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Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
and, by the incantation of this verse,

scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
be through my lips to unawakened earth
the trumpet of a prophecy! O wind

if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind!

P. B. SHELLEY

482

O

TO THE river blYTH

THOU, that prattling on thy pebbled way through my paternal vale dost stray, working thy shallow passage to the sea; O stream, thou speedest on the same as many seasons gone; but not, alas! to me

remain the feelings that beguiled

my early road, when careless and content
(losing the hours in pastimes innocent)
upon thy banks I strayed, a playful child;
whether the pebbles that thy margin strew
collecting heedlessly I threw;

or loved in thy translucent wave
my tender shrinking feet to lave;
or else insnared your little fry,

and thought how wondrous skilled was I!-
So passed my boyish days, unknown to pain,
days that will ne'er return again.

It seems but yesterday

I was a child-to-morrow to be grey!
So years succeeding years steal silently away.
Not fleeter thy own current, hurrying thee,
rolls down to the great sea.

Thither O carry these sad thoughts-the deep
bury them;-thou meantime thy tenor keep,
and winding through the green-wood cheer,
as erst, my native peaceful pastures here.

W. L. BOWLES

483 THE LORD YOUR GOD ḤATH GIVEN YOU THIS

LAND TO POSSESS IT

HERE is a land of pure delight

THERE

where saints immortal reign;

infinite day excludes the night,
and pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting Spring abides,
and never-withering flowers;
death, like a narrow sea, divides
this heavenly land from ours.

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
stand dressed in living green;
so to the Jews old Canaan stood,
while Jordan rolled between.

But timorous mortals start and shrink
to cross this narrow sea,
and linger shivering on the brink,
and fear to launch away.

O, could we make our doubts remove
those gloomy doubts that rise,
and see the Canaan that we love
with unbeclouded eyes!

could we but climb where Moses stood

and view the landscape o'er,

not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,
should fright us from the shore.

484

I. WATTS

ORPHEUS AND THe sirens

THE divine, baffled ocean's rudest shocks,

'HE bark divine, itself instinct with life,

escaping, though with pain and arduous strife,
the huge encountering rocks;

and force and fraud o'ercome, and peril past,
its hard-won trophy raised in open view,
through prosperous floods was bringing home at last
its high heroic crew;

till now they cried (Ææa left behind,

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and the dead waters of the Cronian main),

no peril more upon our path we find,

safe haven soon we gain."

When, as they spake, sweet sounds upon the breeze

came to them, melodies till now unknown, and blended into one delight with these,

sweet odours sweetly blown,—

sweet odours wafted from the flowery isle,
sweet music breathéd by the Sirens three,
who there lie wait, all passers to beguile,
fair monsters of the sea!

Fair monsters foul, that with their magic song
and beauty to the shipman wandering
whose peril than disastrous whirlpools strong,
or fierce sea-robbers bring.

485 Sometimes upon the diamond rocks they leant,
sometimes they sat upon the flowery lea

that sloped towàrd the wave, and ever sent
shrill music o'er the sea.

The winds, suspended by the charméd song,
shed treacherous calm about that fatal isle;
the waves, as though the halcyon o'er its young
were always brooding, smile;

and every one that listens, presently

forgetteth home and wife and children dear,
all noble enterprise and purpose high,
and turns his pinnace here.—

He cannot heed, so sweet unto him seems
to reap the harvest of the promised joy;
the wave-worn man of such secure rest dreams,
so guiltless of annoy.

-The heroes and the kings, the wise, the strong,

that won the fleece with cunning and with might, their souls were taken in the net of song,

snared in that false delight;

486

Till ever loathlier seemed all toil to be,

and that small space they yet must travel o'er, stretched, an immeasurable breadth of sea, their fainting hearts before.

"Let us turn hitherward our bark," they cried,
"and, 'mid the blisses of this happy isle,
past toil forgetting and to come, abide

in joyfulness awhile;

"and then, refreshed, our tasks resume again,
if other tasks we yet are bound unto,
combing the hoary tresses of the main
with sharp swift keel anew."

O heroes, that had once a nobler aim,

O heroes sprung from many a godlike line,
what will ye do, unmindful of your fame,
and of your race divine?

But they, by these prevailing voices now
lured, evermore draw nearer to the land,
nor saw the wrecks of many a goodly prow,
that strewed that fatal strand;

or seeing, feared not-warning taking none
from the plain doom of all who went before,
whose bones lay bleaching in the wind and sun,
and whitened all the shore.

And some impel through foaming billows now
the hissing keel, and some tumultuous stand
upon the deck, or crowd about the prow,
waiting to leap to land.

And them this fatal lodestar of delight

had drawn to ruin wholly, but for one

of their own selves, who struck his lyre with might, Calliope's great son.

487 Of holier joy he sang, more true delight,

in other happier isles for them reserved, who, faithful here, from constancy and right and truth have never swerved;

How evermore the tempered ocean gales

breathe round those hidden islands of the blest, steeped in the glory spread, when daylight fails, far in the sacred West;

how unto them, beyond our mortal night,
shines evermore in strength the golden day;
and meadows with purpureal roses bright
bloom round their feet alway;

and how 'twas given thro' virtue to aspire
to golden seats in ever-calm abodes;
of mortal men, admitted to the quire
of high immortal Gods.

He says a mighty melody divine,

that woke deep echoes in the heart of each-
reminded whence they drew their royal line,
and to what heights might reach.

And all the while they listened, them the speed
bore forward still of favouring wind and tide,
that, when their ears were vacant to give heed
to any sound beside,

the feeble echoes of that other lay,

which held awhile their senses thralled and bound, were in the distance fading quite away,

a dull unheeded sound.

R. C. TRENCH

488

TO A YOUNG LADY CURLING HER HAIR

O

No longer seek the needless aid

of studious art, dear lovely Maid!

vainly from side to side, forbear

to shift thy glass, and braid each straggling hair.

As the gay flowers, which Nature yields
spontaneous on the vernal fields,
delight the fancy more than those
which gardens trim arrange in equal rows;

as the pure rill, whose mazy train
the prattling pebbles check in vain,

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