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232

I CANNOT FORGET, ETC.

Bright visions! I mixed with the world and ye faded;

No longer your pure rural worshipper now; In the haunts your continual presence pervaded,

Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow.

In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountain,
In deep lonely glens where the waters complain,
By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain,
I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in vain.

Oh, leave not, forlorn and for ever forsaken,
Your pupil and victim, to life and its tears!
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken
The glories ye showed to his earlier years.

LINES ON REVISITING THE COUNTRY.

I STAND upon my native hills again,

Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky
With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie,

While deep the sunless glens are scooped between,
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.

A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near,
And ever restless feet of one, who, now,
Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year;
There plays a gladness o'er her fair young brow.
As breaks the varied scene upon her sight,
Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light.

For I have taught her, with delighted eye,
To gaze upon the mountains, to behold,
With deep affection, the pure ample sky,

And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,
To love the song of waters, and to hear
The melody of winds with charmed ear.

Here, I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat,
Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air;

234

ON REVISITING THE COUNTRY.

And where the season's milder fervours beat,

And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear The song of bird, and sound of running stream, Am come awhile to wander and to dream.

Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. The maize leaf and the maple bough but take,

From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away.

The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all
The wide earth knows-when, in the sultry time,

He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall,

He seems the breath of a celestial clime ; As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow, Health and refreshment on the world below.

SONNET-MUTATION.

THEY talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so-
Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,

Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease:
Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase

Are fruits of innocence and blessedness:

Thus joy, o'erborne and bound, doth still release

His young limbs from the chains that round him press.

Weep not that the world changes-did it keep

A stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

THE sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;

All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:

Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,

Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

go.

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