Intended and bestow'd, and with sharp dart
Pierces, or with a barbed arrow wounds.
Slow, and considerate, and weighing deep
Al! consequences, and all chance of ill,
The cautious talker tells us what is naught.
It is a selfish baseness, that conceals
Opinion. Give it not the name of Candour!
It is a habit, that grows, and still grows,
Till the poor barren mind becomes a blank,
And sand, and sand, is put upon it, till
It has no surface but white worthless atoms.
If ebullition of quick thoughts produce
Injustice, then restraint becomes a duty :
But the reserve, which has its origin
In calculation of self-injury,
Is a most odious baseness, which would damp
The energies of the most noble heart.
The free communion of enlighten'd mind,
Sagacious, penetrating thought, confession
Of unsophisticated moves of heart,
Conviction, the result of complex powers
Of all the faculties when most abundant,
Most strain'd together,—of that inspiration
Which only genius knows;-which is not borrow'd,
And therefore may not elsewhere be obtain❜d;
The bright thought suddenly by strong collision
Struck at an accidental dart; the fire
Communicative, from another caught;-
These form the charm intense of social life.
Solitude has its charms, and its great uses;
But so has social life, when well selected:
It quickens our best intellectual powers;
And mends our hearts, and teaches matter rich,
And of discernment nice, which not from books
Or solitary musing can be learn'd.
There are full curious inexhaustible
Stores of instructive knowlege floating ever
Upon men's lips, which not the pen or type
Has ever register'd, or ever can!
Loose and inaccurate full oft the babble
Of ignorance or vanity; but judgment
Selects, arranges, sifts; or gets a clue
By which the workings of his proper mind
Arrive at truth. Thus men who have convers'd
Much with the world, are ready, sharp, exact,
And by comparison with thoughts of others,
Are less expos'd to strange hallucinations,
Which find no test or compass in themselves.
There is a partial blindness,—some weak spot,-
I' th' individual sight of half mankind :
But then there is a range in solitude
For the mind's grandest visions, and the view
O' th' human countenance in its arch smile;
Its love of the ridiculous; its actual
Encumberment of matter; and the call
Of prompt attention to all visible things,
Reins in imagination, and weighs down
By earthly particles the mounting scale.
Thus solitary genius is the most
Sublime, and social most acute and witty,
Sagacious, and exact, and in the daily
Conduct of life, the surest guide to wisdom.
It is the intermingled course, which leads
To the mind's highest efforts, and best fruits.
But I have wander'd from my subject far;
And must to thee, O Lake belov'd, return!
When the spring came, along the little garden
I pac'd, that by thy fickle waves was wash'd,
And view'd the budding flower, and felt the beam
Of renovating suns, and still beheld
With wistful eye the beamy sail descend
From where Lausanne's bright turrets in the rays
Of golden Phoebus glitter'd; on the bank
Oppos'd, by Jura's frowning Mountains back'd,
Smil'd many a beautiful and varied villa,
Hanging their
green shrubs o'er the azure waves. There the light boat is dancing on the Lake, And dashes many an oar, and throws the spray Panting, and many a petty sail is spread
To court the expiring breeze; and here and there
The tones of music, and the gentle voice
Sound sweetly on the bosom of the wave.
Then came the midday dream; and Poesy
Awak'd in all her exquisite emotions;
And then the Tragic Tale went on,-and tears
Profusely on the blotted paper flow'd;
And the swell'd heart with virtues most refined,
Most melancholy and most tender sighs,
Work'd itself into temperaments unearthly.
Oft to thy waters sparkling in the sun,
Then dark again with clouds,--now smooth as plains,
Then suddenly to mountain heights uprear'd,
In frailest boats, with weak hands to the oar
Quite inexperienced, did I entrust
My worn-out frame, by mingled fever torn,
Yet calm'd by courses new of meditation.
Then oft across the burning heat uprose
A sudden piercing blast, that in the mountain
Gorges in secret bred, came like a thief
I' th' night, and with its petrifaction chill'd
The boiling blood. And now twelve years have pass'd,
And yet the dire disorder reigns within,
Now agitating, and now palsying
This frame of eight and sixty years of pain.
Oft on the waves beneath the blazing rays
Upon my oars I rested: then the sun
Shot vertical, and my dry brain was parch'd
Beneath its fire. Disorder took its seat
Within my veins, and I was sound no more.
Now came the clime of Italy to soothe,
But yet perchance my fever'd circulation
With momentary calmness to deceive;
For I once more was to the bed of sickness
For three long months confin'd; and then again
I labour'd hard in intellect, and search'd
Thro regions dull and dry, yet intermix'd
With bright imagination's moral range.
Here the full blazon of the Arts to me
Open'd in rapture, and delirium pass'd
From my eyes to my melted heart, at view
Of Painting and of Sculpture's magic powers.
O Florence-nurse of Genius-birth-place lov'd
Of modern poesy! Where Dante first
Saw Heaven's sublimity upon his cradle
Reflected; and where Milton, and where Gray
Lighted the flames, that, sown in northern climes,
Wanted the heat of more congenial suns!--
With thee I linger'd many a month, tho' death
Over me with his threatening arrow hung.
But I escap'd then, as full thrice at least
Since; and to thee, dear Leman, safe return'd
Ere twenty months completely had elaps'd.
Now broad upon thy blue expanse again
I look'd; and right against the glittering villa
Mounted on Cologny's vine-cover'd hills,
Beneath the Alpine heights and proud Mont-Blanc,
By Deodati's fond Miltonic name
Hallow'd, and yet again on modern rolls
With beams more brilliant blazing, by the memory
Of mighty Byron's sojourn long, where all
The Muse's charms were oped to his embrace.
Thence on this Lake he frolick'd; thence in storms
His rous'd soul, most delighted with thy waves
To battle, and to hear the thunder roll,
And his rent sails all shivering, and his mast
Dire cracking in the roars and blasts of wind;
Then cross the conflict of thy billows he
To Coppet pass'd; and there a strife far other
It was his lot to battle sharply with;
-The conflicts of the mind; the strong collision
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