With which Spring often decks a mouldering Tree!
Yet so it pleased a fond, a vain Old Man,
And a most frivolous People. Him I mean
Who framed, to ridicule confiding Faith,
This sorry Legend; which by chance we found
Piled in a nook, through malice, as might seem,
Among more innocent rubbish.”—Speaking thus,
With a brief notice when, and how, and where,
We had espied the Book, he drew it forth;
And courteously, as if the act removed,
At once, all traces from the good Man's heart
Of unbenign aversion or contempt
Restored it to its owner.
Herewith he grasped the Solitary's hand,
"You have known better Lights and Guides than these—
Ah! let not aught amiss within dispose
A noble Mind to practise on herself,
And tempt Opinion to support the wrongs
Of Passion: whatsoe'er is felt or feared,
From higher judgment-scats make no appeal
To lower can you question that the Soul
Inherits an allegiance, not by choice
To be cast off, upon an oath proposed
By each new upstart Notion? In the ports
Of levity no refuge can be found,
No shelter, for a spirit in distress.
He, who by wilful disesteem of life
And proud insensibility to hope
Affronts the eye of Solitude, shall learn
That her mild nature can be terrible;
That neither she nor Silence lack the power
avenge their own insulted Majesty.
-O blest seclusion! when the Mind admits The law of duty; and thereby can live, Through each vicissitude of loss and gain,
Linked in entire complacence with her choice;
When Youth's presumptuousness is mellowed down,
And Manhood's vain anxiety dismissed;
When Wisdom shews her seasonable fruit,
Upon the boughs of sheltering leisure hung
In sober plenty; when the spirit stoops
To drink with gratitude the chrystal stream
Of unreproved enjoyment; and is pleased
To muse, and be saluted by the air
Of meek repentance, wafting wall-flower scents
From out the crumbling ruins of fallen Pride
And chambers of Transgression, now forlorn.
O, calm contented days, and peaceful nights!
Who, when such good can be obtained, would strive
To reconcile his Manhood to a couch,
Soft as may seem; but, under that disguise,
Stuffed with the thorny substance of the past,
For fixed annoyance; and full oft beset
With floating dreams, disconsolate and black,
The vapoury phantoms of futurity?
Within the soul a Faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingences of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty Grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene. Like
Like power abides
In Man's celestial Spirit; Virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the incumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment,-nay from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of Despair.”
The Solitary by these words was touched With manifest emotion, and exclaimed, "But how begin? and whence?—The Mind is free, Resolve-the haughty Moralist would say, This single act is all that we demand.
Alas! such wisdom bids a Creature fly
Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn
His natural wings!-To Friendship let him turn
For succour; but perhaps he sits alone
On stormy waters, in a little Boat
That holds but him, and can contain no more!
Religion tells of amity sublime
Which no condition can preclude; of One
Who sees all suffering, comprehends all wants,
All weakness fathoms, can supply all needs;
But is that bounty absolute?-His gifts,
Are they not still, in some degree, rewards
For acts of service? Can his Love extend
To hearts that own not Him? Will showers of
When in the sky no promise may be seen,
Fall to refresh a parched and withered land?
Or shall the groaning Spirit cast her load
At the Redeemer's feet?"
With some impatience in his mien he spake;
And this reply was given.—
Do in the constitution of their Souls
Differ, by mystery not to be explained;
And as we fall by various ways, and sink
One deeper than another, self-condemned,
Through manifold degrees of guilt and shame,
So, manifold and various are the ways
Of restoration, fashioned to the steps
Of all infirmity, and tending all
To the same point,―attainable by all;
Peace in ourselves, and union with our God.
-For Him, to whom I speak, an easy road
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