THE VIRGIN'S CRADLE-HYMN.

COPIED FROM A PRINT OF THE VIRGIN, IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC VILLAGE IN GERMANY.

DORMI, Jesu! Mater ridet

Quæ tam dulcem somnum videt,
Dormi, Jesu! blandule!
Si non dormis, Mater plorat,
Inter fila cantans orat,

Blande, veni, somnule.

ENGLISH.

Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling:
Mother sits beside thee smiling;
Sleep, my darling, tenderly!

If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,
Singing as her wheel she turneth:
Come, soft slumber, balmily!

WRITTEN DURING A TEMPORARY BLINDNESS, IN THE YEAR 1799.

O, WHAT a life is the eye! what a strange and inscrutable essence!

Him, that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him;

Him that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother;

Him that smiled in his gladness as a babe that smiles in its slumber;

Even for him it exists! It moves and stirs in its

prison!

Lives with a separate life: and—“Is it a spirit ?” he

murmurs:

Sure, it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only a language!"

ODE TO TRANQUILLITY.

TRANQUILLITY! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame!
Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age

To low intrigue, or factious

rage;

For oh dear child of thoughtful Truth,

To thee I gave my early youth,

And left the bark, and blest the stedfast shore,

Ere yet the tempest rose and scared me with its roar.

Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,

On him but seldom, Power divine

Thy spirit rests! Satiety

And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Mock the tired worldling. Idle hope
And dire remembrance interlope,

To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:
The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.

But me thy gentle hand will lead

At morning through the accustomed mead
And in the sultry summer's heat
Will build me up a mossy seat;

And when the gust of Autumn crowds,

And breaks the busy moonlight clouds,

Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune,
Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding moon.

The feeling heart, the searching soul,
To thee I dedicate the whole!
And while within myself I trace
The greatness of some future race,
Aloof with hermit-eye I scan

The present works of present man—

A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile,
Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES.

HEAR, my beloved, an old Milesian story!-
High, and embosom'd in congregated laurels,
Glimmer'd a temple upon a breezy headland:
In the dim distance amid the skiey billows

Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had placed it.
From the far shores of the bleak resounding island
Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating,
Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland,
Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes
Up to the groves of the high embosom'd temple.
There in a thicket of dedicated roses,

Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision,
Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea,
Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat,
And with invisible pilotage to guide it
Over the dusk wave, until the nightly sailor
Shivering with ecstasy sank upon her bosom.

DEJECTION: AN ODE.

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!

We shall have a deadly storm

BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENCE

I.

WELL! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Eolian lute,
Which better far were mute.

For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming on of rain and squally blast.
And oh that even now the gust were swelling,

And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast! Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, And sent my soul abroad,

Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!

II.

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,

In word, or sigh, or tear

O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,

I see, not feel how beautiful they are!

III.

My genial spirits fail;

And what can these avail

To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west:

I

may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within

IV.

O Lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live:

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!
And would we aught behold, of higher worth,

Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud