The lake of Geneva, a poem

SUMMARY COMMENT ON THESE CONTENTS.

I KNOW not how far it is wise to anticipate objections to these Contents. The Public requires no aid in finding faults. Censurers will immediately remark a want of plan. But does the natural association of ideas in poetry admit of a plan? The purpose of poetry is to be a mirror of the free wanderings of imagination. Cowper did not restrain himself in his Task: he gave the full reins to his Pegasus. Then again tautology will be made a charge against the matter of these pages. I will not venture to say, that the charge may not be plausible;-and perhaps true. There is sometimes a recurrence of the same ideas, sentiments, or opinions; and an approximation even to the same expressions. A rigid pruner would have struck them out. Fault or no fault, it is my system to bring things forth as I have originally written them.

Often as I have said it, I repeat here, that the artifices of poetry to me have not only no merit, but cause disgust. Imagination has no method :—it is as excursive as the birds in the air.

There is an axiomatic sort of wisdom, which long ago Oldys remarked in the poetry of the great sir Walter Raleigh. It is a sort of concrete and essential knowledge, which is of the nature of intuition. It arises from the blaze of light, in which the imaginative powers exhibit things. Nothing literary is of deep and permanent interest, which does not teach rectitude of thought and sentiment and no other

knowledge can be so extensively and profoundly useful, as moral knowledge. Its efficient teachers must be beings illumined by genius, and rendered eloquent by sensibility.

In every age moral genius speaks in the same tone; and has a sympathy with the past and the future. From whom does Shakespeare differ, except in superior force of conception and expression? His conclusions and feelings are the same as those of all authors, to which time has given the stamp as emanations of sagacity and truth.

The diversities, the tints and shadows, of moral science are too nice and evanescent to be reached by art and labour. Chasteness of colouring is almost as necessary a test of genius, as truth of invention. Glare of hues is the resort of false and weak pretence to power: what the heart does not recognise, is the fabrication of an impotent head. Reason is cold and uncertain;-the heart, when it is moved, is always true.

There have been local poems in our language,-such as Denham's Cooper's Hill:-but till the late very interesting Poem On Italy, by Rogers, they have been short. Pye wrote a Poem on Faringdon Hill, his native spot; but he was a feeble unoriginal writer; and it is little known. Rogers's poem pursues the course of his route; and therefore may be said to have a method which mine has not.

If any reader is desirous of a conspectus of such a maze as the present Poem contains, the present Table of Contents may in some degree assist him: an alphabetical Index might also perhaps may have been desirable; but I have not had the courage to undertake the labour! This Table is sufficient to enable the fault-finder to discover my tautologies; -if tautologies they are! The same scenes will sometimes, in spite of one, cause a repetition of the same sentiments.

There are few English, who have not visited the Lake of Geneva: but there are many, in whom the sleeping fire of ideas and emotions requires to be awakened. With some there are no sparks to be kindled; and nothing to receive the light. There is no mirror; the receptacle of the brain

is barren and lifeless. There are others which catch the glow in a moment, like the clouds of a fine evening, that reflect the setting sun.

A mind in a state of incessant motion throws forth inexhaustible streams production multiplies, and generates its own funds of supply. We associate with the dead as familiarly as with the living; and our existence is more spiritual than material. The topics of this Poem are an attempt to add to its intellectuality. They may not succeed :-the chances are, that they will not succeed :-nothing of mine ever succeeds! Meantime I go on calmly and firmly;undaunted in spirit; unbroken in hope. I know that my intentions are virtuous, and my love of fame is pure. I rise above the foul obloquy of low, mercenary, day-labours-critics, and their wretched, ignorant, selfish, and malignant employers. Since literature has become a mechanical trade, how has public taste been corrupted?

Geneva, 16 Oct. 1831.

THE

LAKE OF GENEVA.

BOOK I.

O LAKE most beautiful, thou art become
Now as a home to me! Time has united
The sight of thee with many a feeling fond,
And many a bright idea past; and thou

The mellow mirror art that throws them back
Fairer than when they first within me sprung!
But not to me alone;-to all the world

These years have of tremendous import been.
How many a noble heart, which once I knew,
Sleeps in the dust, since first upon mine eyes
The grandeur of thy glassy waters broke.
It is not wonderful that thou wert chosen,
Nearly two thousand years ago, the seat

Of those Burgundian Kings, who made their inroad

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