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LINES TO A FAVOURITE LAUREL

IN THE GARDEN AT ANKERWYKE COTTAGE.

[Written in 1814.]

OW changed this lonely scene !(the rank weed chokes
The garden flowers: the thistle's towering growth

Waves o'er the untrodden paths: the rose that breathed
Diffusive fragrance from its christening bed,

Scarce by a single bud denotes the spot

Where glowed its countless bloom : the woodbine droops
And trails along the ground, and wreathes no more
Around the light verandah's pillared shade
The tendrils of its sweetness: the green shrubs,
That made even winter gay, have felt themselves
The power of change, and mournful is the sound
Of evening's twilight gale, that shrilly sweeps
Their brown and sapless leaves.

But thou remain'st
Unaltered save in beauty: thou alone,
Amid neglect and desolation, spread'st
The rich luxuriance of thy foliage still,

More rich and more luxuriant now, than when, /
"Mid all the gay parterre, I called thee first
My favourite laurel) and 'tis something yet,
Even in this world where Ahrimanes reigns-
To think that thou, my favourite, hast been left
Unharmed amid the inclemency of time,
While all around thee withered.

There is a solemn aspect in thy shade,

A mystic whisper in the evening gale,

Lovely tree!

That murmurs through thy boughs; it breathes of peace,
Of rest, to one, who, having trodden long

The thorny paths of this malignant world,

Full fain would make the moss that tufts thy root

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The pillow of his slumber.

Many a bard,

Beneath some favourite tree, oak, beech, or pine,

Has by the pensive music of the breeze,

Been soothed to transient rest: but thou canst shed
A mightier spell: the murmur of thy leaves

Is full of meaning; and their influence,

Accessible to resolution, yields

No evanescent balm, but pours at once

Through all the sufferer's frame, the sweetest sleep

The weary pilgrim of the earth can know :

The long, oblivious, everlasting sleep

Of that last night on which no morn shall rise.

THIS BALLAD IS INSCRIBED TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD BYRON,

With that deep conviction of the high value of his praise, and of the fatal import of his censure, which must necessarily be impressed by the profound judgment with which his opinions are conceived, the calm deliberation with which they are promulgated, the Protean consistency with which they are maintained, and the total absence of all undue bias on their formation, from private partiality or per sonal resentment: with that admiration of his poetical talents which must be universally and inevitably felt for versification undecorated with the meretricious fascinations of harmony, for sentiments unsophisticated by the delusive ardour of philanthropy, for narrative en◄ veloped in all the Cimmerian sublimity of the impenetrable obscure.

I. JOHNNY ON THE SEA.
II. JOHNNY IN THE SEA.
III. JOHNNY UNDER THE SEA.

IV. CHEVY CHASE.

V. THE BATHOS.

VI. THE WORLD'S END.

I.

ILLE EGO.

H! list to me: for I'm about
To catch the fire of Chaucer,
And spin in doleful measure out
The tale of Johnny Raw, sir;"

Who, bent upon a desperate plan
To make the people stare,
Set off full speed for Hindoostan
Upon old Poulter's mare.t

Tramp! tramp! across the land he went;
Splash! splash! across the sea;

And then he gave his bragging‡ vent—
"Pray who can ride like me?

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*Our hero appears to have been "all naked feeling and raw life,” like Arvalan, in the "Curse of Kehama."

This is the Pegasa of the Cumberland school of poetry. Old Poulter's mare is the heroine "of one of our old ballads so full of

beauty. A modern bard, "whose works will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten," was at infinite trouble to procure an imperfect copy of this precious piece of antiquity, and has rescued it from oblivion, si aîs placet, in the pages of "Thalaba."

After all, perhaps, there is not much bragging in the speech of our hero. He has classical authority for self-panegyric, and, what is still better, the authority of Mr. Southey:

And again;

Come, listen to a tale of times of old :

Come, for ye know me! I am he who sung
The Maid of Arc; and I am he who framed
Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song.
Come, listen to my lay, and ye shall hear
How Madoc, etc.

Most righteously thy soul
Loathes the black catalogue of human crimes]
And human misery: let that spirit fill

Thy song, and it shall teach thee, boy, to raise
Strains such as Cato might have deigned to hear.

What degree of pleasure Cato would have derived from the "Carmen Triumphale" for the year 1814, is a point that remains to be decided.

Ranarian minstrels of all ages and nations have entertained a high opinion of their own melody. The Muses of Styx, the Пipideç Ka. TaxJovial, have transferred their seat in modern days to the banks

"For I'm the man who sallied forth,
To rout the classic forces,

And swore this mare was far more worth
Than both fierce Hector's horses.

"Old Homer from his throne I struck,
To Virgil gave a punch,
And in the place of both I stuck
The doughty Mother Bunch.

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"To France I galloped on my roan,
Whose metal nought can quail;
There squatted on the tomb of Joan,
And piped a dismal tale.

"A wild and wondrous stave I sung,

To make my hearers weep:

But when I looked, and held my tongue,
I found them fast asleep!*

"Oh! then, a furious oath I swore,

Some dire revenge to seek ;

of the Northern Lakes, where they inflate their tuneful votaries with inspiration and egotism. O dolce concento! when, to the philosophic wanderer on the twilight shore, ascends from the depths of Winander the choral modulation:

Brek-ek-ek-ex! ko-ax! ko-ax!

Our lay's harmonious burthen be :

In vain yon critic owl attacks

Our blithe and full-voiced minstrelsy.

Still shall our lips the strain prolong
With strength of lung that never slacks;
Still wake the wild and wondrous song:
Ko-ax! ko-ax! ko-ax! ko-ax!

Chorus in the Frogs of Aristophanes.

* Ω φιλον ΥΠΝΟΥ θέλγητρον, ΕΠΙΚΟΥΡΟΝ ΝΟΣΟΥ,
ΩΣ ΗΔΥ μοι προσήλθες εν ΔΕΟΝΤΙ γε !

And conjured up, to make them roar,
Stout Taffy and his leek.

"To heaven and hell I rode away,
In spite of wind and weather:
Trumped up a diabolic lay;

And cursed them altogether.

"Now, Proteus, rise! thou changeful seer!
To spirit up my mare :*

In every shape but those appear,

Which taste and nature wear.'

II.

DIVERSE LINGUE, ORRIBILI FAVELLE.

EVEN while he sung Sir Proteus rose,
That wight of ancient fun,

With salmon-scales instead of clothes,
And fifty shapes in one.

He first appeared a folio thick,
A glossary so stout,

Of modern language politic,†

Where conscience was left out.

* This seems to be an imitation of two lines in the "Dionysiaca " of Nonnus, selected by Mr. Southey as the motto to the "Curse of Kehama :"

Στήσατε μοι Πρωτη πολυτροπον, οφρα φανει

Ποικιλον ειδος ἔχων, ότε ποικιλον ύμνον αρασσω.

Let me the many-changing Proteus see,

To aid my many-changing melody.

It is not at all surprising, that a man, under a process of moral and political metamorphosis, should desire the patronage of this multiform god, who may be regarded as the tutelary saint of the numerous and thriving sect of Anythingarians. Perhaps the passage would have been more applicable to himself, though less so to his poem, if he had read, suo periculo:

Στήσατε μοι Πρωτη πολυτροπον, οφρα φανει

Ποικιλον ειδος εχων, ΟΤ' ΑΜΕΙΒΩ ΠΟΙΚΙΛΟΝ ΕΙΜΑ! Before my eyes let changefnl Proteus float, When now I change my many-coloured coat. This language was not much known to our ancestors; now pretty well understood by the majority of the H

but it is of C