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Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of some magic wand;
An holy trance my charmed spirit wings,
And awful shapes of warriors and of kings
People thy busy mead,

Like spectres swarming to the wizard's hall;
And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-covered by the purple pall.
Before me Pity seems to stand

A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore,
To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood

His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er.
Pale Terror leads the visionary band,

And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood.

SELECTIONS FROM THE SONNETS.

I.

ON REVISITING THE RIVER LODON.

AH! what a weary race my feet have run
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crowned,
And thought my way was all through fairy ground,
Beneath the azure sky and golden sun,

When first my Muse to lisp her notes begun!
While pensive Memory traces back the round
Which fills the varied interval between ;

Much pleasure, more of sorrow marks the scene.
Sweet native stream! those skies and sun so pure,
No more return to cheer my evening road!

Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure
Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed,

From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature ;
Nor with the muse's laurel unbestowed.

II.

WRITTEN AT WINSLADE, HAMPSHIRE.

WINSLADE, thy beech-capt hills, with waving grain
Mantled, thy chequer'd views of wood and lawn,
Whilom could charm, or when the gradual dawn
Gan the gray mist with orient purple stain,
Or evening glimmer'd o'er the folded train;

Her fairest landscapes whence my muse has drawn,
Too free with servile courtly phrase to fawn,
Too weak to try the buikin's stately strain;
Yet now no more thy slopes of beech and corn,
Nor views invite, since he far distant strays,
With whom I trac'd their sweets at eve and morn,
From Albion far, to cull Hesperian bays;

In this alone they please, howe'er forlorn,
That still they can recall those happier days.

III.

WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF DUGDALE'S MONASTICON.

DEEM not devoid of elegance the sage,
By fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled,
Of painful pedantry, the poring child,

Who turns of these proud domes the historic page,
Now sunk by time, and Henry's fiercer rage.
Think'st thou the warbling muses never smiled
On his lone hours? Ingenious views engage
His thoughts, on themes unclassic falsely styled,
Intent. While cloistered piety displays
Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores
New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.
Not rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers.

IV.

WRITTEN AT STONEHENGE.

THOU noblest monument of Albion's isle!
Whether by Merlin's aid from Scythia's shore,
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant-hands, the mighty pile,
T' entomb his Britains slain by Hengist's guile;
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught mid thy massy maze their mystic lore;
Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,
To victory's idol vast, and unhewn shrine,
Rear'd the rude heap; or, in thy hallow'd round,
Repose the Kings of Brutus' genuine line;

Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd:
Studious to trace thy wondrous origine,
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd.

V.

WRITTEN AFTER SEEING WILTON HOUSE.

FROM Pembroke's princely dome, where mimic art
Decks with a magic hand the dazzling bow'rs,
Its living hues where the warm pencil pours,
And breathing forms from the rude marble start,
How to life's humbler scene can I depart?
My breast all glowing from those gorgeous tow'rs,
In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours!
Vain the complaint: for fancy can impart
(To fate superior, and to fortune's doom)
Whate'er adorns the stately-storied hall,
She, 'mid the dungeon's solitary gloom,
Can dress the graces in their Attic pall,
Bid the green landskip's vernal beauty bloom;
And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall.

VI.

ON SUMMER.

While summer suns o'er the gay prospect played,
Through Surrey's verdant scenes, where Epsom spreads
'Mid intermingling elms her flowery meads,
And Hascombe's hills, in towering groves array'd,
Rear'd its romantic steep, with mind serene
I journey'd blithe. Full pensive I return'd;
For now my breast with hopeless passion burn'd,
Wet with hoar mists appear'd the gaudy scene
Which late in careless indolence I pass'd;
And autumn all around those hues had cast
Where past delight my recent grief might trace.
Sad change, that Nature a congenial gloom

Should wear, when most my cheerless mood to chase,
I wished her green attire and wonted bloom!

HENRY JAMES PYE.

Born in London in 1745. Made laureate in 1790. Died in 1813.

(Reign of George III.)

WHEN Warton died, there were many suggestions from the critics that the Laureateship be abolished. Edward Gibbon said: "This is the best time for not filling up the office, when the prince is a man of virtue, and the poet just departed was a man of genius."

Byron said that Henry James Pye was a man eminently respectable in everything but his poetry; and his critics and lampooners fret themselves over the puzzle why he was made poet laureate. The Chronique Scandaleuse, seeking for a solution, finds it in the fact that once Pye and George III. were hunting together. The king tumbled and lost his wig. Pye hastened to raise his sovereign from his undignified position, but His Majesty, with ill-concealed anxiety, began to search in the bog for his wig. "Never mind your royal wig," said Pye impulsively; " I care more for the safety of your sacred Majesty's person. I sincerely trust your Majesty is unhurt." This solicitude impressed the king to such an extent that when Warton died, and a list of candidates for the Laureateship being presented to the king, he straightway recommended Pye.

Henry James Pye was an aristocrat, belonged to an ancient family which had come over to England with the Conqueror, and had afterwards been connected with royalty. One of his ancestors was Auditor of the Exchequer in the reign of James I. It was therefore Sir Robert Pye's duty to pay Ben Jonson his annual grant, and it was to him that Jonson addressed his famous epistle when the salary was in arrears. Sir Robert Pye's son married the daughter of John Hampden.

It is not with his ancestors, however, but with the laureate himself that we must concern ourselves. His childhood was a happy one. Taught by a private tutor at home, he was studious and precocious, read Homer at ten years of age, and delighted in mental gymnastics such as in these days are unknown to our children.

At seventeen he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, and at twenty-one he left the university on account of the death of his father. The estate was a large one, and he felt his responsi

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