Father of many a forest deep,
Whence many a navy thunder-fraught!
Erst in thy acorn-cells asleep,

Soon destined o'er the world to sweep
Opening new spheres of thought!

Wont in the night of woods to dwell,
The holy Druid saw thee rise;
And, planting there the guardian-spell,
Sung forth, the dreadful pomp to swell
Of human sacrifice!

Thy singed top and branches bare
Now straggle in the evening-sky;
And the wan moon wheels round to glare
On the long corse that shivers there
Of him who came to die!

WHEN by the green-wood side, at summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy-scenes, that Fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest minstrelsy;
"Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heaven away,
And all is Solitude, and all is Night!
-Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air!
No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,

Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear.

206 TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY **

Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings,
Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore.
Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful larum flings!
-I wake in horror, and dare sleep no more!

TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF
LADY **1

1800.

AH! why with tell-tale tongue reveal2
What most her blushes would conceal?
Why lift that modest veil to trace
The seraph-sweetness of her face?
Some fairer, better sport prefer;
And feel for us, if not for her.

For this presumption, soon or late,
Know thine shall be a kindred fate.
Another shall in vengeance rise-
Sing Harriet's cheeks, and Harriet's eyes;
And, echoing back her wood-notes wild,
-Trace all the mother in the child!

[To Lady Harriet Villiers, daughter of Lady Jersey, and afterwards wife of Dr. Bagot, Bishop of Bath and Wells.-ED.]

2 Alluding to some verses which she had written on an elder sister.

TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST.1

Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor?
Aeris et linguæ sum filia;

Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum.-AUSONIUS.

ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul,
Once more we hail thy soft controul.
-Yet whither, whither didst thou fly?
To what bright region of the sky?
Say, in what distant star to dwell?
(Of other worlds thou seem'st to tell)
Or, trembling, fluttering here below,
Resolved and unresolved to go,
In secret didst thou still impart
Thy raptures to the pure in heart?
Perhaps to many a desert shore,
Thee, in his rage, the Tempest bore;
Thy broken murmurs swept along,
Mid Echoes yet untuned by song;
Arrested in the realms of Frost,
Or in the wilds of Ether lost.

Far happier thou! 't was thine to soar,
Careering on the winged wind.

Thy triumphs who shall dare explore?
Suns and their systems left behind.

1 In the winter of 1805.

208

TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST.

No tract of space, no distant star,
No shock of elements at war,
Did thee detain. Thy wing of fire
Bore thee amid the Cherub-choir;
And there awhile to thee 't was given
Once more that Voice1 beloved to join,
Which taught thee first a flight divine,

And nursed thy infant years with many a strain from Heaven!