For thee, who, mindful of the unhonour'd dead, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate. To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old fantastic root so high, Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he: "The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the churchway-path we saw him borne. THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, He gave to misery all he had-a tear; He gain'd from Heaven-'twas all he wish'd-a friend. 7. Wayward, O. E. vaevärd, is not generally traced to way but to woe, though it might possibly be referred to the former, in the sense of one who goes his own way No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God. 168. From THE PROGRESS OF POESY.' Far from the sun and summer gale, In thy green lap was Nature's darling' laid, Her awful face; the dauntless child This pencil 2 take (she said) whose colours clear Thine, too, these golden keys, immortal Boy! Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears. Nor second He that rode sublime 4 He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time; Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night. Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder clothed and long-resounding pace. Hark! his hands the lyre explore! 1. Nature's darling, Shakespeare. Darling, O. E. deorling, is a diminutive of dear. 2. Pencil, from Lat. penicillus, a little tail, is more correctly applicable to what SPECS. ENG. LIT. we call a "camel's-hair pencil." 3. Gates: derivatively speaking, a gate (or gait) is a going; "go thy gate" is go thy way, Gk. βαίνειν βάσιν. 4. He that rode sublime, Milton. Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe and words that burn; O lyre divine! what dying spirit Wakes thee now? though he inherit Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how far-but far above the great. 5. The Theban eagle, Pindar. 6. Orient: once used in the pure sense of bright. William Cowper. 1731-1800. (History, p. 203.) 169. From 'THE TASK.' MERCY TO ANIMALS. I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail Will tread aside, and let the reptile live. The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight, And charged, perhaps, with venom, that intrudes, Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove, The chamber, or refectory, may die: A necessary act incurs no blame. Not so when, held within their proper bounds, 1 And guiltless of offence, they range the air, 1. Guiltless: the word guilt leads us at once to the judicial institutions of our forefathers. It simply means a liability to pay, from gildan, to pay; and belongs to the same class of words as gold, gild, guild, wer-gild. 170. PLEASURES OF A WINTER EVENING. Not such his evening who, with shining face, 1 And bored with elbow-points through both his sides, Nor his, who patient stands till his feet throb, Of patriots, bursting with heroic rage, 1. Elbow-points: the elbow is the bow or bend of the ell or arm, Lat. ulna. Which not e'en critics criticise; that holds Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair, Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns? He climbs, he pants, he grasps them? At his heels, And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down, Here rills of oily eloquence, in soft Meanders lubricate the course they take; Sermons, and city feasts, and favourite airs, Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits, 2. Map, more fully in Fr. mappemonde, comes from Lat. mappa, a table-cloth, owing to the resemblance that a large chart of the world bears to a cover of this kind. |