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, Oh, leave not, forlorn and for ever forsaken, LINES ON REVISITING THE COUNTRY. I STAND upon my native hills again, Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky While deep the sunless glens are scooped between, A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near, For I have taught her, with delighted eye, And clouds along its blue abysses rolled, Here, I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat, 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 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- The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease: 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; 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, And thou dost see them rise, Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set. Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet, Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, There, at morn's rosy birth, Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air, go. |