'The helmsman steered, the ship moved with a pilot and hermit on board ap

'For when it dawned, they dropped their I know the man that must hear me :

'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding-guest:
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

'He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

The mariner whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the wedding-guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn :

A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

From the Ode to the Departing Year' (1795).

Spirit who sweepest the wild harp of time!
It is most hard, with an untroubled ear
Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fixed on heaven's unchanging clime
Long ere I listened, free from mortal fear,

With inward stillness, and submitted mind:
When lo! its folds far waving on the wind,
I saw the train of the departing year!
Starting from my silent sadness,

Then with no unholy madness,

Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight,
I raised the impetuous song and solemnised his flight

Hither, from the recent tomb,
From the prison's direr gloom,
From Distemper's midnight anguish,

And thence, where Poverty doth waste and languish ;
Or where, his two bright torches blending,
Love illumines manhood's maze;

Or where, o'er cradled infants bending,
Hope has fixed her wishful gaze,
Hither, in perplexed dance,

Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance!
By Time's wild harp, and by the hand
Whose indefatigable sweep

Raises its fateful strings from sleep,

I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band!

From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,

Haste for one solemn hour;

And with a loud and yet a louder voice,
O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth
Weep and rejoice!

Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth
Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of hell:
And now advance in saintly jubilee

Justice and Truth! They, too, have heard thy speil:
They, too, obey thy name, divinest Liberty!

I marked ambition in his war-array!

I heard the mailèd monarch's troublous cry-
'Ah! wherefore does the northern conqueress stay!
Groans not her chariot on its onward way?'

Fly, mailed monarch, fly!

Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace,
No more on Murder's lurid face

The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!
Manes of the unnumbered slain !

Ys that gasped on Warsaw's plain!

Ye that erst at Ismail's tower,

1

When human ruin choked the streams,

Fell in conquest's glutted hour,

"Mid women's shrieks aud infants' screams!
Spirits of the uncoffined slain,

Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft, at night, in misty train,

Rush around her narrow dwelling!

The exterminating fiend is fled

Foul her life, and dark her doom-
Mighty armies of the dead

Dance like death-fires round her tomb!
Then with prophetic song relate
Each some tyrant-murderer's fate!

Departing year! 'twas on no earthly shore
My soul beheld thy vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits; thy robe inscribed with gore,
With many an imaginable groan

Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued,
Deep silence o'er the ethereal multitude.

Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone,
Then, his eye wild ardours glancing,

From the choirèd gods advancing,

The Spirit of the earth made reverence meet,
And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat.

Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,

O Albion! O my mother isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks

(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks);

And Ocean. 'mid his uproar wild,
Speaks safely to his island-child i
Hence, for many a fearless age
Has social Quiet loved thy shore!
Nor ever proud invader's rage

Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore.

Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamount.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !

The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou. still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entrauced in praya,

I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale!
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink!
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald; wake, Ŏ wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth!
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded-and the silence came-
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet?
'God!' let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!'

God!' sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,

And in their perilous fall shall thunder, 'God!'

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagle's playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth God,' and fill the hills with praise !

Thou too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,

Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low

In adoration. upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud
To rise before me-Kise, oh, ever rise;

Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Love.