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 Naturc, 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.
TRANQUILLITY! thou better name

Than all the family of Fame i
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 nand 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 1 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 colored lichens with slow oozing 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; Beneath whose boughs, by those still sounds be

guiled, Calm 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 enamored 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

II.

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,

In word, or sigh, or tear-
O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,

All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green: And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye ! And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars ; Those stars, that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue ; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel how beautiful they are !

III.

My genial spirits fail :

And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ?

It were a vain endeavor,

Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

IV.

O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live :
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud !

And would we aught behold, of higher worth,