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He saw a LAWYER killing a Viper

On a dung-heap beside his stable, And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother, Abel.

A POTHECARY on a white horse
Rode by on his vocations,

And the Devil thought of his old Friend
DEATH in the Revelations.

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility!

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

He went into a rich bookseller's shop, Quoth he! we are both of one college; For I myself sate like a cormorant once Fast by the tree of knowledge.*

Down the river there plied with wind and tide,
A pig, with vast celerity;

And the Devil look'd wise as he saw how the while,
It cut its own throat. There! quoth he, with a smile,
Goes "England's commercial prosperity."

As he went through Cold-Bath Fields, he saw
A solitary cell,

And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving his prisons in Hell.

CONSTANCY TO AN IDEAL OBJECT. SINCE all, that beat about in Nature's range, Or veer or vanish, why shouldst thou remain The only constant in a world of changeO yearning THOUGHT, that livest but in the brain? Call to the HOURS, that in the distance play, The fairy people of the future day

Fond THOUGHT! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,

Still, still as though some dear embodied good,
Some living love before my eyes there stood,
With answering look a ready ear to lend,

I mourn to thee and say-"Ah! loveliest friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might be,
To have a home, an English home and thee!
Vain repetition! Home and thou art one.
The peacefull'st cot the moon shall shine upon,
Lull'd by the thrush and waken'd by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalmed Bark,
Whose helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.

And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An imaget with a glory round its head;
The enamour'd rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows, he makes the shadow he pursues!

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So clomb this first grand thief

Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life
Sat like a cormorant.-Par. Lost, IV.

The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for "Life" Cod. quid habent, "Trade." Though indeed the trade, i. e. the bibliopolic, so called, Kar' 6xy, may be regarded as Life sansu eminentiori: a suggestion, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, country houses, etc. of the trade, exclaimed, "Ay! that's what I call Life now!"-This "Life, our Death," is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of Authorship.-Sic nos non nobis mellificamus Apes.

Of this poem, with which the Fire, Famine and Slaughter first appeared in the Morning Post, the three first stanzas, which are worth all the rest, and the ninth, were dictated by Mr. Southey. Between the ninth and the concluding stanza, two or three are omitted as grounded on subjects that have lost their interest-and for better reasons.

If any one should ask, who General-meant, the Author begs leave to inform him, that he did once see a red-faced person in a dream whom by the dress he took for a General; but

THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT.

ERE the birth of my life, if I wish'd it or no
No question was ask'd me-it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try,
And to live on be YES; what can No be? to die.

NATURE'S ANSWER.

Is 't return'd as 't was sent? Is 't no worse for the wear?
Think first, what you ARE! Call to mind what you
WERE!

I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope.
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the Invent'ry; inspect, compare!
Then die-if die you dare!

he might have been mistaken, and most certainly he did not hear any names mentioned. In simple verity, the Author never meant any one, or indeed any thing but to put a concluding stanza to his doggerel.

†This phenomenon, which the Author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passage of the Aids to Reflection:

"Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music on different characters, holds equally true of Genius: as many The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. Being, that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."-Aids to Reflection, p. 20.

THE BLOSSOMING OF THE SOLITARY

DATE-TREE.

A LAMENT.

I seem to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew Writers, an Apologue or Rabbinical Tradition to the following purpose: While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: "Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so! for the Man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise." And the word of the Most High answered Satan: "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Fiend! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to have the heart of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should have been inflicted on thyself."

[The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact mentioned by Linnæus, of a Date-tree in a nobleman's garden, which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, but never produced fruit, till a branch from a Date-tree had

Or call my destiny niggard? O no! no!
It is her largeness, and her overflow,
Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!

4.

For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,
But tim'rously beginning to rejoice
Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start
In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.
Beloved! 'tis not thine; thou art not there!
Then melts the bubble into idle air,
And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.

5.

The mother with anticipated glee
Smiles o'er the child, that standing by her chair,
And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare
To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight
She hears her own voice with a new delight;
And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes
aright,

6.

Then is she tenfold gladder than before! But should disease or chance the darling take, What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore been conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the MS. from which the poem has been Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake! transcribed, and which contained the two or three introduc- Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee tory stanzas, is wanting: and the author has in vain taxed Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee: his memory to repair the loss. But a rude draught of the Why was I made for love, and love denied to me?

poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and the reader is requested to receive it as the substitute. It is not impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed those of the author at the time the poem was written, may find a pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integrity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite Metre.

1.

S. T.C.

FANCY IN NUBIBUS,

OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS.

O! IT is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,

Or let the easily persuaded eyes

BENEATH the blaze of a tropical sun the moun-To make the shifting clouds be what you please, tain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. one with us shares, seems scarce our own." The presence of a ONE,

"What no Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold
"Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through CLOUDLAND, gor
geous land!

The best beloved, who loveth me the best, is for the heart, what the supporting air from within is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen, and crushes it into flatness.

2.

The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them?

3.

Imagination; honorable Aims;

Free Commune with the choir that cannot die;
Science and Song; Delight in little things,
The buoyant child surviving in the man;
Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,
With all their voices-O dare I accuse
My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,

Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possess'd, with inward light
Beheld the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

THE TWO FOUNTS.

STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER RECOVERY,
WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS, FROM A SEVERE AT-

TACK OF PAIN.

"Twas my last waking thought, how it could be
That thou, sweet friend, such anguish shouldst endure:
When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he
Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure.

Methought he fronted me, with peering look
Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game
The loves and griefs therein, as from a book:
And utter'd praise like one who wish'd to blame.

In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin,
Two Founts there are, of suffering and of cheer!
That to let forth, and this to keep within!
But she, whose aspect I find imaged here,

Of Pleasure only will to all dispense,
That Fount alone unlock'd, by no distress
Choked or turn'd inward, but still issue thence
Unconquer'd cheer, persistent loveliness.

As on the driving cloud the shiny Bow,

That gracious thing made up of tears and light, 'Mid the wild rack and rain that slants below Stands smiling forth, unmoved and freshly bright:

As though the spirits of all lovely flowers, Inweaving each its wreath and dewy crown, Or ere they sank to earth in vernal showers, Had built a bridge to tempt the angels down.

Even so, Eliza! on that face of thine,
On that benignant face, whose look alone

(The soul's translucence through her crystal shrine!) Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own.

A beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing,
But with a silent charm compels the stern
And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring
To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn.

Who then needs wonder, if (no outlet found
In passion, spleen, or strife) the FOUNT OF PAIN
O'erflowing beats against its lovely mound,
And in wild flashes shoots from heart to brain?

Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam
On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile,
Had pass'd: yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile,
Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream:

Till audibly at length I cried, as though
Thou hadst indeed been present to my eyes,
O sweet, sweet sufferer! if the case be so,
I pray thee, be less good, less sweet, less wise!

In every look a barbed arrow send,
On these soft lips let scorn and anger live!
Do any thing, rather than thus, sweet friend!
Hoard for thyself the pain thou wilt not give!

WHAT IS LIFE?

RESEMBLES life what once was held of light,
Too ample in itself for human sight?
An absolute self? an element ungrounded?
All that we see, all colors of all shade
By encroach of darkness made?

Is very life by consciousness unbounded?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling life and death?

Her father's love she bade me gain;

I went and shook like any reed!

I strove to act the man-in vain!

We had exchanged our hearts indeed.

SONNET,

COMPOSED BY THE SEASIDE, OCTOBER 1817.

OH! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please;
Or yield the easily persuaded eyes

To each quaint image issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low,
And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold
"Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go

From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous land!

Or listening to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand,
By those deep sounds possess'd, with inward light
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea!

EPIGRAMS. I.

I ASK'D my fair, one happy day,
What I should call her in my lay,

By what sweet name from Rome, or Greece,
Neæra, Laura, Daphne, Chloris,

Carina, Lalage, or Doris,
Dorimene, or Lucrece ?

II.

"Ah," replied my gentle fair; "Dear one, what are names but air?Choose thou whatever suits the line; Call me Laura, call me Chloris, Call me Lalage, or Doris, Only-only-call me thine!"

SLY Belzebub took all occasions
To try Job's constancy, and patience.
He took his honor, took his health;
He took his children, took his wealth,
His servants, oxen, horses, cows,-
But cunning Satan did not take his spouse.

But Heaven, that brings out good from evil,
And loves to disappoint the devil,
Had predetermined to restore
Twofold all he had before;

His servants, horses, oxen, cows-
Short-sighted devil, not to take his spouse!

THE EXCHANGE.

WE pledged our hearts, my love and I,-
I in my arms the maiden clasping;

I could not tell the reason why,
But, oh! I trembled like an aspen.

HOARSE Mævius reads his hobbling verse
To all, and at all times;

And finds them both divinely smooth,
His voice as well as rhymes.

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the "Fortunate Isles" of the Muses: and then other and more momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer anchorage and a securer port. I have in vain tried to recover the lines from the Palimpsest tablet of my memory: and I can only offer the introductory stanza, which had been committed to writing for the purpose of procuring a friend's judgment on the metre, as a specimen.

Encinctured with a twine of leaves,
That leafy twine his only dress!
A lovely Boy was plucking fruits,
By moonlight, in a wilderness.
The moon was bright, the air was free,
And fruits and flowers together grew
On many a shrub and many a tree:
And all put on a gentle hue,
Hanging in the shadowy air
Like a picture rich and rare.

It was a climate where, they say,
The night is more beloved than day.
But who that beauteous Boy beguiled,
That beauteous Boy, to linger here?
Alone, by night, a little child,

In place so silent and so wild

Has he no friend, no loving Mother near?

I have here given the birth, parentage, and premature deceam of the "Wanderings of Cain, a poem,"-entreating, however, my Readers not to think so meanly of my judgment, as to suppose that I either regard or offer it as any excuse for the publication of the following fragment (and I may add, of one or two others in its neighborhood), or its primitive crudity. But I should find still greater difficulty in forgiving myself, were I to record pro tædio publico a set of petty mishaps and annoy ances which I myself wish to forget. I must be content therefore with assuring the friendly Reader, that the less he attributes its appearance to the Author's will, choice, or judgment, the nearer to the truth he will be. S. T. C.

THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN.

PREFATORY NOTE.

CANTO II.

"A LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight." Their road was through a forest of fir-trees; at its entrance A prose composition, one not in metre at least, seems prima the trees stood at distances from each other, and the facie to require explanation or apology. It was written in the path was broad, and the moonlight, and the moonlight year 1798, near Nether Stowoy in Somersetshire, at which place shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to in (sanctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and habit that solitude. But soon the path winded and recollections) the Author had taken up his residence in order became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimes to enjoy the society and close neighborhood of a dear and hon-speckled, but never illumined it, and now it was

ored friend, T. Poole. Esq. The work was to have been written

in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within dark as a cavern.

the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connex- "It is dark, O my father!" said Enos; "but the ion with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were sug-soon come out into the open moonlight."

gested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the

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contents for each of the three books or cantoes, of which the little child!" And the innocent little child clasped a Lead on, my child!" said Cain: "guide me,

work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook finger of the hand which had murdered the righteous the first canto: I the second: and whichever had done first, was Abel, and he guided his father. "The fir branches to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by; yet drip upon thee, my son." "Yea, pleasantly, father, at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile for I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the pitcher moot the question which of the two things was the more im- and the cake, and my body is not yet cool, How

practicable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another

man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir-trees! simple to imitate the Death of Abel? Methinks I see his grand they leap from bough to bough, and the old squirrels and noble countenance as at the moment when having dispatch-play round their young ones in the nest. I clomba tree ed my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened yesterday at noon, O my father, that I might play

to him with my manuscript-that look of humorous despond

ency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its with them; but they leapt away from the branches, silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme-moment I beheld them on another tree. Why, O my which broke up in a laugh: and the Ancient Mariner was writ-father, would they not play with me? I would be

ten instead.

Years afterward, however, the draft of the Plan and propo- good to them as thou art good to me: and I groaned sed Incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favor in the to them even as thou groanest when thou givest me eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic to eat, and when thou coverst me at evening, and as work could not but have weighed with me, even though no pa- often as I stand at thy knee and thine eyes look st rental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a me." Then Cain stopped, and stifling his groans he

make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and

composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the realizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off darkness beside him.

And Cain lifted up his voice and cried bitterly, ed from its point, and between its point and the and said, "The Mighty One that persecuteth me is sands a tall man might stand upright. It was here on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like that Enos had found the pitcher and cake, and to the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; this place he led his father. But ere they had reachhe is around me even as the air! O that I might be ed the rock they beheld a human shape: his back utterly no more! I desire to die-yea, the things was towards them, and they were advancing unperthat never had life, neither move they upon the ceived, when they heard him smite his breast and earth-behold! they seem precious to mine eyes. O cry aloud, "Woe is me! woe is me! I must never die that a man might live without the breath of his nos-again, and yet I am perishing with thirst and huntrils! So I might abide in darkness, and blackness, ger."

and an empty space! Yea, I would lie down, I would Pallid, as the reflection of the sheeted lightning on not rise, neither would I stir my limbs till I became the heavy-sailing night-cloud, became the face of as the rock in the den of the lion, on which the Cain; but the child Enos took hold of the shaggy young lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For skin, his father's robe, and raised his eyes to his the torrent that roareth far off hath a voice, and the father, and listening whispered, "Ere yet I could clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty speak, I am sure, O my father! that I heard that One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the voice. Have not I often said that I remembered a cedar grove; and in silence am I dried up." Then sweet voice? O my father! this is it:" and Cain Enos spake to his father: "Arise, my father, arise, trembled exceedingly. The voice was sweet indeed, we are but a little way from the place where I found but it was thin and querulous like that of a feeble the cake and the pitcher." And Cain said, "How slave in misery, who despairs altogether, yet cannot knowest thou?" and the child answered-" Behold, refrain himself from weeping and lamentation. And, the bare rocks are a few of thy strides distant from behold! Enos glided forward, and creeping softly the forest; and while even now thou wert lifting up round the base of the rock, stood before the stranger, thy voice, I heard the echo." Then the child took and looked up into his face. And the Shape shriekhold of his father, as if he would raise him: and ed, and turned round, and Cain beheld him, that his Cain being faint and feeble, rose slowly on his knees limbs and his face were those of his brother Abel and pressed himself against the trunk of a fir, and whom he had killed! And Cain stood like one who stood upright, and followed the child. struggles in his sleep because of the exceeding terribleness of a dream.

The path was dark till within three strides' length of its termination, when it turned suddenly; the Thus as he stood in silence and darkness of soul, thick black trees formed a low arch, and the moon- the Shape fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, light appeared for a moment like a dazzling portal. and cried out with a bitter outcry, "Thou eldestEnos ran before and stood in the open air; and when born of Adam, whom Eve, my mother, brought forth, Cain, his father, emerged from the darkness, the cease to torment me! I was feeding my flocks in child was affrighted. For the mighty limbs of Cain green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou were wasted as by fire; his hair was as the matted killedst me; and now I am in misery." Then Cain curls on the Bison's forehead, and so glared his fierce closed his eyes, and hid them with his hands; and and sullen eye beneath: and the black abundant again he opened his eyes, and looked around him, locks on either side, a rank and tangled mass, were and said to Enos, " What beholdest thou? Didst thou stained and scorched, as though the grasp of a hear a voice, my son?" "Yes, my father, I beheld burning iron hand had striven to rend them; and his a man in unclean garments, and he uttered a sweet countenance told in a strange and terrible language voice, full of lamentation." Then Cain raised up of agonies that had been, and were, and were still the Shape that was like Abel, and said:-"The to continue to be. Creator of our father, who had respect unto thee, The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye and unto thy offering, wherefore hath he forsaken could reach it was desolate: the bare rocks faced thee?" Then the Shape shrieked a second time, and each other, and left a long and wide interval of thin rent his garment, and his naked skin was like the white sand. You might wander on and look round white sands beneath their feet; and he shrieked yet and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks, a third time, and threw himself on his face upon the and discover nothing that acknowledged the influ- sand that was black with the shadow of the rock, ence of the seasons. There was no spring, no sum- and Cain and Enos sate beside him; the child by his mer, no autumn: and the winter's snow, that would right hand, and Cain by his left. They were all have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and three under the rock, and within the shadow. The scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised Shape that was like Abel raised himself up, and himself over this desert; but the huge serpent often spake to the child: "I know where the cold waters hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and are, but I may not drink; wherefore didst thou then the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within take away my pitcher?" But Cain said, “Didst thou the coils of the serpent. The pointed and shattered not find favor in the sight of the Lord thy God?" summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude The Shape answered, "The Lord is God of the mimicry of human concerns, and seemed to proph-living only, the dead have another God." Then esy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, the child Enos lifted up his eyes and prayed; but and battlements, and ships with naked masts. As far Cain rejoiced secretly in his heart. "Wretched shall from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the they be all the days of their mortal life," exclaimed brook, there was one rock by itself at a small dis- the Shape, "who sacrifice worthy and acceptable tance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated sacrifices to the God of the dead; but after death there perhaps by the groan which the Earth uttered their toil ceaseth. Woe is me, for I was well beloved when our first father fell. Before you approached, it by the God of the living, and cruel wert thou, O appeared to lie flat on the ground, but its base slant- my brother, who didst snatch me away from his

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