IV.

Except some trifling love song, or at most
A lay to beauteous flower or tuneful bird,

Is all the voice as yet the world hath heard
From my glib muse, that should have nobler boast;
For I've beheld oppression's banded host

Trample humanity-hard toil's reward

The veriest pittance-cant to truth preferred,And swaggering vice usurping virtue's post,

But yet have not denounced them, though I feel,

As well as see, the unmitigated wrong

That power and selfishness with iron heel,

Daily inflict upon the toiling throng

And blush to think I've uttered no appeal

Against these evils in indignant song.

ས.

ILLUSTRATING THE DEVELOPMENT OF POETICAL TALENT.

1.

Of poetry, our simple ballad lore

Long formed my only library, till the page
Of unsurpassed Shakspere did engage
Mine eye, its depths of treasure to explore:
My favourites were the much-beguiléd Moor,
And the fair victim of his jealous rage;

Romeo and Juliet; and, upon

the stage

Of martial heroes, him of Agincour;

But much of what was nature seemed uncouth,
Far as my folded faculties could see,

And failed to strike my inexperienced youth
Either with sweetness or sublimity;

Till, by degrees, its beauty and its truth.

Won, and still wins, my deep idolatry.

VI.

2.

Next Burns's light upon me shone, and smiled
In manly sentiment, and loving song;

And o'er his lyrics I delighted hung,

When woman's beauty first my heart beguiled.
Eliza! thou rememberest how wild

My transports were, how tender, deep, and strong The love that burn'd within me, and how long Passion and peace remain'd unreconciled.

His proud unbent integrity of mind,

His wit and satire spurning every rein,
His worship and his love of womankind,

The troubles that he struggled with in vain
Claim'd all my sympathy and deep enshrin'd
In memory's temple his most touching strain.

VII.

3.

And then the Paintings of The Seasons led
My soul to contemplation, and I stood
In open landscape and embow'ring wood,
Enchanted with the wonders round me spread.
Imbibing sentiment from all I read,

And musing on it, I became imbued

With sense of all the beautiful and good,

That heaven on earth so bountifully had shed;

The flowers grew lovelier, sweeter; birds and streams
Warbled and murmur'd softer in mine ear

The morning's radiance-evening's glowing beams,
The voiceful winds, the moon, each glittering sphere,
Woke in my mind enthusiastic dreams,

Which Fancy idealising, rendered dear.

VIII.

4.

Charm'd was I now by rich, melodious Pope;
By Mentor Cowper pointed to the right;
And sooth'd or lifted up by Henry White;
Then saw the portals of the heavens ope,
Through Milton's genius, which alone could cope
With so sublime a theme; and heard Young slight

The selfish world, in which he took delight;

And wept for very joy o'er Campbell's Hope!
And Bloomfield's watching spirit pleas'd has been
To see me lie upon the daisied grass,
Fancying I saw his faithful painted scene
Reflected round me, as if in a glass;

And Butler's shade, too, might have heard, I ween,
My laughter o'er his matchless Hudibras.