Imatges de pàgina
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Their earthly stains; and spotless shine
On every brow in light divine

The Cross by angel hands impressed,

The seal of glory won and pledge of promised rest.

Little they dream, those haughty souls

Whom empires own with bended knee,
What lowly fate their own controls,

Together linked by Heaven's decree ;-
As bloodhounds hush their baying wild
To wanton with some fearless child,

So Famine waits, and War with greedy eyes,
Till some repenting heart be ready for the skies.

Think ye the spires that glow so bright
In front of yonder setting sun,
Stand by their own unshaken might?
No-where th' upholding grace is won,
We dare not ask, nor Heaven would tell,

But sure from many a hidden dell,

From many a rural nook unthought of there,

Rises for that proud world the saints' prevailing prayer.

On Champions blest, in Jesus' name,

Short be your strife, your triumph full,
Till every heart have caught your flame,
And, lightened of the world's misrule,
Ye soar those elder saints to meet,
Gathered long since at Jesus' feet,
No world of passions to destroy,

Your prayers and struggles o'er, your task all praise and joy

UNITED STATES.

[From Lyra Apostolica.]

Tyre of the farther West! be thou too warned,
Whose eagle wings thine own green world o'erspread,
Touching two Oceans: wherefore hast thou scorned
Thy fathers' God, O proud and full of bread?

Why lies the Cross unhonoured on thy ground
While in mid air thy stars and arrows flaunt?
That sheaf of darts, will it not fall unbound,
Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt,

Thou bring it to be blessed where Saints and Angels haunt? The holy seed, by Heaven's peculiar grace.

Is rooted here and there in thy dark woods; But many a rank weed round it grows apace, And Mammon builds beside thy mighty floods, O'ertopping Nature, braving Nature's God;

O while thou yet hast room, fair fruitful land, Ere war and want have stained thy virgin sod,

Mark thee a place on high, a glorious stand,

Whence Truth her sign may make o'er forest, lake, and stran

Eastward, this hour, perchance thou turn'st thine ear,
Listening if haply with the surging sea,

Blend sounds of Ruin from a land once dear

To thee and Heaven. O trying hour for thee!
Tyre mocked when Salem fell; where now is Tyre?
Heaven was against her.
Nations thick as waves,

Burst o'er her walls, to Ocean doomed and fire:

And now the tideless water idly laves

Her towers, and lone sands heap her crowned merchants'

graves.

FROM THE WATERFALL.'

[Lyra Innocentium.]

Go where the waters fall,

Sheer from the mountain's height

Mark how a thousand streams in one,

One in a thousand on they fare,

Now flashing to the sun,

Now still as beast in lair.

Now round the rock, now mounting o'er,
In lawless dance they win their way,
Still seeming more and more

To swell as we survey,

They rush and roar, they whirl and leap,
Not wilder drives the wintry storm.

Yet a strong law they keep,
Strange powers their course inform.

Even so the mighty skyborn stream
Its living waters from above,

All marred and broken seem,
No union and no love.

Yet in dim caves they softly blend
In dreams of mortals unespied :
One is their awful end,

One their unfailing Guide

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

[HARTLEY COLERIDGE, Son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born 19th Sep tember, 1796; died, 6th January, 1849. Besides some prose writings, we have Poems by Hartley Coleridge, vol. i. (all published) Leeds, 1833; Poems by Hartley Coleridge, with a Memoir of his Life by his Brother, 2 vols, 1851.]

Hartley Coleridge always classed himself among 'the small poets,' and it is true he was not born for great and splendid achievements; but there are some writers for whom our affection would be less if they were stronger, more daring, more successful; and Hartley Coleridge is one of these. We think of him as the visionary boy, whom his father likened to the moon among thin clouds, moving in a circle of his own light,-as the fairy voyager of Wordsworth's prophetic poem, whose boat seemed rather

To brood on air than on an earthly stream.'

We think of him as the elvish figure one might meet forty years later by Grasmere side, too soon an old man and white-haired, with now and then an expression of pain, a half-tone in his voice that betrayed some sense of incompleteness or failure, but with the full eye still bright and soft; the speech still rippling out fancy and play and wisdom; the heart, in spite of sorrow and the injuries of time, still as Wordsworth knew it,

'A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks.'

A great poet is a toiler, even when his toil is rapturous. Hartley Coleridge did not and perhaps could not toil. Good thoughts came to him as of free grace; gentle pleasures possessed his senses; loving-kindnesses flowed from his heart, and took as they flowed shadows and colours from his imagination; and all these mingled and grew mellow. And so a poet's moods expressed themselves in his verse; but he built no losty rhyme. The sonnet, in which a thought and a feeling are wedded helpmates suited his genius ; and of his many delightful sonnets some of the best are immediate transcripts of the passing mood of joy or pain. To see him brandishing his pen,' a friend has written, and now and then beating time with his foot, and breaking out into a shout at any felicitous idea, was a thing never to be forgotten. . . . His sonnets were all written instantaneously, and never, to my knowledge,

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occupied more than ten minutes.' Perhaps because of this happy facility they often fall short of complete attainment; sometimes the vigour of conception suddenly declines, sometimes the touch loses its precision; nor is the poetic mood from which they originate always delivered by the imagination from its surrounding circumstance of prose, or its alloy of humbler feeling.

But all that Hartley Coleridge has written is genuine, full of nature, sweet, fresh, breathing charity and reconciliation. His poems of self-portrayal are many, and of these not a few are pathetic with sense of change and sorrowing self-condemnation; yet his penitence had a silver side of hope, and one whose piety was so unaffected, whose faith though 'thinner far than vapour' had yet outlived all frowardness, could not desperately upbraid even his weaker self. For all that is sweet and venerable-for the charm of old age, for the comeliness of ancient use and wont, for the words of sacred poet or prophet, for the traditions of civility, for the heritage of English law and English freedom, for the simple humanities of earth, for fatherhood and motherhood, Hartley Coleridge had a heartfelt and tender reverence. And with a more exquisite devotion he cherished all frail, innocent, and dependent creatures; small they should be or they could not look to their quaint little poet as a protector. To think of the humming-bird's or the cricket's glee made him happy; he bowed over the forgetme-not blossom as if it were a sapphire amulet against all mortal taint, and over the eye-bright 'gold-eyed weedie,' which owns such holy, medicinal virtue. He loved with the naïveté of innocenthearted old bachelorhood the paradise of maidenhood; with all its sweet she-slips, in Shakespeare's play and Stothard's page, and, better still, on English lawn or by English fireside. And who has been laureate to as many baby boys and 'wee ladies sweet' as Hartley Coleridge? Rounding the lives of all little children and all helpless things he felt a nearness of some strong protecting Love which called forth his deepest instincts of piety.

In Grasmere churchyard, close to the body of Wordsworth, rests that of Hartley Coleridge; so a Presence of strength and plain heroic magnitude of mind environs him. And hard by a stream goes murmuring to the lake. As a mountain rivulet to a mountain lake, so is Hartley Coleridge's poetry to that of Wordsworth; and the stream has a melodious life and a freshness of its own.

EDWARD DOWDEN.

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