COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE.
EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty :
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;—
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will;
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea;
Listen!-the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder-everlastingly.
Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not, therefore, less divine;
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worship'st at the temple's inner shrine.
God being with thee when we knew it not.
A SEA PIECE.-BRIDLINGTON QUAY, 1824.
Ar nightfall, walking on the crownèd shore,
Where sea and sky were in each other lost;
Dark ships were scudding through the wild uproar,
Whose wrecks ere morn must strew the dreary coast;
I marked one well-moored vessel tempest-tost,
Sails reefed, helm lashed, a dreadful siege she bore,
Her deck by billow after billow crossed,
While every moment she might be no more :
Yet firmly anchored on the nether sand,
Like a chained Lion ramping at his foes,
Forward and rearward still she plunged and rose,
Till broke her cable;-then she fled to land,
With all the waves in chase; throes following throes;
She 'scaped-she struck-she stood upon the strand.
THE morn was beautiful, the storm was gone;
Three days had passed; I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plain,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky:
On shore that lonely vessel caught mine eye,
Her bow was seaward, all equipt her train,
Yet to the Sun she spreads her wings in vain,
Like a chained Eagle, impotent to fly;
There fixed as if for ever to abide;
Far down the beach had rolled the low neap-tide,
Whose mingling murmur faintly lulled the ear.
"Is this," methought, "is this the doom of pride,
Checked in the onset of thy brave career,
Ingloriously to rot by piece-meal here?"
SPRING-TIDES returned and Fortune smiled; the bay
Received the rushing Ocean to its breast;
While waves on waves innumerably prest,
Seemed with the prancing of their proud array,
Sea-horses, plashed with foam and snorting spray;
Their power and thunder broke that vessel's rest;
Slowly, with new expanding life possest,
To her own element she glid away:
Buoyant and bounding like the polar whale,
That takes his pastime; every joyful sail
Was to the freedom of the wind unfurled,
While right and left the parted surges curled:
—Go, gallant bark, with such a tide and gale,
I'll pledge thee to a voyage round the world.
THOU lingerest, Spring!-still wintry is the scene;
The fields their dead and sapless russet wear;
Scarce does the glossy Celandine appear
Starring the sunny bank, or, early green,
The elder yet its circling tufts put forth.
The sparrow tenants still the eaves-built nest,
Where we should see our martin's snowy breast
Oft darting out. The blasts from the bleak north
And from the keener east still frequent blow.
Sweet Spring, thou lingerest! and it should be so;
Late let the fields and gardens blossom out!
Like man, when most with smiles thy face is drest,
'Tis to deceive; and he who knows ye best,
When most ye promise, ever most must doubt.
I MARVEL not, O Sun! that unto thee
In adoration man should bow the knee,
And pour his prayers of mingled awe and love;
For like a god thou art, and on thy way
Of glory sheddest with benignant ray,
Beauty, and life, and joyance from above.
No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud,— These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day; But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud, And cheer the earth once more. The languid flowers
Lie odourless, bent down with heavy rain,
Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers!
O lord of light! put forth thy beams again,
For damp and cheerless are the gloomy hours.
O GOD! have mercy in this dreadful hour
On the poor mariner!-in comfort here
Safe sheltered as I am, I almost fear
The blast that rages with resistless power.
What were it now to toss upon the waves,
The maddened waves, and know no succour near;
The howling of the storm above to hear,
And the wild sea that to the tempest raves:
To
gaze amid the horrors of the night,
And only see the billow's gleaming light;
And in the dread of death to think of her,
Who, as she listens, sleepless, to the gale,
Puts up a silent prayer and waxes pale?
O God! have mercy on the mariner !
A WRINKLED, crabbèd man, they picture thee,
Old Winter, with a ruggèd beard as grey
As the long moss upon the apple tree;
Blue-lipt, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose;
Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way
Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows.
They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth,
Old Winter! seated in thy great-armed chair,
Watching the children at their Christmas mirth,
Or circled by them as thy lips declare
Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire,
Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night,
Pausing at times to rouse the mouldering fire,
Or taste the old October brown and bright.
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