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The accents fall from Tamar's lip
Like dewdrops from the rose-leaf dripping,
When honey-bees all crowd to sip,
And cannot cease their sipping.

The shadowy blush that tints her cheek,
For ever coming ever going,
May well the spotless fount bespeak
That sets the stream aflowing.

Her song comes o'er my thrilling breast
Even like the harp-strings holies measures,
When dreams the soul of lands of rest
And everlasting pleasures.

Then ask not what hath changed my heart,
Or where hath fled my youthful folly

I tell thee, Tamar's virtuous art
Hath made my spirit holy.

Pringle.

Thomas Pringle wurde in Roxburgshire, im Jahre 1788 geboren. Obschon er wegen Lamheit nicht für ein Leben voll Beschwerden und Mühseligkeiten geschaffen war, so wanderte er doch mit seinem Vater und mehreren Brüdern im J. 1820 nach dem Cap der guten Hoffnung aus, und gründete dort unter dem Namen Glen Lynden eine kleine Niederlassung. Pringle begab sich später in die Kapstadt, allein müde seines Aufenthaltes im Kaffernlande und mit dem Statthalter zerfallen, kehrte er nach England zurück, wo er seinen Unterhalt durch schriftstellerische Arbeiten erwarb. Er war einige Zeit lang Herausgeber einer literarischen Zeitschrift, unter dem Titel „Friendship's Offering". Auch war er an der Begründung des Blackwood Magazine betheiligt und der Verfasser von „Scenes of Teviotdale, Ephemerides, and other Poems,,. Der Afrikanischen Gesellschaft (African Society) stand er als Secretair vor, welches Amt er bis wenige Monate vor seinem Tode, den 5. Dec. 1834, mit grosser Pflichttreue und mit dem Geiste der Humanität und mit glühender Liebe für die Sache, der er sich unterzog, verwaltete. Seine letzte Arbeit war eine Reihe von African Sketches", mit Versen verwebt.

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Pringle's poetische Werke zeichnen sich durch Wärme und Innigkeit des Gefühls, so wie durch einen feingebildeten Geschmack aus.

Afar in the Desert.

A far in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the present, I turn to the past;
And the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And the shadows of things that have long
since fled,

Flit over the brain like the ghosts of the

dead

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Like the fresh bowers of Paradise opening to view!

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Bright visions of glory that vanished too All all now forsaken, forgotten, or gone; And I, a lone exile, remembered of none, Day-dreams that departed ere manhood's My high aims abandoned, and good acts

soon

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undone

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and folly,

Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
In fields seldom freshened by moisture or rain;
And the stately koodoo exultingly bounds,
Undisturbed by the bay of the hunter's hounds;
And the timorous quagha's wild whistling
neigh

Is heard by the brak fountain far away;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste;
And the vulture in circles wheels high over-
head,

Greedy to scent and to gorge on the dead;
Howl for their prey at the evening fall;
And the grisly wolf, and the shrieking jackal,
Fearfully startles the twilight dim.
And the fiend-like laugh of hyena's grim,

Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy; Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;

high,

And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh

Oh, then! there is freedom, and joy, and pride,

A far in the Desert alone to ride!

There is rapture to vault on the champing

steed,

And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand
(The only law of the Desert land);
But 'tis not the innocent to destroy,
For I hate the huntsman's savage joy.

A far in the Desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side; Away away from the dwellings of men, By the wild deer's haunt, and the buffalo's glen,

By valleys remote, where the oribi plays; Where the gnoo, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze; And the gemsbok and eland unhunted recline By the skirts of gray forests o'ergrown with wild vine; And the elephant browses at peace in his wood;

And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood;

And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will
In the Vley, where the wild ass is drinking

his fill.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: O'er the brown Karroo where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;

Where the white man's foot hath never Away away in the wilderness vast,

passed,

And the quivered Koranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan:
Which man hath abandoned from famine and
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,

fear;

Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, And the bat flitting forth from his old hollow stone;

Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot:
And the bitter melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare, by the Salt Lake's brink:
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Nor reedy pool, nor mossy fountain,
Nor shady tree, nor cloud-capped mountain,
Are found to refresh the aching eye:
But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the black horizon round and round,
Without a living sight or sound,
Tell to the heart, in its pensive mood,

-

That this is Nature's Solitude.

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Clare.

John Clare wurde zu Helpstone, einem Dorfe in der Nähe von Peterborough 1793 von armen Eltern geboren, welche dem Bauernstande angehörten. Von seinem geringen Erwerb als Ackerjunge bestritt er das Schulgeld, und erlangte so einige Bildung. Im 13. Jahre ging er an einem schönen Morgen in die Stadt Stamford, 6—7 Meilen von seinem Geburtsorte, um sich Thomson's Seasons zu kaufen. Auf seinem Rückwege durch den herrlichen Burghley Park, dichtete er sein erstes Gedicht „Morning Walk", dem bald ein zweites, "Evening Walk" und einige andre Gedichte folgten. 4817 veröffentlichte er einen Band Gedichte, unter dem Titel: a Collection of Original Trifles, und 1820 erschienen Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, by John Clare, a Northamshire peasant. Die liter. Zeitschriften beurtheilten seine Leistungen sehr günstig. So gelangte Clare bald zu einigem Vermögen. 1824 trat er wiederum als Dichter mit folgendem Werke auf: The Village Minstrel and other Poems, in zwei Bänden, das ihn zu dem Rufe eines wahren Dichters erhob. Clare's Glück ging indess schnell vorüber, während ihm sein Dichterruf für alle Zeiten bleiben wird. Er liess sich in Speculationen mit Pachtungen ein, verlor sein Vermögen und versank in Schwermuth. Vor wenigen Jahren lebte er noch, aber hoffnungslos, doch nicht ohne alle Theilnahme an den Zeitereignissen.

John Clare ist ein wahrer Naturdichter und einer der besten Schilderer ländlicher Scenen und Gegenden. Seine Dichtungen sind der unmittelbare Erguss inniger Empfindungen, wie sie auf Fluren und Spaziergängen in ihm hervorgerufen wurden.

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With joy and oft an unintruding guest,

I watched her secret toils from day to day; How true she warped the moss to form her nest,

And modelled it within with wood and clay.

And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,

There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Jnk-spotted over, shells of green and blue: And there I witnessed in the summer hours, A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.

Dawnings of Genius.

In those low paths which poverty surrounds, The rough rude ploughman, off his fallow grounds

(That necessary tool of wealth and pride), While moiled and sweating, by some pasture's side,

Will often stoop, inquisitive to trace
The opening beauties of a daisy's face;
Oft will he witness, with admiring eyes,
The brook's sweet dimples o'er the pebbles
rise;
And often bent, as o'er some magic spell,
He'll pause and pick his shaped stone and
shell:
Raptures the while his inward powers in-
flame,

And joys delight him which he cannot name;
Ideas picture pleasing views to mind,
For which his language can no utterance
find;

Increasing beauties, freshening on his sight,
Unfold new charms, and witness more delight;
So while the present please, the past decay,
And in each other, losing, melt away.
Thus pausing wild on all he saunters by,
He feels enraptured, though he knows not
why;

And hums and mutters o'er his joys in vain, And dwells on something which he can't explain.

The bursts of thought with which his soul's perplexed,

Are bred one moment, and are gone the next;
Yet still the heart will kindling sparks retain,
And thoughts will rise, and Fancy strive again.
So have I marked the dying ember's light,
When on the hearth it fainted from my sight,
With glimmering glow oft redden up again,
And sparks crack brightening into life in
vain;

Still lingering out its kindling hope to rise
Till faint, and fainting, the last twinkle dies.
Dim burns the soul, and throbs the flutter-
ing heart,

Its painful pleasing feelings to impart;
Till by successless sallies wearied quite,
The memory fails, and Fancy takes her flight:

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