Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

EARLY FRIENDS.

BY POLLOK.

MANY Sounds were sweet,

Most ravishing and pleasant to the ear;
But sweeter none than voice of faithful friend,-
Sweet always, sweetest heard in loudest storm.
Some I remember, and will ne'er forget,
My early friends, friends of my evil day;
Friends in my mirth, friends in my misery too;
Friends given by God, in mercy and in love.
My counsellors, my comforters, and guides;
My joy in grief my second grief in joy;
Companions of my young desires; in doubt
My oracles; my wings in high pursuit.
Oh, I remember, and will ne'er forget
Our meeting-spots, our chosen sacred hours;
Our burning words, that uttered all the soul;
Our faces beaming with unearthly love;
Sorrow with sorrow sighing, hope with hope
Exulting, heart embracing heart entire.
As birds of social feather, helping each
His fellow's flight, we soared into the skies,
And cast the clouds beneath our feet, and earth
With all her tardy leaden-footed cares,

And talked the speech, and ate the food of heaven.

TO A FRIEND,

ON HIS PROPOSING TO DOMESTICATE WITH THE

A MOUNT,

AUTHOR.

BY COLERIDGE.

not wearisome, and bare, and steep, But a green mountain variously up-piled, Where o'er the jutting rocks soft mosses creep, Or coloured lichens with slow oozing weep; Where cypress and the darker yew start wild; And, 'mid the summer torrent's gentle dash, Dance brightened the red clusters of the ash; Beneath whose boughs, by stillest sounds beguiled, Calm Pensiveness might muse herself to sleep; Till, haply started by some fleecy dam, That, rustling on the bushy cliff above, With melancholy bleat of anxious love, Made meek inquiry for her wandering lamb: Such a green mountain 'twere most sweet to climb, E'en while the bosom ached with lonelinessHow heavenly sweet, if some dear friend should bless

Th' advent'rous toil, and up the path sublime Now lead, now follow; the glad landscape round, Wide and more wide, increasing without bound!

O, then 'twere loveliest sympathy, to mark The berries of the half up-rooted ash

Dripping and bright; and list the torrent's dash-
Beneath the cypress or the yew more dark,
Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock;
In social silence now, and now t' unlock
The treasured heart; arm linked in friendly arm,
Save if the one, his muse's witching charm
Muttering brow-bent, at unwatched distance lag;
Till, high o'er head, his beck'ning friend appears,
And from the forehead of the topmost crag
Shouts eagerly: for haply there uprears
That shadowing pine its old romantic limbs,
Which latest shall detain th' enamoured sight
Seen from below, when eve the valley dims,
Tinged yellow with the rich departing light;
And haply, basined in some unsunned cleft,
A beauteous spring, the rock's collected tears,
Sleeps sheltered there, scarce wrinkled by the gale!
Together thus, the world's vain turmoil left,
Stretched on the crag, and shadowed by the pine
And bending o'er the clear delicious fount,
Ah, dearest Charles! it were a lot divine
To cheat our noons in moralizing mood,

While west winds fanned our temples toil-bedewed:

Then downwards slope, oft pausing, from the

mount,

To some low mansion in some woody dale, Where, smiling with blue eye, Domestic Bliss Gives this the husband's, that the brother's kiss!

Thus rudely versed in allegoric lore,

The hill of knowledge I essayed to trace;
That verd'rous hill with many a resting place,
And many a stream, whose warbling waters pour
To glad and fertilize the subject plains;

That hill with secret springs, and nooks untrod,
And many a fancy-blest and holy sod
Where Inspiration, his diviner strains

Low murmuring, lay; and starting from the rocks
Stiff evergreens, whose spread foliage mocks
Want's barren soil, and the bleak frosts of age,
And mad oppression's thunder-clasping rage!
O meek retiring Spirit! we will climb,
Cheering and cheered, this lovely hill sublime;
And from the stirring world uplifted high,
(Whose noises faintly wafted on the wind
To quiet musings shall attune the mind,
And oft the melancholy theme supply,)
There, while the prospect through the gazing eve
Pours all its healthful greenness on the soul,
We'll laugh at wealth, and learn to laugh at fame,
Our hopes, our knowledge, and our joys the

same,

As neighb'ring fountains image, each the whole.

Give him all kindness: I had rather have
Such men my friends, than enemies.

Shakespeare.

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.

BY WILLIAM LEGGETT

THE birds, when winter shades the sky,
Fly o'er the seas away,

Where laughing isles in sunshine lie,
And summer breezes play;

And thus the friends that flutter near,
While fortune's sun is warm,

Are started if a cloud appear,

And fly before the storm.

But when from winter's howling plains

Each other warbler's past,

The little snow-bird still remains,

And chirrups midst the blast.

Love, like that bird, when friendship's throng

With fortune's sun depart,

Still lingers with its cheerful song,

And nestles on the heart.

Unequal fortune

Made him my debtor for some courtesies,

Which bind the good more firmly.

Byron.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »