Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure,
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?

There crowd your finely-fibred frame
All living faculties of bliss;
And Genius to your cradle came,

His forehead wreathed with lambent flame,
And bending low, with godlike kiss
Breath'd in a more celestial life;
But boasts not many a fair compeer,

A heart as sensitive to joy and fear?
And some, perchance, might wage an equal strife,
Some few, to nobler being wrought,
Corrivals in the nobler gift of thought.
Yet these delight to celebrate
Laurelled war and plumy state;
Or in verse and music dress
Tales of rustic happiness-
Pernicious tales! insidious strains!
That steel the rich man's breast,
And mock the lot unblest,

The sordid vices and the abject pains,
Which evermore must be

The doom of ignorance and penury!
But you, free Nature's uncorrupted child,
You hailed the chapel and the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?

You were a mother! That most holy name,
Which Heaven and Nature bless,

I may not vilely prostitute to those
Whose infants owe them less
Than the poor caterpillar owes
Its gaudy parent fly.

You were a mother! at your bosom fed

The babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye,
Each twilight-thought, each nascent feeling read,
Which you yourself created. Oh! delight!
A second time to be a mother,

Without the mother's bitter groans:
Another thought, and yet another,

By touch, or taste, by looks or tones

O'er the growing sense to roll,

The mother of your infant's soul!

The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides
His chariot-planet round the goal of day,

All trembling gazes on the eye of God,

A moment turned his awful face away; And as he viewed you, from his aspect sweet New influences in your being rose,

Blest intuitions and communions fleet

With living Nature, in her joys and woes!
Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see
The shrine of social Liberty!

O beautiful! O Nature's child!
'Twas thence you hailed the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure,
Thence learn'd you that heroic measure.

ODE TO TRANQUILLITY.

RANQUILLITY! thou better name

Than all the family of Fame!

Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
To low intrigue, or factious rage;

For oh dear child of thoughtful Truth,

To thee I gave my early youth,

And left the bark, and blest the steadfast shore,

Ere yet the tempest rose and scared me with its roar.

Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
On him but seldom, Power divine,

Thy spirit rests! Satiety

And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Mock the tired worldling. Idle hope
And dire remembrance interlope,

To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:
The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.

But me thy gentle hand will lead

At morning through the accustomed mead;
And in the sultry summer's heat

Will build me up a mossy seat;

And when the gust of Autumn crowds,
And breaks the busy moonlight clouds,

Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune,
Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding moon.

The feeling heart, the searching soul,
To thee I dedicate the whole !

And while within myself I trace

The greatness of some future race,

Aloof with hermit-eye I scan

The present works of present man

A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile, Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

TO A YOUNG FRIEND,

ON HIS PROPOSING TO DOMESTICATE WITH THE AUTHOR. COMPOSED IN 1796.

A

MOUNT, not wearisome and bare and steep, But a green mountain variously up-piled, Where o'er the jutting rocks soft mosses creep, Or coloured lichens with slow oosing weep;

Where cypress and the darker yew start wild; And 'mid the summer torrent's gentle dash Dance brightened the red clusters of the ash; [guiled, Beneath whose boughs, by those still sounds beCalm Pensiveness might muse herself to sleep; Till haply startled by some fleecy dam, That rustling on the bushy cliff above, With melancholy bleat of anxious love,

Made meek inquiry for her wandering lamb: Such a green mountain 'twere most sweet to climb, E'en while the bosom ached with lonelinessHow more than sweet, if some dear friend should bless The adventurous toil, and up the path sublime Now lead, now follow: the glad landscape round, Wide and more wide, increasing without bound!

O then 'twere loveliest sympathy, to mark The berries of the half-uprooted ash

Dripping and bright; and list the torrent's dash,— Beneath the cypress, or the yew more dark,

Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock;
In social silence now, and now to unlock
The treasured heart; arm linked in friendly arm,
Save if the one, his muse's witching charm
Muttering brow-bent, at unwatched distance lag;
Till high o'er head his beckoning friend appears,
And from the forehead of the topmost crag

Shouts eagerly for haply there uprears
That shadowing pine its old romantic limbs,
Which latest shall detain the enamoured sight
Seen from below, when eve the valley dims,
Tinged yellow with the rich departing light;
And haply, basoned in some unsunned cleft,
A beauteous spring, the rock's collected tears,
Sleeps sheltered there, scarce wrinkled by the gale!
Together thus the world's vain turmoil left,
Stretched on the crag, and shadowed by the pine,
And bending o'er the clear delicious fount,
Ah! dearest youth! it were a lot divine
To cheat our noons in moralizing mood,
While west-winds fanned our temples toil-bedewed:
Then downwards slope, oft pausing, from the mount,
To some lone mansion, in some woody dale,
Where smiling with blue eye, domestic bliss
Gives this the husband's, that the brother's kiss!
Thus rudely versed in allegoric lore,

The Hill of Knowledge I essayed to trace;
That verdurous hill with many a resting-place,
And many a stream, whose warbling waters pour
To glad and fertilize the subject plains;
That hill with secret springs, and nooks untrod,
And many a fancy-blest and holy sod

Where Inspiration, his diviner strains

Low murmuring, lay; and starting from the rocks