And all remain'd as all had been before, For he is twice himself who can converse "What is this mystery of human life? New manners, passions, tastes, pursuits in each; what He hath been, is not, cannot be again; ages. -The Child;we know no more of happy childhood Than happy childhood knows of wretched eld; And all our dreams of its felicity Are incoherent as its own crude visions : We but begin to live from that fine point Which memory dwells on, with the morningstar, The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing, Yet who would be a Boy, a Girl again, -The Youth, the Maiden ;-living but for love, Yet learning soon that life hath other cares. And joys less rapturous, but more enduring: The Woman;--in her offspring multiplied; A tree of life, whose glory is her branches, Beneath whose shadow, she (both root and stem) Delights to dwell in meek obscurity, That they may be the pleasure of beholders: -The Man;-as father of a progeny, Whose birth requires his death to make them room, Yet in whose lives he feels his resurrection. Aud grows immortal in his children's children: Then the gray Elder;-leaning on his staff. And bow'd beneath a weight of years, that steal Upon him with the secrecy of sleep, (No snow falls lighter than the snow of age. None with such subtilty benumbs the frame) Till he forgets sensation, and lies down Dead in the lap of his primeval mother; She throws a shroud of turf and flower around him, Then calls the worms, and bids them de their office: Man giveth up the ghost, and where is He?" I saw those changes realised before me; Saw them recurring in perpetual line, The line unbroken, while the thread ran on Failing at this extreme, at that renew'd.— Like buds, leaves, blossoms, fruits on herbs and trees; Like mites, flies, reptiles; birds, and beasts, and fishes, Of every length of period here, all mortal And all resolved into those elements Whence they had emanated, whence they drew Their sustenance, and which their wrecks recruited To generate and foster other forms As like themselves as were the lights of heaven, For ever moving in serene succession,- Thus the swift series of man's race elapsed, Down to the worm, thence to the zoophyte, They were, then were not; they had lived and died. ROBERT SOUTHEY. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. HYMN TO THE PENATES. YET one Song more! one high and solemn strain, Ere, Phoebus! on thy temple's ruin'd wall SELLORS Of Jove; or if, SUPREME of Deities, And, wisest of Immortals, the dread Maid Estranged, and exiled from your altars long, In many a long and melancholy hour Yes, I have loved you long! I call on you Yourselves to witness with what holy joy, Shunning the common herd of human kind, I have retired to watch your lonely fires And commune with myself. Delightful hours, That gave mysterious pleasure, made me know Mine inmost heart, its weakness and its strength, Taught me to cherish with devoutest care To tumult. When a child—(and still I love With feelings not its own: sadly at night First wet with tears my pillow. As I grew Develop'd the young feelings of my heart, Darken'd old Avon's stream, in the ivied cave To mingle with the crowd, your calm abodes. Where by the evening-hearth CONTENTRENT sits And hears the cricket chirp; where Low Hear me, ye POWERS benignant! there i one Must be mine inmate, for I may not choos But love him. He is one whom many wroRES Have sicken'd of the world. There was i time When he would weep to hear of wickedness. And wonder at the tale; when for the p prest He felt a brother's pity, to the oppressor A good man's honest anger. His quick eye Betray'd each rising feeling; every though Leapt to his tongue. When first amen mankind He mingled, by himself he judged of then And loved and trusted them, to Wisden deaf, And took them to his bosom. Falsehood m Her unsuspecting victim, fair of front, And lovely as Apega's sculptured form, Like that false image caught his warm en brace, And gored his open breast. The reptile rac Clung round his bosom, and, with viper-fals Encircling, stung the fool who foster'd them His mother was SIMPLICITY, his sire BENEVOLENCE; in earlier days he bore His father's name; the world who injur him Call him MISANTHROPY. I may not choo But love him, HOUSEHOLD GODs! for we wen nurst In the same school.-PENATES ! some there Who say, that not in the inmost heaven? dwell, Gazing with eye remote on all the ways Of man, his GUARDIAN GODS; wiselier the deem A dearer interest to the human race Links you, yourselves the SPIRITS OF TH DEAD. No mortal eye may pierce the invisi world, No light of human reason penetrate Shrinks like the Arch-Fiend at Ithurie spear, And SOPHISTRY's gay glittering bubble burs As at the spousals of the Nereid's son, When that false Florimel, by her prototy Display'd in rivalry, with all her charms Dissolved away.-Nor can the halls of Hezw Give to the human soul such kindred joy, Of one beloved on earth; or when at night And Joys that are no more. Or when, per- With power permitted to alleviate ill The breast with ominous fear, and disciplines To visit day by day the favourite plant And watch all-anxious for the promised flower: 60wn The seeds of Truth and Virtue, holy flowers, Whose odour reacheth Heaven. When my sick heart (Sick with hope long delayed, than which no care Weighs on the spirit heavier ;) from itself SEWARD! my dear dead friend! For not in O early summon'd on thy heavenly course! Was thy brief sojourn here: me didst thou leave With strengthen'd step to follow the right Till we shall meet again. Meantime I sooth | The votive wreath renew'd, and the rich Curl from the costly censer slow and sweet. Vain sacrifice or impious, and sometimes Arose; he first the impious rites put down, Frequent recur and blameless ; and when came To you the fragrant censer smoked, to you Ye ask, PENATES! nor the altar cleansed PENATES! to your shrines I come for rest, From some high eminence on goodly vales Amid the scene so fair, nor one small spot There is a magic in that little word; Such feelings Nature prompts, and hence Till to the grave they go! them POVERTY, your rites, DOMESTIC GoDs arose. When for his son wealth Heapt for an alien, he with obstinate eye A safe asylum, fled the offending slave, Soften'd the father, and he loved to sce Hollow-eyed fiend, the child of WEALTH and Bad offspring of worse parents, aye afflicts, GOD OF ETERNAL JUSTICE! not on them When man shall feel your sacred power, and | Whose streamer to the gentle breeze love Your tranquil joys; then shall the city stand state Shall bless the race redeem'd of Man, when And Power and all their hideous progeny Tend all the tumults of the troubled world, Meantime, all hoping and expecting all In patient faith, to you, DoмESTIC GODS! I come, studious of other lore than song, Of my past years the solace and support: Yet shall my heart remember the past years With honest pride, trusting that not in vain Lives the pure song of LIBERTY and TRUTH. RUDIGE R. Divers Princes and Noblemen being assembled in a beautiful and fair Palace, which was situate upon the river Rhine, they beheld a boat or small barge inake toward the shore, drawn by a Swan in a silver chain, the one end fastened about her neck, the other to the vessel; and in it an unknown soldier, a man of a comely personage and graceful presence, who stept upon the shore; which done, the boat guided by the Swan left him, and floated down the river. This man fell afterward in league with a fair gentlewoman, married her, and by her had many children. After some years, the same Swan came with the same barge unto the same place; the soldier entering into it, was carried thence the way he came, left wife, children, and family, and was never seen amongst them after. Now who can judge this to be other than one of those spirits that are named Incubi? says Thomas Heywood. I have adopted his story, but not his solution, making the unknown soldier not an evil spirit, but one who had purchased happiness of a malevolent being, by the promised sacrifice of his first-born child. BRIGHT on the mountain's heathy slope And many a one from Waldhurst's walls As ruffling o'er the pleasant stream So as they stray'd a swan they saw And by a silver chain he drew Long floating flutter'd light, Beneath whose crimson canopy There lay reclined a knight. With arching crest and swelling breast And onward to the shore they drew, Was never a Knight in Waldhurst's wal Was never a Maid in Waldhurst's walls And many a rich and noble youth At every tilt and tourney he Still bore away the prize, His gallant feats, his looks, his love, Like morning-dreams of happiness Yet Rudiger would sometimes sit And his dark downward eye would seem But soon he raised his looks again, Was none like him so gay. And onward roll'd the waning months, The hour appointed came, And Margaret her Rudiger Hail'd with a father's name. But silently did Rudiger And darkly on the babe he gazed,— |