 'lt sing! for well thy magic muse
Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar;
Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more!
Ah, homely swains! your homeward steps ne'er lose;
Let not dank Will* mislead you to the heath;
Dancing in murky night, o'er fen and lake,

He glows to draw you downward to your death,
In his bewitch'd, low, marshy, willow brake!

What though far off, from some dark dell espied
His glimmering mazes cheer the excursive sight,
Yet turn, ye wanderers, turn your steps aside,
Nor trust the guidance of that faithless light:
For watchful, lurking. mid th' unrustling reed,
At those murk hours the wily monster lies,
And listens oft to hear the passing steed,

And frequent round him rolls his sullen eyes,
If chance his savage wrath may some weak wretch surprise.

Ah, luckless swain, o'er all unbless'd, indeed!

Whom late bewilder'd in the dank, dark, fen,
Far from his flocks, and smoking hamlet, then!
To that sad spot where hums the sedgy weed:
On him, enrag'd, the fiend, in angry mood,
Shall never look with Pity's kind concern,
But instant, furious, raise the whelming flood
O'er its drown'd banks, forbidding all return!
Or if he meditate his wish'd escape,
To some dim hill, that seems uprising near,
To his faint eye, the grim and grisly shape,
In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear.

Meantime the watery surge shall round him rise,
Pour'd sudden forth from every swelling source!
What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs?
His fear-shook limbs have lost their youthful force,
And down the waves he floats, a pale and breathless corse!

For him in vain his anxious wife shall wait,
Or wander forth to meet him on his way!

For him in vain at to-fall of the day,

His babes shall linger at th' unclosing gate!
Ah, ne'er shall he return! alone, if night

A fiery meteor, called by various names, such as Will with the Wisp. Jack with the Lantern, &c. It hovers in the air over marshy and fenny places.

Her travell'd limbs in broken slumbers steep!
With drooping willows dress'd, his mournful sprite
Shall visit sad, perchance, her silent sleep:
Then he, perhaps, with moist and watery hand

Shall fondly seem to press her shuddering cheek,
And with his blue swoln face before her stand,
And shivering cold these piteous accents speak:
"Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue,

At dawn or dusk, industrious as before;
Nor e'er of me one helpless thought renew,
While I lie weltering on the osier'd shore,

Drown'd by the Kelpie's* wrath, nor e'er shall aid thee more!"

Unbounded is thy range; with varied skill

Thy muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle, To that hoar pilet which still its ruins shows; n whose small vaults a pigmy-folk is found, Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows, And culls then, wondering, from the hallow'd ground! Or thither, where beneath the showery west, The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid; Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest,

No slaves revere them, and no wars invade :
Yet frequent now, at midnight solemn hour,

The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold,
And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power,
In pageant robes, and wreath'd with sheeny gold,
And on their twilight tombs aërial council hold.

But, oh! o'er all, forget not Kilda's race,

On whose bleak rocks, which brave the wasting tides, Fair Nature's daughter, Virtue, yet abides. Go! just, as they, their blameless manners trace! Then to my ear transmit some gentle song, Of those whose lives are yet sincere and plain, Their bounded walks the rugged cliffs along, And all their prospect but the wintry main. With sparing temperance, at the needful time, They drain the scented spring: or, hunger-press'd, Along th' Atlantic rock, undreading climb,

And of its eggs despoil the solan's nest.

*The water fiend.

One of the Hebrides is called the Isle of Pigmies; it is reported, that several miniature bones of the human species have been dug up in the ruins of a chapel there.

Icolmkill, one of the Hebrides, where near sixty of the ancient Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian kings are interred.

An aquatic bird like a goose, on the eggs of which the inhabitants of St. Kilda, another of the Hebrides, chiefly subsist.