Far hence all earthly thoughts be hurl'd!
Thy regions, Fancy, shine unfurl'd,
Amid the visionary world

I lose the sad reality.

Led by thy magic pow'r sublime,
From shore to shore, from clime to clime,
Uncheck'd by distance or by time,

My steps shall wander rapidly.

Thy pow'r can all the past restore,
Bid present ills afflict no more,
And teach the spirit to explore
The volume of futurity.

A

REMEMBER ME.

[Written after 1808.]

E tu, chi sa se mai

Te sovverrai di me ?-METASTASIO.

ND what are life's enchanting dreams,

That melt, like morning mists, away?
And what are Fancy's golden beams,
That glow with transitory day?
While adverse stars my steps impel,
To climes remote, my love, from thee,
Will that dear breast with pity swell,
And wilt thou still remember me?
Alas! I hoped from Britain's shore
My wayward feet would never rove:
I hoped to share my little store,

With thee, my first, my only love!
No more those hopes my breast elate:
No more thy lovely form I see:
But thou wilt mourn thy wanderer's fate,
And thou wilt still remember me.

When twilight shades the world o'erhung,
Oft has thou loved with me to stray,
While Philomela sweetly sung

The dirge of the departing day.

But when our cherished meads and bowers
Thy solitary haunts shall be,
Oh! then recall those blissful hours;
Oh! then, my love, remember me.

When Spring shall bid the forest live,
And clothe the hills and vales with green;
Or summer's ripening hand shall give
New beauties to the sylvan scene;
Reflect that thus my prospects smiled
Till changed by Fortune's stern decree :
And wintry storms severe and wild,
Shall bid thee still remember me.

For wintry storms have overcast

And blighted all my hopes of joy :
Vain joys of life, so quickly past!

Vain hope that clouds so soon destroy!
Around us cares and dangers grow:
Between us rolls the restless sea:
Yet this one thought shall soothe my woe,
That thou wilt still remember me.

And when, thy natal shades among,

While noontide rays their fervours shower,

The poet's sadly-pleasing song

Shall charm thy melancholy hour; When Zephyr, rustling in the grove,

Sighs feebly through the spreading tree, Think 'tis the whispering voice of love, And pity, and remember me!

Remember me, when morning's call

Shall bid thee leave thy lonely bed:

Remember me, when evening fall

Shall tinge the skies with blushing red :

Remember me, when midnight sleep

Shall set excursive fancy free;

And should'st thou wake, and wake to weep, Still, in thy tears, remember me.

Farewell, my love! the paths of truth,

The paths of happiness pursue :

But ever mindful of the youth,

Who loved thee with a flame so true.

And though to thy transcendent form
Admiring courts should bow the knee,
Still be thy breast with pity warm,
Still, still, my love, remember me.

D

ROMANCE.

[Published in 1806.]

EATH! the mourner's surest aid!
Mark my sad devotion:
Hear a lost, forsaken maid,

Mourn with wild emotion.

I my griefs unpitied pour

To the winds that round me roar,
On the billow-beaten shore
Of the lonely ocean.

Where the sea's extremest line
Seems with ether blended,
Still I see the white sails shine
To the breeze extended.

False one! still I mark thy sail
Spread to catch the favouring gale.
Soon shall storms thy bark assail,
And thy crimes be ended!

By the mighty tempests tost,
Death-flames round thee burning,

On a bleak and desert coast,
Whence is no returning ;-
Thou o'er all thy friends shall weep,
Buried in th' unpitying deep;
Thou thy watch of woe shalt keep,

Vainly, deeply, mourning.

Unattended shalt thou rove,

O'er the mountain dreary,
Through the haunted, pathless grove,
Through the desert eerie :

Unassuaged thy tears shall flow;

None shall sooth or share thy woe,

When thy blood runs cold and slow,

And thy limbs are weary!

Far from haunts of human kind,
Vengeful heaven impelling,
Thou thy dying bed shall find,
Where cold blasts are yelling.
None shall hear thee, none shall save,
In thy monumental cave,

None shall weep, where tempests rave
Round thy narrow dwelling!

THE GENIUS OF THE THAMES.
[Second edition, published in 1812.]

PART I.

[The variations between this, the second edition, and the first edition, published in 1810, are recorded in foot-notes.]

ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΟΣ ΠΟΤΑΜΩΝ ΕΠΙ ΓΑΙΑΝ ΙΠΣΙ.— 0Μ,

Non è questo 'l terren, ch' i' toccai pria?

Non è questo 'l mio nido,

Ove nudrito fui si dolcemente?

Non è questa la patria in ch' io mi fido

Madre benigna e pia,

Che copre l'uno e l'altro mio parente ?-PETRARCA *

*PREMIUM.

Sweet was the choral song,

When in Arcadian vales,

Primeval shepherds twined the Aonian wreath.

While in the dying gales,

That sighed the shades among,

Rapt fancy heard responsive spirits breathe.

Dryads and Genii wandered then

Amid the haunts of guileless men,

As yet unknown to strife:

Ethereal beings poured the floods,

Dwelt in the ever waving woods,

And filled the varied world with intellectual life.

Ah! whither are they flown,

Those days of peace and love

So sweetly sung by bards of elder time?

When in the startling grove

The battle-blast was blown,

And misery came, and cruelty and crime,
Far from the desolated hills,

Polluted meads, and blood-stained rills,

ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST PART.

An Autumnal night on the banks of the Thames. Eulogium of the Thames. Characters of several rivers of Great Britain. Acknowledged superiority of the Thames. Address to the Genius of the Thames. View of some of the principal rivers of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Pre-eminence of the Thames. General character of the river. The port of London. The naval dominion of Britain and extent of her commerce and navigation. Tradition that an immense forest occupied the site of the metropolis. Episode of a Druid, supposed to have taken refuge in that forest, after the expulsion of Mona.

*

I.

HE moonlight rests, with solemn smile,†

TH

On sylvan shore and willowy isle :

While Thames beneath the imaged beam,

Rolls on his deep and silent stream.

Their guardian genii flew ;

And through the woodlands, waste and wild,

Where erst perennial summer smiled,

Infuriate passions prowled, and wintry whirlwinds blew.

Yet where light breezes sail

Along the sylvan shore,

The bard still feels a sacred influence nigh:

When the far torrent's roar

Floats through the twilight vale,

And, echoing low, the forest-depths reply.

Nor let the throng his dreams despise

Who to the rural deities

From courts and crowds retires :

Since human grandeur's proudest scheme

Is but the fabric of a dream,

A meteor-kindled pile, that, while we gaze, expires.
Retrospect of early associations. First edition.
First edition begins thus:

I.

The woods are roaring in the gale,
That whirls their fading leaves afar ;
The crescent moon is cold and pale,
And swiftly sinks the evening star.
High on this mossy bank reclined
I listen to the eddying wind,
While Thames impels with sinuous flow
His silent rolling stream below;

And darkly waves the giant oak,
That broad, above, its stature rears;

On whose young strength innocuous broke
The storms of unrecorded years.