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What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape?

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens

loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not
leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;' Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, yet, do not

Though winning near the goal

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grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Sonnets.

To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear

Catching the notes of Philomel, an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by; E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently.

Happy is England! I could be content

To see no other verdure than its own; To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent: Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment

For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or wordling meant. Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters; Enough their simple loveliness for me, Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:

Yet do I often warmly burn to see

Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,

And float with them about the summer waters.

Stanzas.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?

To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting, careless, on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind:
Or, on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy
hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined
flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or, by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by
hours.

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Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue: Then, in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft,

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more

And still more, later flower for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er brimm'd their clammy
cells.

bourn;

Hedge- crickets sing; and now, with treble

soft,

The redbreast whistles from a garden croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Hogg

James Hogg ward am 25. Januar 1772 in einer Hütte am Ufer des Ettrick im Shire von Selkirk (Schottland) geboren. Er stammte von Schäfern und ward selbst wieder ein Schäfer, wes halb er auch zur Auszeichnung the Ettrick Shepherd genannt wurde. Schon früh musste er sich sein Brod verdienen und genoss nur ein halbes Jahr lang eigentlichen Schulunterricht; seine ganze übrige Bildung verdankte er seinem eigenen Fleisse. Als er achtzehn Jahr alt war, entstanden seine ersten Gedichte, welche er später in Edinburg herausgab, die aber wenig Aufmerksamkeit erregten. Mit der Landwirthschaft wollte es ihm nicht gelingen und er hatte mit Armuth zu kämpfen, bis sich Walter Scott seiner annahm. Hogg liess nun mehrere grössere Dichtungen erscheinen, unter denen namentlich The Queen's Wake sich des allgemeinsten Beifalls erfreute, aber seine Vermögensumstände verbesserten sich nicht, da er den Pachthof von Mount Benger übernommen hatte und vom Ackerbau doch nicht sonderlich viel verstand. Er starb am 21. November 1835 und hinterliess eine Wittwe und fünf Kinder in drückenden Verhältnissen.

Neben mehreren Romanen und prosaischen Erzählungen schrieb Hogg einige grössere Dichtungen, wie dass oben erwähnte Queen's Wake, the Pilgrims of the Sun, Mador of the Moor, Queen Hynde und eine Anzahl Balladen und lyrischer Poesieen u. A. m. Allan Cunningham sagt von ihm a. a. O.: "Als Dichter steht er auf einer hohen Stufe. An Energie des Ausdrucks und Leidenschaftlichkeit des Gefühls ist er Burns zwar bei Weitem nicht gleich, allein was den natürlichen Aufschwung einer freien fessellosen Einbildungskraft anlangt, tritt er vor Niemand zurück. Die besonderen Eigenschaften seiner Dichtungen, so wie seine Stellung als Haupt der ländlichen Schule, die eben keine zahlreichen Jünger hat, geben ihm alle Aussicht auf Nachruhm."

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The Skylark.

Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!

Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay, and loud,
Far in the downy cloud,
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.

Where, on thy dewy wing,
Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,

Kilmeny.

From the Queen's Wake.

Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen;
But it wasna to meet Duneira's men,
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the Yorlin sing,
And pu' the cress-flower round the spring;
The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye,
And the nut that hang frae the hazel-tree;
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the green-wood shaw;
Lang the laird of Duneira blame,

And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame!
When many a day had come and fled,
When grief grew calm, and hope was dead,
When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,
When the bedesman had prayed, and the dead-
bell rung,

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