THE

MINSTREL.

BOOK SECOND.

I.

Or chance or change, O let not man complain,

F

Else shall he never never cease to wail!

For, from the imperial dome, to where the swain
Rears the lone cottage in the silent dale,

All feel the assault of fortune's fickle gale;

Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doomed; Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale, And gulphs the mountain's mighty mass entombed, And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloomed.

II.

But sure to foreign climes we need not range,
Nor search the ancient records of our race,
To learn the dire effects of time and change,
Which, in ourselves, alas! we daily trace.
Yet at the darkened eye, the withered face,
Or hoary hair, I never will repine:

But spare, O Time! whate'er of mental grace,
Of candour, love, or sympathy divine,

Whate'er of fancy's ray, or friendship's flame, is mine.

III.

So I, obsequious to Truth's dread command,
Shall here, without reluctance, change my lay,
And smite the Gothic lyre with harsher hand;
Now when I leave that flowery path for aye
Of childhood, where I sported many a day,
Warbling and sauntering carelessly along;
Where every face was innocent and gay,

Each vale romantic, tuneful every tongue,

Sweet, wild, and artless all, as Edwin's infant song.

IV.

“Perish the lore that deadens young desire,

Is the soft tenor of my song no more.

Edwin, though loved of Heaven, must not aspire To bliss, which mortals never knew before. On trembling wings let youthful fancy soar, Nor always haunt the sunny realms of joy; But now and then the shades of life explore; Though many a sound and sight of woe annoy, And many a qualm of care his rising hopes destroy.

V.

Vigour from toil, from trouble patience grows.
The weakly blossom, warm in summer bower,
Some tints of transient beauty may disclose;
But, ah! it withers in the chilling hour.
Mark yonder oaks! Superior to the power
Of all the warring winds of heaven they rise,
And from the stormy promontory tower,

And toss their giant arms amid the skies,

While each assailing blast increase of strength supplies.

VI.

And now the downy cheek and deepened voice
Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime;

And walks of wider circuit were his choice,

And vales more wild, and mountains more sublime.
One evening as he framed the careless rhyme,
It was his chance to wander far abroad,
And o'er a lonely eminence to climb,

Which, heretofore, his foot had never trode ;
A vale appeared below, a deep retired abode.

VII.

Thither he hied, enamoured of the scene:
For rocks on rocks piled, as by magic spell,
Here scorched with lightning, there with ivy green,
Fenced from the north and east this savage dell;
Southward, a mountain rose with easy swell,
Whose long long groves eternal murmur made;
And toward the western sun a streamlet fell,

Where, through the cliffs, the eye, remote, surveyed Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold arrayed.