Whose louder song is like the voice of life, Triumphant o'er death's image; but whose deep, Low, lovelier note is like a gentle wife, A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one, Stealing, when day-light's common tasks are done, * This passage respecting the nightingale is not altogether "in keeping," (to use a painter's phrase), nor, indeed, are some others of this fragment; but the author retained them partly to introduce the passage itself; and in behalf of the latter he bespeaks the reader's indulgence, for a reason which the sensibility of true taste will allow him; namely, that the image is a copy from life, and from his mother. THE EPHYDRIADS, OR, NYMPHS OF THE FOUNTAINS.-A SKETCH. 'Tis there the Ephydriads haunt ;-there, where a gap Betwixt a heap of tree-tops, hollow and dun, Shews where the waters run, And whence the fountain's tongue begins to lap. There lie they, lulled by little whiffling tones Of rills among the stones, Or by the rounder murmur, fast and flush, Of the escaping gush, That laughs and tumbles, like a conscious thing, For joy of all its future travelling. The lizard circuits them; and his grave will The frog, with reckoning leap, enjoys apart, Till now and then the woodcock frights his heart With brushing down to dip his dainty bill. A little bridge there is, a one-railed plank ; Sometimes a poet from that bridge might see A Nymph reach downwards, holding by a bough With tresses o'er her brow, And with her white back stoop The pushing stream to scoop In a green gourd cup, shining sunnily. THE CLOUD. A FRAGMENT. As I stood thus, a neighbouring wood of elms And overhead, like a portentous rim Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim, It passed with it's slow shadow; and I saw Struck the all-coloured arch of his great eye, Scored on the ground it's conquering line; And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud, Like children after fear, were merry and loud. |