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ABSALOM.

If from this woe its bitterness had won thee, May God have called thee like a wanderer home, My erring Absalom!"

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He covered up his face, and bowed himself
A moment o'er his child: then giving him
A look of melting tenderness, he clasped
His hands convulsively, as if in prayer:
And, as a strength were given him of God,
He rose up calmly and composed the pall
Fairly and quietly, and left him there
As if his rest had been a breathing sleep!

275

N. P. WILLIS.

Sonnet.

There is no remedy for time misspent,
No healing for the waste of idleness,
Whose very languor is a punishment-

Heavier than active souls can feel or guess.
Oh! hours of indolence and discontent,

Not now to be redeemed! ye sting not less,
Because I know this span of life was lent-
For lofty duties, not for selfishness.
Not to be whiled away in aimless dreams,
But to improve ourselves, and serve mankind,
Life, and its choicest faculties were given.
Man should be ever better than he seems-
And shape his acts, and discipline his mind,

To walk adorning earth, expecting Heaven!

Cintern Abbey.

FIVE years have passed: five summers, with the length

Of five long winters and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain springs
With a sweet inland murmur. Once again

Do I behold these steep aud lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion, and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up in silence from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwelling in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermits cave, where, by his fire,
The hermit sits alone.

Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind

TINTERN ABBEY.

With tranquil restoration-feelings too,
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world

:

Is lightened that serene and blessed mood
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the joy,
We see into the life of things.

If this

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh; how oft,
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight, when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beating of my heart,
How oft in spirit have I turned to thee,

O sylvan Wye!-thou wanderer through the woods-
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts,

277

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That in this moment there is life and good
For future years. And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills: when, like a roe,
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man,.

Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)

To me was all in all-I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite a feeling and a love

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, or any interest
Unhonoured from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

TINTERN ABBEY.

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion of a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods

And mountains, and of all that we behold

Of and ear,

eye

From this green earth of all the mighty world
both what they half create
And what perceive: well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

For thou art with me here, upon the banks
Of this fair river: thou, my dearest friend,
My dear, dear friend, and in thy voice I catch.
The language of my former heart, and read
My purer pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,

My dear, dear sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

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