From source still deeper, and of higher worth,
'Tis thine the quickening impulse to control,
And in due season send the mandate forth;
Thy call a prostrate Nation can restore,

When but a single Mind resolves to crouch no more.

Dread Minister of wrath!

IV

Who to their destined punishment dost urge

The Pharaohs of the earth, the men of hardened heart!
Not unassisted by the flattering stars,

Thou strew'st temptation o'er the path
When they in pomp depart

With trampling horses and refulgent cars-
Soon to be swallowed by the briny surge;

Or cast, for lingering death, on unknown strands ;

Or caught amid a whirl of desert sands

An Army now, and now a living hill

That a brief while heaves with convulsive throes—
Then all is still;

Or, to forget their madness and their woes,
Wrapt in a winding-sheet of spotless snows!

V

Back flows the willing current of my Song:
If to provoke such doom the Impious dare,
Why should it daunt a blameless prayer?
-Bold Goddess! range our Youth among ;

Nor let thy genuine impulse fail to beat
In hearts no longer young;

Still may a veteran Few have pride

In thoughts whose sternness makes them sweet ;
In fixed resolves by Reason justified;

That to their object cleave like sleet
Whitening a pine tree's northern side,
When fields are naked far and wide,

And withered leaves, from earth's cold breast
Up-caught in whirlwinds, nowhere can find rest.

VI

But, if such homage thou disdain
As doth with mellowing years agree,
One rarely absent from thy train
More humble favours may obtain
For thy contented Votary.

She, who incites the frolic lambs
In presence of their heedless dams,
And to the solitary fawn

Vouchsafes her lessons, bounteous Nymph
That wakes the breeze, the sparkling lymph

Doth hurry to the lawn ;

She, who inspires that strain of joyance holy

Which the sweet Bird, misnamed the melancholy, Pours forth in shady groves, shall plead for me; And vernal mornings opening bright

With views of undefined delight,

And cheerful songs, and suns that shine
On busy days, with thankful nights, be mine.

VII

But thou, O Goddess! in thy favourite Isle
(Freedom's impregnable redoubt,

The wide earth's store-house fenced about
With breakers roaring to the gales
That stretch a thousand thousand sails)
Quicken the slothful, and exalt the vile !-
Thy impulse is the life of Fame;
Glad Hope would almost cease to be
If torn from thy society;

And Love, when worthiest of his name,
Is proud to walk the earth with Thee!

XCV

TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE:

SIX YEARS OLD

O THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought

The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou faery voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat

May rather seem

To brood on air than on an earthly stream;

Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,

Where earth and heaven do make one imagery;

O blessed vision! happy child !

Thou art so exquisitely wild,

I think of thee with many fears

For what may be thy lot in future years.

I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality;

And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest

But when she sate within the touch of thee.

O too industrious folly!

O vain and causeless melancholy!

Nature will either end thee quite ;

Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee, by individual right,

A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks.
What hast thou to do with sorrow,

Or the injuries of to-morrow?

Thou art a dew-drop, which the morn brings forth,

Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks,

Or to be trailed along the soiling earth;

A gem that glitters while it lives,

And no forewarning gives;

But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife
Slips in a moment out of life.

XCVI

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three

years:

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail ;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade :
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes !

1797