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XXXVII.

STRANGE Visitation! at Jemima's lip

Thus hadst thou pecked, wild Redbreast! Love might say,

A half-blown rose had tempted thee to sip

Its glistening dews; but hallowed is the clay

Which the Muse warms; and I, whose head is grey,

Am not unworthy of thy fellowship;

Nor could I let one thought-one motion

That might thy sylvan confidence betray.

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For are we not all His, without whose care
Vouchsafed, no sparrow falleth to the ground?
Who gives his Angels wings to speed through air,
And rolls the planets through the blue profound;
Then peck or perch, fond Flutterer! nor forbear
To trust a Poet in still vision bound.

XXXVIII.

WHEN Philoctetes in the Lemnian Isle

Lay couched;

upon that breathless Monument,

On him, or on his fearful bow unbent,

Some wild Bird oft might settle, and beguile
The rigid features of a transient smile,
Disperse the tear, or to the sigh give vent,
Slackening the pains of ruthless banishment
From home affections, and heroic toil.

Nor doubt that spiritual Creatures round us move,
Griefs to allay that Reason cannot heal;
And very Reptiles have sufficed to prove
To fettered Wretchedness, that no Bastile
Is deep enough to exclude the light of love,
Though Man for Brother Man has ceased to feel.

XXXIX.

WHILE they, her Playmates once, light-hearted tread The mountain turf and river's flowery marge;

Or float with music in the festal barge;

Rein the proud steed, or through the dance are led; Is Anna doomed to press a weary bed

Till oft her guardian Angel, to some Charge

More urgent called, will stretch his wings at large, And Friends too rarely prop the languid head.

Yet Genius is no feeble comforter:

The presence even of a stuffed Owl for her
Can cheat the time; sending her fancy out
To ivied castles and to moonlight skies,

Though he can neither stir a plume, nor shout,
Nor veil, with restless film, his staring eyes.

XL.

TO THE CUCKOO.

Nor the whole warbling grove in concert heard
When sunshine follows shower, the breast can thrill
Like the first summons, Cuckoo! of thy bill,
With its twin notes inseparably paired.

The Captive, 'mid damp vaults unsunned, unaired,
Measuring the periods of his lonely doom,

That cry can reach; and to the sick man's room
Sends gladness, by no languid smile declared.
The lordly Eagle-race through hostile search
May perish; time may come when never more
The wilderness shall hear the Lion roar ;
But, long as Cock shall crow from household perch
To rouse the dawn, soft gales shall speed thy wing,
And thy erratic voice be faithful to the Spring!

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UNQUIET Childhood here by special grace
Forgets her nature, opening like a flower
That neither feeds nor wastes its vital power
In painful struggles. Months each other chase,
And nought untunes that Infant's voice; a trace
Of fretful temper sullies not her cheek;
Prompt, lively, self-sufficing, yet so meek
That one enrapt with gazing on her face,
(Which even the placid innocence of Death
Could scarcelymake more placid, Heaven more bright,)
Might learn to picture, for the eye of faith,
The Virgin, as she shone with kindred light;
A Nursling couched upon her Mother's knee,
Beneath some shady Palm of Galilee.

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