QUEEN of the stars! (RYDAL.) -so gentle, so benign, That ancient fable did to thee assign, When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow Warned thee these upper regions to forego, Alternate empire in the shades below — A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail From the close confines of a shadowy vale. Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene, Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen Through cloudy umbrage, well might that fair face, And all those attributes of modest grace, In days when fancy wrought unchecked by fear, Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere, To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear! O still belov'd (for thine, meek Power, are charms That fascinate the very babe in arms, While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright, Spreading his little palms in his glad mother's sight) O still belov'd, once worshipped! Time, that frowns In his destructive flight on earthly crowns, Spares thy mild splendour; still those far-shot beams Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays; And through dark trials still dost thou explore Thy way for increase punctual as of yore, When teeming Matrons-yielding to rude faith In mysteries of birth and life and death And painful struggle and deliverance - prayed Of thee to visit them with lenient aid. What though the rites be swept away, the fanes Extinct that echoed to the votive strains; Yet thy mild aspect does not, cannot, cease Love to promote and purity and peace; And Fancy, unreproved, even yet may trace Faint types of suffering in thy beamless face. Told, also, how the voiceless heavens declare Learn from thy course, where'er their own be taken, XIV. How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high A brightening edge will indicate that soon XV. TO LUCCA GIORDANO. GIORDANO, verily thy pencil's skill RYDAL MOUNT, 1846. XVI. Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high, Will reappear before the uplifted eye To glide in open prospect through clear sky Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move XVII. WHERE lies the truth? has man, in wisdom's creed, A pitiable doom; for respite brief A care more anxious, or a heavier grief? Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed 1846. [* See also, as connected with the series of "EVENING VOLUNTARIES," the "Ode composed upon an evening of extraordinary splendour and beauty," p. 311.-H. R.] NOTES ΤΟ POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION. Note 1, p. 398. "Simon Lee." "O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring," &c. The same feeling, or something closely resembling it, seems to be indicated in each of the following quotations, especially in the exquisite phrase of Shakspeare: "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 'Farewell, selfe-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings foorth."SPENSER: Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney. Is there not in this concurrence obviously casual · SHAKSPEARE SPENSER WORDSWORTH, proof of a trait of the temperament of poetic genius? This simple stanza appears too to have touched a chord in the heart of Coleridge, who in one of his letters thus refers to it: "To have formed the habit of looking at every thing, not for what it is relative to the purposes and associations of men in general, but for the truths which it is suited to represent to contemplate objects as words and pregnant symbols — the advantages of this are so many, and so important, so eminently calculated to excite and evolve the power of sound and connected reasoning, of distinct and clear conception, and of genial feeling, that there are few of Wordsworth's finest passages and who, of living poets, can lay claim to half the number? that I repeat so often as that homely quatrain, "O Reader! had you in your mind - Another time all plain, all quite thread-bare; Either truth, goodness, virtue are not still Or we our actions make them wait upon, Note 3, p. 424. "Lines on a Portrait." “They are in truth the Substance, we the Shadows." [This incident is thus narrated by the author or authors of that 'rare' book The Doctor,' with one of the rich comments, which distinguish the work: "When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian's famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronimite said to him, I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three-score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one after another, — all who were my Seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one gencration has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!' "I wish I could record the name of the Monk by whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed. "The shows of things are better than themselves," says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name, also, I could wish had been forthcoming; and the clas sical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles: — ̔Ομῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλὴν *Ειδωλ, ̓ ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἤ κούφην σκιών. These are reflections which should make us think "Of that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayd Upon the pillars of Eternity, That is contraire to mutability; For all that moveth doth in change delight: But thenceforth all shall rest eternally O that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabbath's sight." "The Doctor," Vol. III. p. 235. — H. k Note 4, p. 368. "Lines on a Portrait." gentle and unassuming. She is endeared too by a more than sisterly devotion, which paused only at his grave, to one of the most winning writers in the language, [The following is one of the poems by Mr. Southey, whose intellectual efforts were probably best encourwhich are referred to: "ON MY OWN MINIATURE PICTURE TAKEN AT TWO YEARS OF AGE. "And I was once like this? that glowing cheek I march myself in vain, and find no trace Impending storms! They augured happily, Stray in the pleasant paths of POESY, And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd, aged by her who cheered the loneliness of his hearth. LINES SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF TWO FEMALES "The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears. “And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!" plated, through the medium of that order, all modes of existence as subservient to one spirit, concludes his address to the power of Duty in the following words: I cannot deny myself the gratification of introducing ["A living Teacher, to be spoken of with gratitude as into this group of poems suggested by paintings anof a benefactor, having, in his character of philosophiother, also from the pen of one of Mr. Wordsworth's cal Poet, thought of morality as implying in its esfriends one, to whom I am confident he would desence voluntary obedience, and producing the effect of light in seeing any tribute paid in connection with his order, transfers, in the transport of imagination, the own writings. I have therefore less hesitation in in-law of moral to physical natures, and having contemserting here the following lines by Mary Lamb, included among the poems of her brother, the late Charles Lamb, and at the same time of using these pages to express a grateful admiration of an individual who has exhibited one of the most beautiful examples of the delicacy of female authorship to be met with in the records of English literature. In a few unambitious poems mingled among her brother's-as indeed her very existence seems to have been blended with his-and in that most graceful children's classic, 'Mrs. Leicester's School', there are tokens of a spirit as lofty in its purity as it is 3E To humbler functions, awful Power! And in the light of Truth thy Bondman let me live !"—W. W 37 EPISTLE TO SIR GEORGE HOWLAND BEAUMONT, BART. FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet lake, Or, pilgrim-like, on forest moss reclined, What shall I treat of? News from Mona's Isle? On that proud pageant now at hand or past, -This dwelling's inmate more than three weeks' space Soon as the herring-shoals at distance shine And oft a prisoner in the cheerless place, A bridge to copy, or to paint a mill, Tired of my books, a scanty company! Like beds of moonlight shifting on the brine. Mona from our abode is daily seen, But with a wilderness of waves between; And by conjecture only can we speak Of aught transacted there in bay or creek; No tidings reach us thence from town or field, Only faint news her mountain sunbeams yield, And some we gather from the misty air, And some the hovering clouds, our telegraph, declare But these poetic mysteries I withhold; For Fancy hath her fits both hot and cold, And should the colder fit with you be on Let more substantial themes the pen engage, |