With viewless fingers weave thy wintry tent,
And line with gossamer thy pendant cell,
Safe in the rift of some lone ruin pent

Where ivy shelters from the storm-wind fell.

Blest if like thee I cropt with heedless spoil
The gifts of youth and pleasure in their bloom,
Doom'd for no coming winter's want to toil,
Fit for the spring that waits beyond the tomb.

R. O.

INSCRIPTIONS, by ROBERT SOUTHEY.

INSCRIPTION I.

For the Banks of the HAMPSHIRE AVON.

A little while, O Traveller! linger here,
And let thy leisure eye behold and feel
The beauties of the place; yon heathy hill
That rises sudden from the vale so green,
The vale far stretching as the view can reach
Under its long dark ridge, the river here
That, like a serpent, thro' the grassy mead
Winds on, now hidden, glittering now in light.

Nor fraught with merchant wealth, nor fam'd in song,
This river rolls; an unobtrusive tide

Its gentle charms may soothe and satisfy

Thy feelings. Look! how bright its pebbled bed
Gleams thro' the ruffled current; and that bank
With flag leaves bordered, as with two-edged swords!
See where the water wrinkles round the stem

Of yonder water lilly whose broad leaf
Lies on the wave,-and art thou not refresh'd
By the fresh odour of the running stream?
Soon Traveller! does the river reach the end
Of all its windings: from the near ascent
Thou wilt behold the ocean where it pours
Its waters and is lost. Remember thou,
Traveller! that even so thy restless years
Flow to the ocean of eternity.

INSCRIPTION II.

For a Monument at OXFORD, opposite Balliol gate-way

Here Latimer and Ridley in the flames

Bore witness to the truth. If thou hast walk'd
Uprightly thro' the world, proud thoughts of joy
Will fill thy breast in contemplating here
Congenial virtue. But if thou hast swerved
From the right path, if thou hast sold thy soul
And served, a hireling, with apostate zeal,
The cause thy heart disowns, oh! cherish well
The honourable shame that sure this place
Will wake within thee, timely penitent,
And let the future expiate the past.

INSCRIPTION III.

For a Monument in the VALE of EwIAS.

Here was it Stranger, that the patron Saint
Of Cambria past his age of penitence,
A solitary man; and here he made

His hermitage, the roots his food, his drink
Of Hodney's mountain stream. Perchance thy youth
Has read with eager wonder how the Knight
Of Wales in Ormandine's enchanted bower,

Slept the long sleep and if that in thy veins

:

Flows the pure blood of Britain, sure that blood
Has flow'd with quicker impulse at the tale
Of David's deeds, when thro' the press of war
His gallant comrades followed his green crest
To conquest. Stranger! Hatterill's mountain heights
And this fair vale of Ewias, and the stream
Of Hodney, to thine after-thoughts will rise
More grateful, thus associate with the name
Of David and the deeds of other days.