English

ELINOR.

Time , Morning . S CENE , The Shore .

O NCE more to daily toil, once more to wear
The livery of shame, once more to search
With miserable task this savage shore!
O thou, who mountest so triumphantly
In yonder Heaven, beginning thy career
Of glory, O thou blessed Sun! thy beams
Fall on me with the same benignant light
Here, at the farthest limits of the world,
And blasted as I am with infamy,
As when in better years poor Elinor

ODE II.

1.

I N a vision I was seized,
When the elements were hush'd
In the stillness that is felt
Ere the Storm goes abroad;
Through the air I was borne away;
And in spirit I beheld
Where a City lay beneath,
Like a valley mapp'd below,
When seen from a mountain top

2.

The night had closed around,
And o'er the sullen sky
Were the wide wings of darkness spread,
The City's myriad lamps
Shone mistily below,

ODE I

1.

Take up thy prophecy,
Thou dweller in the mountains, who hast numbed
Thy soul in solitude,
Holding communion with immortal minds,
Poets and Sages of the days of old
And with the sacred food
Of meditation and of lore divine
Hast fed thy heavenly part;
Take up thy monitory strain.
O son of song, a strain severe
Of warning and of woe!

2.

O Britain, O my Mother Isle,

Where these capacious basins, by the laws
Of the subjacent element receive
The ship, descending or upraised, eight times,
From stage to stage with unfelt agency
Translated; fitliest may the marble here
Record the Architect's immortal name.
Telford it was, by whose presiding mind
The whole great work was plann'd and perfected;
Telford, who o'er the vale of Cambrian Dee,
Aloft in air, at giddy height upborne,
Carried his navigable road, and hung
High o'er Menai's straits the bending bridge;

Thou who hast reach'd this level where the glede,
Wheeling between the mountains in mild air,
Eastward or westward, as his gyre inclines,
Descries the German or the Atlantic Sea,
Pause here; and, as thou seest the ship pursue
Her easy way serene, call thou to mind
By what exertions of victorious art
The way was open'd. Fourteen times upheaved,
The vessel hath ascended, since she changed
The salt sea water for the highland lymph;
As oft in imperceptible descent
Must, step by step, be lower'd, before she woo

A THWART the island here, from sea to sea,
Between these mountain barriers, the Great Glen
Of Scotland offers to the traveller,
Through wilds impervious else, an easy path,
Along the shore of rivers and of lakes,
In line continuous, whence the waters flow
Dividing east and west. Thus had they held
For untold centuries their perpetual course
Unprofited, till in the Georgian age
This mighty work was plann'd, which should unite
The lakes, control the innavigable streams,
And through the bowels of the land deduce

STRANGER .

Whom are they ushering from the world, with all
This pageantry and long parade of death?

TOWNSMAN .

A long parade, indeed, Sir; and yet here
You see but half; round yonder bend it reaches
A furlong further, carriage behind carriage.

STRANGER .

'Tis but a mournful sight; and yet the pomp
Tempts me to stand a gazer.

TOWNSMAN .

Yonder schoolboy

TRAVELLER .

I PRAY you, wherefore are the village bells
Ringing so merrily?

WOMAN .

A wedding, Sir, —
Two of the village folk. And they are right
To make a merry time on't while they may!
Come twelve-months hence, I warrant them they'd go
To church again more willingly than now,
If all might be undone.

TRAVELLER .

An ill-match'd pair,
So I conceive you. Youth perhaps and age?

JAMES .

What , Gregory, you are come, I see, to join us
On this sad business.

GREGORY .

Ay, James, I am come
But with a heavy heart, God knows it, man!
Where shall we meet the corpse?

JAMES .

Some hour from hence
By noon, and near about the elms, I take it.
This is not as it should be, Gregory,
Old men to follow young ones to the grave!

NATHANIEL .

Father ! here, father! I have found a horse-shoe!
Faith, it was just in time; for t'other night
I laid two straws across at Margery's door;
And ever since I fear'd that she might do me
I mischief for't. There was the Miller's boy,
Who set his dog at that black cat of hers, —
I met him upon crutches, and he told me
'Twas all her evil eye.

FATHER .

'Tis rare good luck!
I would have gladly given a crown for one,