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 galę.
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!

eserve

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.—UΜ.

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 botle-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.

T

I.

HE moonlight rests, with solemn smile,t

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.

The wasting wind of autumn sighs :
The oak's discoloured foliage flies:
The grove, in deeper shadow cast,
Waves darkly in the eddying blast.
All hail, ye breezes loud and drear,
That peal the death-song of the year!
Your rustling pinions waft around
A voice that breathes no mortal sound,
And in mysterious accents sings
The flight of time, the change of things.
The seasons pass in swift career :
Storms close, and zephyrs wake, the year:
The streams roll on, nor e'er return
To fill again their parent urn;
But bounteous nature, kindly-wise,
Their everlasting flow supplies.
Like planets round the central sun,
The rapid wheels of being run,
By laws, from earliest time pursued,
Still changed, still wasted, still renewed.

II.

Ye phantoms of enraptured thought,

By wild-inspiring fancy taught,
That oft the careworn mind employ
In paths of visionary joy!

Oh bring again your genial aid,

In all your former charms arrayed,
As when you came, with life and love
The day-dreams of my youth to bless,
And led my sportive steps to rove
Through fairy worlds of happiness.

III.

Then, while the cloudless morning smiled
Along the flower-enamelled shore,
I watched the waves, that, circling wild,
Passed onward and returned no more:
And when the hollow-murmuring gale
Despoiled the treasures of the wood
I loved to see the dry leaf sail,
Light-eddying down the silver flood.
By youth, and hope, and fancy blest,

The darkening thought ne'er touched my breast,

That all my promised joys should fly,

Swift as those waves were hastening by,

And fancy's golden dreams be past,

Like leaves on the autumnal blast!

*

Reflected in the present scene,

Return the forms that once have been:
The present's varying tints display
The colours of the future day.

II.

Ye bards, that, in these secret shades,
These tufted woods and sloping glades,
Awoke, to charm the sylvan maids,
Your soul-entrancing minstrelsy!
Say, do your spirits yet delight
To rove, beneath the starry night,
Along this water's margin bright,

Or mid the woodland scenery;
And strike, to notes of tender fire,
With viewless hands the shadowy lyre,
Till all the wandering winds respire
A wildly-awful symphony?

III.

Hark! from beneath the aged spray,
Where hangs my humbler lyre on high,
Soft music fills the woodlands gray,
And notes aërial warble by!
What flying touch, with elfin spell,
Bids its responsive numbers swell?
Whence is the deep Æolian strain,

That on the wind its changes flings?
Returns some ancient bard again,

To wake to life the slumbering strings?
Or breathed the spirit of the scene
The lightly-trembling chords between,
Diffusing his benignant power

On twilight's consecrated hour?

IV.

Even now, methinks, in solemn guise,*
By yonder willowy islet gray,

In the first edition :

Were mine the art, with glowing hand
The flood of deathless song to pour,
That lyre should call the fairy band,
To press, oh Thames ! thy willowy shore,
And weave for thee, with spells sublime,
The magic wreath of boldest rhyme,