SONNET.

WINDBOUND AT FOLKESTONE, IN Lodgings.

MPATIENT traveller! chide not the waves

IM

And winds that, leaping from their hollow caves,
Forbid thy progress : let thy better reason
Argue submission to the clime and season.
But if the booming cadence of the sea,

These spray-flakes storm-driven fast and furiously,
Yon shoal of porpoises that sea-ward go,
Traced by their gambols, heavy, dark, and slow,
Fall hopelessly upon thine eye and ear,

And different objects thou wouldst fain require,
Turn within doors to view, whilst yet you may,
An English matron, by an English fire,
The last you are to see for many a day,
Speeding light duties, lighter for such cheer.

Folkestone, October, 1843.

SONNET.

ROUEN.

ERE is the holy gloom of ancient days,

HE

Tempered with modern sunshine: here a maze Of streets, where rich antiquities survive, Concludes in quays as busy as a hive: And whether Gothic piles we contemplate; Or muse o'er speaking records of the fate Of nations; or with curious pleasure trace Some kindred features in each Norman face; Or climb Saint Catherine's height, and thence survey The city's spires, domes, river, bridges, ships, The spirit of the place doth ever stand In garments of religious holiday Distinct before us, and with angel lips Speaks to an English heart of Fatherland.

Rouen, October, 1843.

A SKETCH.

SCARCELY WITHIN REACH OF THE PENCIL.

B

ETWEEN Saulieu and Chalons on the Saone,

There is a place called Ivry, whence the road Winds round a vine-clad warm Burgundian slope, Unto a waste upon a ridge of hills

Where summer rarely comes; and there we saw
The straight white road before us, and the wains
That toiled along it, far between and few,
To all appearance motionless; the last
Diminished in the distance to a speck.

On either side the ploughshare had wrought out
Deformed uncleanly furrows, timidly
Encroaching on the waste: low grey stone walls
Offered a scant protection: here and there
Short stunted oak and hazel, thorn and briar,
Struggled with skeleton fragments of the rock,
Denuded, worn, storm-eaten on the right,
Against the sky-line loomed a single tower,
Whereon a melancholy telegraph
Was set to wave its arms aloft in air,

Like signals of distress: it was a place
To which I could exile the misanthrope,
The hater of his kind, if such there be,
Until the snows, and rains, and frosts, and winds,
Should whip him from his folly: on the left,
One lone square mansion stood: disconsolate
And tenantless it seemed; no touch, no breath
Of life reposed around it; sight nor sound
Was there of man, or beast, or bird, or tree.
The wind howled round its angles-

Why thus depict a desert?

Nay, my friend,

It may have

Its use for should I lie perchance to-night
Courting in vain the gentle power of sleep,
I will bethink me of that barren waste;
And by the meditations thence conceived,
Aimless, and objectless, compel the mind
To fall on sweet oblivion.

Lyons, October, 1843.

IN THE HOTEL AT AVIGNON.

TO AN ITINERANT MUSICIAN.

I

KNOW that tune-that voice—and, sooth,

Those half-wild notes are far from faint ones:

I little dreamed in Avignon,

Poor boy, upon the banks of Rhone,

To greet thee as an old acquaintance !

Yet I should grievously have erred,
Thee and thine equipage forgetting;
Thy mice, thy monkey, very pets,
And tiny waltzing marionettes,
Like Liliputians pirouetting.

I know thee well; but thou in me
Seem'st but to see, by intuition,
A Briton who will not refuse

To ease his purse of some few sous,
At a forlorn petition.

Thou in our wondrous thoroughfares

Hast gazed all stations and degrees on;