Page 187. Line 26.

"Teaching us to forget them or forgive."

This is borrowed from an affecting passage in Mr. George Dyer's History of Cambridge.

See Burnet, who is unusually animated on this subject: the east wind, so anxiously expected and prayed for, was called the Protestant wind."

Page 190. Line 10.

"Yet will we not conceal the precious Cross,

Like Men ashamed."

The Lutherans have retained the Cross within their Churches: it is to be regretted that we have not done the same.

Page 193. Line 6.

"Or like the Alpine Mount, that takes its name

From roseate hues," &c.

Some say that Monte Rosa takes its name from a belt of rock at its summit-a very unpoetical and scarcely a probable supposition.

205

POEMS

OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.

I.

EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY.

"WHY, William, on that old gray stone, Thus for the length of half a day,

Why, William, sit you thus alone,

And dream your time away?

Where are your books? — that light bequeathed

To beings else forlorn and blind!

Up! up and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.

You look round on your mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you}
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you !”*

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,"
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

"The eye

it cannot choose but see;

We cannot bid the ear be still;

Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against, or with our will.

Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum

Of things for ever speaking,

That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?

Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,

Conversing as I may,

I sit upon this old gray stone,
And dream my time away."

II.

THE TABLES TURNED;

AN EVENING SCENE ON THE SAME SUBJECT.

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear
Why all this toil and trouble?

your

looks ;

The sun, above the mountain's head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland Linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the Throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher :

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up these barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

III.

WRITTEN IN GERMANY,

ON ONE OF THE COLDEST DAYS OF THE CENTURY.

The Reader must be apprised, that the Stoves in North-Germany generally have the impression of a galloping Horse upon them, this being part of the Brunswick Arms.

A PLAGUE on your languages, German and Norse!
Let me have the song of the Kettle;

And the tongs and the poker, instead of that Horse
That gallops away with such fury and force
On his dreary dull plate of black metal.

See that Fly, a disconsolate creature! perhaps
A child of the field or the grove;

And, sorrow for him! the dull treacherous heat
Has seduced the poor fool from his winter retreat,
And he creeps to the edge of my stove.

Alas! how he fumbles about the domains
Which this comfortless oven environ!

He cannot find out in what track he must crawl,
Now back to the tiles, and now back to the wall,
And now on the brink of the iron.

Stock-still there he stands like a traveller bemazed:
The best of his skill he has tried;

His feelers, methinks, I can see him put forth

To the East and the West, to the South and the North; But he finds neither Guide-post nor Guide.