The alien firelight died away;
And from the midst of cheerless gloom,
I passed to bright, unclouded day.
A little and a lone green lane

That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreamy, dim, blue chain
Of mountains, circling every side.

A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And

deepening still the dream-like charm Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.

That was the scene, I knew it well;

I knew the turfy pathway's sweep, That, winding o'er each billowy swell, Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep.

Could I have lingered but an hour,

It well had paid a week of toil;
But Truth has banished Fancy's power:
Restraint and heavy task recoil.

Even as I stood with raptured eye,
Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear,

My hour of rest had fleeted by,

And back came labour, bondage, care.

II.

THE BLUEBELL

THE Bluebell is the sweetest flower

That waves in summer air:
Its blossoms have the mightiest power
To soothe my spirit's care.

There is a spell in purple heath
Too wildly, sadly dear;

The violet has a fragrant breath,
But fragrance will not cheer.

The trees are bare, the sun is cold,
And seldom, seldom seen;

The heavens have lost their zone of gold,
And earth her robe of green.

And ice upon the glancing stream
Has cast its sombre shade;
And distant hills and valleys seem
In frozen mist arrayed.

The Bluebell cannot charm me now,

The heath has lost its bloom;

The violets in the glen below,

They yield no sweet perfume.

But, though I mourn the sweet Bluebell,
"T is better far away;

I know how fast my tears would swell
To see it smile to-day.

For, oh! when chill the sunbeams fall
Adown that dreary sky,

And gild yon dank and darkened wall

With transient brilliancy;

Wuthering Heights &c. II.

18

How do I weep, how do I pine
For the time of flowers to come,
And turn me from that fading shine,
To mourn the fields of home!

III.

LOUD without the wind was roaring
Through th' autumnal sky;
Drenching wet, the cold rain pouring,
Spoke of winter nigh.

All too like that dreary eve,

Did my exiled spirit grieve.

Grieved at first, but grieved not long,
Sweet-how softly sweet!

Wild words of an ancient song,

Undefined, without a name.

it came;

"It was spring, and the skylark was singing:" Those words they awakened a spell;

They unlocked a deep fountain, whose springing,
Nor absence, nor distance can quell.

In the gloom of a cloudy November,
They uttered the music of May;
They kindled the perishing ember
Into fervour that could not decay.

Awaken, o'er all my dear moorland,
West-wind, in thy glory and pride!
O! call me from valley and lowland,
To walk by the hill-torrent's side!

It is swelled with the first snowy

weather;

The rocks they are icy and hoar,

And sullenly waves the long heather,

And the fern leaves are sunny no more.

There are no yellow stars on the mountain;
The bluebells have long died away,
From the brink of the moss-bedded fountain;
From the side of the wintry brae.

But lovelier than corn-fields all waving
In emerald, and vermeil, and gold,
Are the heights where the north-wind is raving,
And the crags where I wandered of old.

It was morning: the bright sun was beaming;
How sweetly it brought back to me,

The time when nor labour nor dreaming
Broke the sleep of the happy and free.

But blithely we rose as the dawn-heaven
Was melting to amber and blue,

And swift were the wings to our feet given,
As we traversed the meadows of dew.

For the moors! For the moors, where the short grass Like velvet beneath us should lie!

For the moors! For the moors, where each high pass Rose sunny against the clear sky!

For the moors,

where the linnet was trilling

Its song on the old granite stone;

Where the lark, the wild sky-lark, was filling

Every breast with delight like its own!

What language can utter the feeling
Which rose, when in exile afar,
On the brow of a lonely hill kneeling,
I saw the brown heath growing there?

It was scattered and stunted, and told me
That soon even that would be gone:
It whispered, "The grim walls enfold me,
I have bloomed in my last summer's sun.'

But not the loved music whose waking
Makes the soul of the Swiss die away,
Has a spell more adored and heartbreaking
Than, for me, in that blighted heath lay.
The spirit which bent 'neath its power,
How it longed-how it burned to be free!
If I could have wept in that hour,

Those tears had been heaven to me.

Well-well; the sad minutes are moving,
Though loaded with trouble and pain;
And some time the loved and the loving
Shall meet on the mountains again!

The following little piece has no title; but in it the Genius of a solitary region seems to address his wandering and wayward votary, and to recall within his influence the proud mind which rebelled at times even against what it most loved.

SHALL earth no more inspire thee,

Thou lonely dreamer, now?

Since passion may not fire thee,

Shall nature cease to bow?