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Must needs express his love's excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what, if in a world of sin

(0 sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom, save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do.

YOUTH AND AGE.

VERSE, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee-
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young ?-Ah, woful when!
Ah for the change 'twixt now and then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er airy cliffs and glittering sands,
How lightly then it flash'd along :-

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Naught cared this body for wind or weather,
When Youth and I lived in't together.

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O the joys, that came down shower-like, Of friendship, love, and liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth for years so many and sweet,
"Tis known, that thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit-
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:-
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this alter'd size:
But springtide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are house-mates still.

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS. FROM his brimstone bed at break of day A-walking the DEVIL is gone,

To visit his little snug farm of the earth, And see how his stock went on.

72

Over the hill and over the dale

And he went over the plain, And backward and forward he swish'd his long tail As a gentleman swishes his cane.

And how then was the Devil drest?

O! he was in his Sunday's best:

His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through.

He saw a LAWYER killing a viper

On a dung-heap beside his stable,

And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother, Abel.

A POTHECARY on a white horse
Rode by on his vocations,

And the Devil thought of his old friend
DEATH in the Revelations.

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility!

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

He went into a rich bookseller's shop,

Quoth he! we are both of one college; For I myself sate like a cormorant once, Fast by the tree of knowledge.*

Down the river there plied with wind and tide, A pig, with vast celerity;

* And all amid them stood the Tree of Life High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit

Of vegetable gold (query paper money?); and next to Life

Our Death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by.—

So clomb this first grand thief

Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life
Sat like a cormorant.-Par. Lost, IV.

The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for "Life" Cod. quid habent, "Trade." Though indeed the trade, i. e. the bibliopolic, so called, kär' εóxŋy, may be regarded as life sansu eminentiori: a suggestion, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, country houses, etc. of the trade, exclaimed, "Ay! that's what I call life now!" -This "Life, our Death," is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of authorship.-Sic nos non nobis mellificamus Apes.

Of this poem, with which the Fire, Famine, and Slaughter first appeared in the Morning Post, the three first stanzas, which are worth all the rest, and the ninth, were dictated by Mr. Southey. Between the ninth and the concluding stanza, two or three are omitted as grounded on subjects that have lost their interest-and for better

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II.

"Ah," replied my gentle fair;

"Dear one, what are names but air?—
Choose thou whatever suits the line;
Call me Laura, call me Chloris,
Call me Lalage, or Doris,
Only-only-call me thine!"

SLY Beelzebub took all occasions
To try Job's constancy, and patience.
He took his honour, took his health;
He took his children, took his wealth,
His servants, oxen, horses, cows,-
But cunning Satan did not take his spouse.

But Heaven, that brings out good from evil,
And loves to disappoint the devil,
Had predetermined to restore
Twofold all he had before;

His servants, horses, oxen, cows-
Short-sighted devil, not to take his spouse !

HOARSE Mævius reads his hobbling verse
To all, and at all times;

And finds them both divinely smooth,
His voice as well as rhymes.

But folks say Mævius is no ass;
But Mævius makes it clear
That he's a monster of an ass-
An ass without an ear!

THERE comes from old Avaro's grave
A deadly stench-why, sure, they have
Immured his soul within his grave!

SWANS sing before they die-'twere no bad thing Did certain persons die before they sing.

THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO.

Of late, in one of those most weary hours,
When life seems emptied of all genial powers,

A dreary mood, which he who ne'er has known
May bless his happy lot, I sate alone;
And, from the numbing spell to win relief,
Call'd on the past for thought of glee or grief.
In vain! bereft alike of grief and glee,

I sate and cower'd o'er my own vacancy!
And as I watch'd the dull continuous ache,
Which, all else slumbering, seem'd alone to wake;
O friend! long wont to notice yet conceal,
And soothe by silence what words cannot heal,

I but half saw that quiet hand of thine
Place on my desk this exquisite design,
Boccaccio's garden and its faëry,

The love, the joyance, and the gallantry!
An idyl, with Boccaccio's spirit warm
Framed in the silent poesy of form.
Like flocks adown a newly-bathed steep
Emerging from a mist: or like a stream
Of music soft that not dispels the sleep,
But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's
dream,

Gazed by an idle eye with silent might
The picture stole upon my inward sight.
A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest,
As though an infant's finger touch'd my breast.
And one by one (I know not whence) were brought
All spirits of power that most had stirr'd my
thought.

In selfless boyhood, on a new world tost
Of wonder, and in its own fancies lost;
Or charm'd my youth, that kindled from above,
Loved ere it loved, and sought a form for love;
Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan
Of manhood, musing what and whence is man!
Wild strain of scalds, that in the sea-worn caves
Rehearsed their war-spell to the winds and waves:

Or fateful hymn of those prophetic maids,
That call'd on Hertha in deep forest glades;
Or minstrel lay, that cheer'd the baron's feast;
Or rhyme of city pomp, of monk and priest,
Judge, mayor, and many a guild in long array,
To high-church pacing on the great saint's day.
And many a verse which to myself I sang,
That woke the tear, yet stole away the pang,
Of hopes which in lamenting I renew'd.
And last, a matron now, of sober mien,
Yet radiant still and with no earthly sheen,
Whom as a faëry child my childhood woo'd
E'en in my dawn of thought-Philosophy.
Though then unconscious of herself, pardie,
She bore no other name than poesy;

And, like a gift from heaven, in lifeful glee,
That had but newly left a mother's knee,

Fair cities, gallant mansions, castles old,
And forests, where beside his leafy hold
The sullen boar hath heard the distant horn,
And whets his tusks against the gnarled thorn;
Palladian palace with its storied halls;
Fountains, where love lies listening to their falls;
Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span,
And nature makes her happy home with man,
Where many a gorgeous flower is duly fed
With its own rill, on its own spangled bed,
And wreathes the marble urn, or leans its head,
A mimic mourner, that with veil withdrawn
Weeps liquid gems, the presents of the dawn,
Thine all delights, and every muse is thine:
And more than all, th' embrace and intertwine
Of all with all in gay and twinkling dance!
'Mid gods of Greece and warriors of romance,

Prattled and play'd with bird, and flower, and stone, See! Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees

As with elfin playfellows well known,
And life reveal'd to innocence alone.

Thanks, gentle artist! now I can descry
Thy fair creation with a mastering eye,
And all awake! And now in fix'd gaze stand,
Now wander through the Eden of thy hand;
Praise the green arches, on the fountain clear
See fragment shadows of the crossing deer,
And with that serviceable nymph I stoop,
The crystal from its restless pool to scoop.
I see no longer! I myself am there,
Sit on the ground-sward, and the banquet share.
'Tis I, that sweep that lute's love-echoing strings,
And gaze upon the maid, who gazing sings:
Or pause and listen to the tinkling bells
From the high tower, and think that there she
dwells.

With old Boccaccio's soul I stand possest,
And breathe an air like life, that swells my chest.

The brightness of the world, O thou once free,
And always fair, rare land of courtesy !
O, Florence! with the Tuscan fields and hills!
And famous Arno fed with all their rills;
Thou brightest star of star-bright Italy!
Rich, ornate, populous, all treasures thine,
The golden corn, the olive, and the vine.

The new-found roll of old Mæonides ;*

But from his mantle's fold, and near the heart,
Peers Ovid's Holy Book of Love's sweet smart!†
O all-enjoying and all-blending sage,
Long be it mine to con thy mazy page,
Where, half-conceal'd, the eye of fancy views
Fauns, nymphs, and winged saints, all gracious to
thy muse!

Still in thy garden let me watch their pranks,
And see in Dian's vest between the ranks
Of the trim vines, some maid that half believes
The vestal fires, of which her lover grieves,
With that sly satyr peering through the leaves!

* Boccaccio claimed for himself the glory of having first introduced the works of Homer to his country.

+ I know few more striking or more interesting proofs of the overwhelming influence which the study of the Greek and Roman classics exercised on the judgments, feelings, and imaginations of the literati of Europe at the commencement of the restoration of literature, than the passage in the Filocopo of Boccaccio: where the sage instructer, Racheo, as soon as the young prince and the beautiful girl, Biancafiore had learned their letters, sets them to study the Holy Book, Ovid's Art of Love. "Incominciò Racheo a mettere il suo officio in essecuzione con intera sollecitudine. E loro, in breve tempo, insegnato a conoscer le lettere, fece legere il santo libro d' Ovvidio, nel quale il sommo poeta mostra, come i santi fuochi di Venere si debbano ne freddi cuori occendere."

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

JAMES MONTGOMERY was born in Irvine, Ayrshire, in 1771. His parents belonged to the church of the United Brethren, commonly called Moravians, a sect by no means numerous in England, and still more limited in Scotland. Having previously sojourned for a short time at a village in the Irish county of Antrim, they placed the future poet at the school of their society at Fulnick, near Leeds, and embarked for the West Indies as missionaries among the negro slaves. They were the victims of their zeal and humanity; the husband died in Barbadoes, and the wife in Tobago.

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by the upright and unimpeachable tenor of his life—
even more than by his writings-the persuasive
and convincing advocate of religion. In his per-
sonal appearance, Montgomery is rather below than
above the middle stature: his countenance is
peculiarly bland and tranquil; and but for the
occasional sparklings of a clear gray eye, it could
scarcely be described as expressive.
Very early in life, Montgomery published a
volume of poems. They were not, it would appear,
favourably received by the public; and he writes,
the disappointment of his premature poetical hopes
brought with it a blight which his mind has never
recovered. "For many years," he adds, "I was
as mute as a moulting bird; and when the power
of song returned, it was without the energy, self-
confidence, and freedom which happier minstrels

Wanderer of Switzerland was published in 1806; the West Indies, in 1810; the World before the Flood, in 1813; Greenland in 1819; the Pelican Island, in 1827: he has since contented himself with the production of occasional verses.

After remaining two years at Fulnick, and, like other men of genius, disappointing the expectations of his friends as a student, "from very indolence," he was placed by them in a retail shop at Mirfield near Wakefield. This ungenial employment he considered himself-not being under indentures-among my contemporaries have manifested." The at liberty to relinquish at the end of two years, with a view to try his fortune in the great world. After spending other two years at a village near Rotherham, and a few months with a bookseller in London, he engaged as an assistant with Mr. Joseph Gales of Sheffield, who, published a news- Those who can distinguish the fine gold from the paper;-to the management of which, in 1794, he" sounding brass" of poetry, must place the name succeeded. This, though conducted with compara- of James Montgomery high in the list of British tive moderation, exposed him to much enmity-poets; and those who consider that the chiefest rather inherited from his predecessor than actually incurred by himself. The liberty of the press in those days was, like faith," the substance of things hoped for ;" a sentence of condemnation, or even a word of reproach, against men in "high places," was punished as libellous. Montgomery did not indeed share the fate of some of his stern sectarian forefathers; but in lieu of maiming and pillory, he had to endure fine and imprisonment. Within eighteen months, and when he had scarcely arrived at manhood, his exertions in the cause of rational freedom had twice consigned him to a jail. During the thirty years that followed, however, he was permitted to publish his opinions, without being the object of open persecutions. Wearied out, at length, he relinquished his newspaper, in 1825. Recently one of the government grants to British worthies has been conferred upon him; and-it must be recorded to his honour-by Sir Robert Peel. The poet continues to reside in Sheffield, esteemed, admired, and beloved: a man of purer mind, or more unsuspected integrity, never existed. He is an honour to the profession of letters; and

duty of such is to promote the cause of religion, virtue, and humanity, must acknowledge in him one of their most zealous and efficient advocates. He does not, indeed, often aim at bolder flights of imagination; but if he seldom rises above, he never sinks beneath, the object of which he desires the attainment. If he rarely startles us, he still more rarely leaves us dissatisfied; he does not attempt that to which his powers are unequal, and therefore is at all times successful. To the general reader, it will seem as if the early bias of his mind and his first associations had tinged-we may not say tainted-the source from whence he drew his inspirations, and that his poems are "sicklied o'er" with peculiar impressions and opinions which fail to excite the sympathy of the great mass of mankind. We should, however, recollect, that, although he has chiefly addressed himself to those who think with him, his popularity is by no means confined to them; but that those who read poetry for the delight it affords them, and without any reference to his leading design, acknowledge his merit, and contribute to his fame.

572

THE WANDERER OF SWITZER

LAND.

IN SIX PARTS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE historical facts alluded to in The Wanderer of Switzerland may be found in the supplement to Coxe's Travels, in Planta's History of the Helvetic Confederacy, and in Zschokke's Invasion of Switzerland by the French, in 1798, translated by Dr. Aikin.

PART I.

A Wanderer of Switzerland and his family, consisting of his wife, his daughter, and her young children, emigrating from their country, in consequence of its subjugation by the French, in 1798, arrive at the cottage of a shepherd, beyond the frontiers, where they are hospitably entertained.

SHEPHERD.

"WANDERER, whither dost thou roam?

Weary wanderer, old and gray; Wherefore hast thou left thine home In the sunset of thy day ?" WANDERER.

"In the sunset of my day,

Stranger! I have lost my home:
Weary, wandering, old, and gray-
Therefore, therefore do I roam.
"Here mine arms a wife enfold,

Fainting in their weak embrace;
There my daughter's charms behold,
Withering in that widow'd face.
"These her infants-0 their sire,
Worthy of the race of Tell,
In the battle's fiercest fire,
In his country's battle fell!"

SHEPHERD.

"Switzerland, then, gave thee birth?"

WANDERER.

"Ay-'twas Switzerland of yore; But, degraded spot of earth,

Thou art Switzerland no more: "O'er thy mountains sunk in blood, Are the waves of ruin hurl'd; Like the waters of the flood

Rolling round a buried world."

SHEPHERD.

"Yet will time the deluge stop;
Then may Switzerland be blest;
On St. Gothard's hoary top
Shall the ark of Freedom rest.

WANDERER.

"No!-irreparably lost,

On the day that made us slaves, Freedom's ark, by tempest tost,

Founder'd in the swallowing waves."

*St. Gothard is the name of the highest mountain in the canton of Uri, the birthplace of Swiss independence.

SHEPHERD.

"Welcome, wanderer as thou art,

All my blessings to partake; Yet thrice welcome to my heart, For thine injured country's sake. "On the western hills afar

Evening lingers with delight, While she views her favourite star Brightening on the brow of night. "Here, though lowly be my lot,

Enter freely, freely share All the comforts of my cot,

Humble shelter, homely fare. "Spouse, I bring a suffering guest, With his family of grief; Give the weary pilgrims rest,

Yield the exiles sweet relief."

SHEPHERD'S WIFE.

"I will yield them sweet relief: Weary pilgrims! welcome here; Welcome, family of grief,

Welcome to my warmest cheer."

WANDERER.

"When in prayer the broken heart
Asks a blessing from above,
Heaven shall take the wanderer's part,
Heaven reward the stranger's love."

SHEPHERD.

"Haste, recruit the failing fire, High the winter-fagots raise; See the crackling flames aspire; O how cheerfully they blaze! "Mourners, now forget your cares,

And, till supper-board be crown'd, Closely draw your fireside chairs; Form the dear domestic round."

WANDERER.

"Host, thy smiling daughters bring, Bring those rosy lads of thine; Let them mingle in the ring

With these poor lost babes of mine."

SHEPHERD.

"Join the ring, my girls and boys; This enchanting circle, this Binds the social loves and joys: 'Tis the fairy ring of bliss!"

WANDERER.

"O ye loves and joys! that sport
In the fairy ring of bliss,
Oft with me ye held your court:
I had once a home like this!

"Bountiful my former lot

As my native country's rills; The foundations of my cot Were her everlasting hills. "But those streams no longer pour Rich abundance round my lands; And my father's cot no more

On my father's mountain stands.

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