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.
WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM AT ELBINGERODE, IN THE HARTZ FOREST.
I STOOD On Brocken's* sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over bills,
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Heavily my way
Downward I dragged through fir groves evermore,
Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song became an hollow sound;
And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly,'
Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct
From many a note of many a waterfall,
And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose islet stones
The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell
The highest mountain in the Hartz, and indeed in North Germany.
Leaped frolicsome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
In low and languid mood:* for I had found
That outward Forms, the loftiest, still receive
Their finer influence from the Life within:
Fair cyphers else: fair, but of import vague
Or unconcerning, where the Heart not finds
History or Prophecy of Friend, or Child,
Or gentle Maid, our first and early love,
Or Father, or the venerable name
Of our adored Country! O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O dear, dear England! how my longing eye
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs!
Filled with the thought of thee this heart was proud, Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the view From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills,
From some high eminence on goodly vales,
And cots and villages embowered below,
The thought would rise that all to me was strange
Amid the scenes so fair, nor one small spot
Where my tired mind might rest, and call it home.
SOUTHEY'S Hymn to the Penates.
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim! Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is everywhere! the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty Family,
Himself our Father, and the World our Home.
ON OBSERVING A BLOSSOM ON THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY, 1796.
SWEET Flower! that peeping from thy russet stem Unfoldest timidly, (for in strange sort
This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering
Month
Hath borrowed Zephyr's voice, and gazed upon thee
With blue voluptuous eye) alas, poor Flower!
These are but flatteries of the faithless year.
Perchance, escaped its unknown polar cave,
E'en now the keen North-East is on its way.
Flower that must perish! shall I liken thee
To some sweet girl of too too rapid growth
Nipped by Consumption mid untimely charms?
Or to Bristowa's Bard, the wondrous boy!
An Amaranth, which Earth scarce seemed to own,
Till Disappointment came, and pelting wrong
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