His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields

Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray

And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

His petty home in some near port or bay And dashest him again to earth :--there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls.

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,

And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs

make

Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war--
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy
flake,

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

At Keswick, and through still continued fusion

Of one another's minds, at last have grown

To deem as a most logical conclusion,

That poesy has wreaths for you alone : There is a narrowness in such a notion. Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for ocean.

I would not imitate the petty thought. Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice. For all the glory your conversion brought.

Since gold alone should not have been its price.

You have your salary; was 't for that you wrought?

And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.

You're shabby fellows-true-but poets still.

And duly seated on the immortal ill.

ago

(Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta)

I was most ready to return a blow, And would not brook at all this sort of thing

In my hot youth-when George the Third was King.

But now at thirty years my hair is gray— (I wonder what it will be like at forty? I thought of a peruke the other day-) My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I

Have squander'd my whole summer while 't was May,

And feel no more the spirit to retort; I Have spent my life, both interest and principal,

And deem not, what I deem'd, my soul invincible.

No more-no more--Oh! never more on

me

The freshness of the heart can fall like

dew,

Which out of all the lovely things we see Extracts emotions beautiful and new,

The illusion's gone for ever, and thou art Insensible, I trust, but none the worse, And in thy stead I've got a deal of judgment,

Though heaven knows how it ever found a lodgment.

My days of love are over; me no more The charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow,

Can make the fool of which they made before,

In short, I must not lead the life I did do:

The credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er,

The copious use of claret is forbid too, So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, think I must take up with avarice.

Ambition was my idol, which was broken Before the shrines of Sorrow, and of Pleasure;

And the two last have left me many a token

O'er which reflection may be made at leisure :

Now, like Friar Bacon's brazen head,

I've spoken,

"Time is. Time was, Time's past: -a chymic treasure

Is glittering youth, which I have spent betimes-

My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.

What is the end of fame? 't is but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in
vapor ;

For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,

And bards burn what they call their

"midnight taper,"

To have, when the original is dust,

A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

Canto I. September, 1818. July 15, 1819.

FROM CANTO II

THE SHIPWRECK

"TWAS twilight, and the sunless day went down [St. 49. Over the waste of waters; like a veil, Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown

Of one whose hate is mask'd but to assail. Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,

And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale, And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear

Been their familiar, and now Death was here.