Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost !
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !
Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
As star that shines dependent upon star
Is to the sky while we look up in love;
As to the deep fair ships, which though they move
Seem fixed, to eyes that watch them from afar;
As to the sandy desert fountains are,
With palm-groves shaded at wide intervals,
Whose fruit around the sun-burnt native falls,
Of roving tired, or desultory war-
Such to this British Isle her Christian Fanes,
Each linked to each for kindred services;
Her Spires, her Steeple-towers with glittering vanes
Far kenned, her chapels lurking among trees,
Where a few villagers on bended knees
Find solace which a busy world disdains.
FROM Little down to Least, in due degree
Around the Pastor, each in new-wrought vest,
Each with a vernal posy in his breast,
We stood, a trembling, earnest Company!
With low soft murmur, like a distant bee,
Some spake, by thought-perplexing fears betrayed,
And some a bold, unerring answer made;
How fluttered then, thy anxious heart for me,
Beloved mother! thou whose happy hand
Had bound the flowers I wore, with faithful tie:
Sweet flowers! at whose inaudible command
Her countenance, phantom-like, doth reappear:
O lost too early for the frequent tear,
And ill-requited by this heart-felt sigh!
THE encircling ground, in native turf arrayed,
Is now by solemn consecration given
To social interests, and to favouring Heaven.
And where the rugged colts their gambols played,
And wild deer bounded through the forest glade,
Uncheck'd as when by merry outlaw driven,
Shall hymns of praise resound at morn and even ;
And soon, full soon, the lonely sexton's spade
Shall wound the tender sod. Encincture small,
But infinite its grasp of weal and woe!
Hopes, fears, in never ending ebb and flow ;-
The spousal trembling, and the "dust to dust,"
The prayers, the contrite struggle, and the trust
That to th' Almighty Father looks through all.
MONASTIC domes! following my downward way,
Untouched by deep regret I marked your fall!
Now ruin, beauty, antient stillness, all
Dispose to judgments temperate as we lay
On our past selves in life's declining day;
For as by discipline of Time made wise,
We learn to tolerate the infirmities
And faults of others, gently as we may,
So with our own the mild Instructor deals,
Teaching us to forget them, or forgive.
Perversely curious, then, for hidden ill
Why should we break Time's charitable seals?-
Once ye were holy, ye are holy still;
Your spirit freely let me drink, and live.
YET one song more! one high and solemn strain,
Ere, Phoebus! on thy temple's ruined wall
I hang the silent harp; there may its strings,
When the rude tempest shakes the aged pile,
Make melancholy music. One song more!
Penates! hear me! for to you I hymn
Hearken your hymn of praise! Though from your rites Estranged, and exiled from your altars long,
I have not ceased to love you, household gods!
In many a long and melancholy hour
Of solitude and sorrow, hath my heart
With earnest longings prayed, to rest at length
Beside your hallowed hearth-for peace is there!
Yes, I have loved you long. I call on you
Yourselves to witness with what holy joy,
Shunning the polish'd mob of human kind,
I have retired to watch your lonely fires,
And commune with myself. Delightful hours,
That gave mysterious pleasure, made me know
All the recesses of my wayward heart,
Taught me to cherish with devoutest care
Its strange unworldly feelings, taught me too
The best of lessons-to respect myself.
Nor have I ever ceased to reverence you,
Domestic deities! from the first dawn
Of reason, through the adventurous paths of youth,
|