Drive my dead thoughts over the universe scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind! P. B. SHELLEY 482 TO THE RIVER BLYTH THOU, that prattling on thy pebbled way through my paternal vale dost stray, working thy shallow passage to the sea; O stream, thou speedest on the same as many seasons gone; but not, alas! to me remain the feelings that beguiled my early road, when careless and content or loved in thy translucent wave and thought how wondrous skilled was I!- It seems but yesterday I was a child-to-morrow to be grey! rolls down to the great sea. Thither O carry these sad thoughts—the deep W. L. BOWLES 483 THE LORD YOUR GOD HATH GIVEN YOU THIS LAND TO POSSESS IT HERE is a land of pure delight THERE where saints immortal reign; infinite day excludes the night, There everlasting Spring abides, Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood But timorous mortals start and shrink O, could we make our doubts remove could we but climb where Moses stood and view the landscape o'er, not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood, 484 I. WATTS THE ORPHEUS AND THE SIRENS 'HE bark divine, itself instinct with life, and force and fraud o'ercome, and peril past, till now they cried (Ææa left behind, and the dead waters of the Cronian main), "no peril more upon our path we find, safe haven soon we gain." When, as they spake, sweet sounds upon the breeze sweet odours sweetly blown,— sweet odours wafted from the flowery isle, Fair monsters foul, that with their magic song 485 Sometimes upon the diamond rocks they leant, The winds, suspended by the charméd song, and every one that listens, presently forgetteth home and wife and children dear, He cannot heed,-so sweet unto him seems -The heroes and the kings, the wise, the strong, that won the fleece with cunning and with might, their souls were taken in the net of song, snared in that false delight; Till ever loathlier seemed all toil to be, and that small space they yet must travel o'er, stretched, an immeasurable breadth of sea, their fainting hearts before. 486 "Let us turn hitherward our bark," they cried, 66 and, 'mid the blisses of this happy isle, past toil forgetting and to come, abide in joyfulness awhile; "and then, refreshed, our tasks resume again, O heroes, that had once a nobler aim, O heroes sprung from many a godlike line, But they, by these prevailing voices now or seeing, feared not-warning taking none And some impel through foaming billows now And them this fatal lodestar of delight had drawn to ruin wholly, but for one of their own selves, who struck his lyre with might, Calliope's great son. 487 Of holier joy he sang, more true delight, in other happier isles for them reserved, who, faithful here, from constancy and right and truth have never swerved; How evermore the tempered ocean gales breathe round those hidden islands of the blest, steeped in the glory spread, when daylight fails, far in the sacred West; how unto them, beyond our mortal night, and how 'twas given thro' virtue to aspire He says a mighty melody divine, that woke deep echoes in the heart of each— And all the while they listened, them the speed the feeble echoes of that other lay, which held awhile their senses thralled and bound, were in the distance fading quite away, a dull unheeded sound. R. C. TRENCH 488 TO A YOUNG LADY CURLING HER HAIR Ο No longer seek the needless aid of studious art, dear lovely Maid! vainly from side to side, forbear to shift thy glass, and braid each straggling hair. As the gay flowers, which Nature yields as the pure rill, whose mazy train |