With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my Friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wild landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; a living thing
Which acts upon the mind-and with such hues
As cloath the Almighty Spirit, when he makes
Spirits perceive his presence.

A delight

Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad

As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd
Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd
Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see

The shadow of the leaf and stem above

Dappling its sunshine! And that Walnut-tree
Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient Ivy, which usurps

Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass
Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

Through the late twilight: and though now the Bat Wheels silent by, and not a Swallow twitters,

Yet still the solitary humble Bee

Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure,
No Plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
'Tis well to be bereft of promised good,
That we may lift the Soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last Rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming, its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in the light)
Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory,

While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,

*Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No Sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

* Flew creeking.] Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleasure to observe that Bartram had observed the same circumstance of the Savanna Crane. "When these Birds move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate and regular; and even when at a considerable distance or high above us, we plainly hear the quill-feathers; their shafts and webs upon one another creek as the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea."

VOI. II.

TO A FRIEND

Who had declared his intention of writing no more Poetry.

DEAR Charles! whilst yet thou wert a babe, I ween

That Genius plunged thee in that wizard fount
Hight Castalie; and (sureties of thy faith)

That Pity and Simplicity stood by,

And promised for thee, that thou shouldst renounce

The world's low cares and lying vanities,

Stedfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse,

And wash'd and sanctified to Poesy.

Yes-thou wert plunged, but with forgetful hand

Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior Son:
And with those recreant unbaptized Heels
Thou'rt flying from thy bounden Ministeries-

So sore it seems and burthensome a task

To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed: For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed Boy,

And I have arrows *mystically dipt,

Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead?
And shall he die unwept, and sink to Earth
"Without the meed of one melodious tear?"

Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved Bard,
Who to the "Illustrious+ of his native Land
"So properly did look for Patronage."

Ghost of Mæcenas! hide thy blushing face!

They snatch'd him from the Sickle and the PloughTo guard Ale-Firkins.

Oh! for shame return!

On a bleak Rock, midway the Aonian mount,
There stands a lone and melancholy tree,
Whose aged branches to the midnight blast
Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,
Ere yet the unwholesome Night-dew be exhaled,
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's Tomb.
Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,

* Vide Pind. Olym. ii. 1. 156.

+ Verbatim from Burns's dedication of his Poem to the Nobility and Gentry of the Caledonian Hunt.