Within a temple stands an awful shrine, While ghastly faces through the gloom appear, The tall sun, pausing on an Alpine spire, How gaily murmur and how sweetly taste The fountains reared for them amid the waste! Their thirst they slake :-they wash their toilworn feet, And some with tears of joy each other greet. Last, let us turn to Chamouny that shields blend ; A scene more fair than what the Grecian feigns 'Mid lawns and shades by breezy rivulets fanned, They sport beneath that mountain's matchless height That holds no commerce with the summer night. From age to age, throughout his lonely bounds And droop, while no Italian arts are thine, Hail Freedom! whether it was mine to stray, With shrill winds whistling round my lonely To scent the sweets of Piedmont's breathing rose, And orange gale that o'er Lugano blows; Of the sun peeping through the clouds can spy, To greet the traveller needing food and rest; And oh, fair France! though now the traveller sees Thy three-striped banner fluctuate on the breeze; Though martial songs have banished songs of love, And nightingales desert the village grove, Scared by the fife and rumbling drum's alarms, And the short thunder, and the flash of arms; That cease not till night falls, when far and nigh Each clacking mill, that broke the murmuring streams, Rocked the charmed thought in more delightful dreams; Chasing those pleasant dreams, the falling leaf With more majestic course the water rolled, Must bid the tocsin ring from tower to tower!Nearer and nearer comes the trying hour! Rejoice, brave Land, though pride's perverted ire Rouse hell's own aid, and wrap thy fields in fire: Lo, from the flames a great and glorious birth; * An insect so called, which emits a short, melancholy cry, heard at the close of the summer evenings, on the banks of the Loire. As if a new-made heaven were hailing a new earth! -All cannot be the promise is too fair In an impartial balance, give thine aid Brood o'er the long-parched lands with Nilelike wings! And grant that every sceptred child of clay Who cries presumptuous, "Here the flood shall stay, That piled these stones and with the mossy sod His only visitants a straggling sheep, When nature had subdued him to herself, The world, and human life, appeared a scene He died, this seat his only monument. If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, him Is in its infancy. The man whose eye move The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 1795 VIII. GUILT AND SORROW; OR, INCIDENTS UPON SALISBURY PLAIN. ADVERTISEMENT, PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS POEM, PUBLISHED IN 1842. Not less than one-third of the following poem, though it has from time to time been altered in the expression, was published so far back as the year 1798, under the title of "The Female Vagrant." The extract is of such length that an apology seems to be required for reprinting it here: but it was necessary to restore it to its original position, or the rest would have been unintelligible. The whole was written before the close of the year 1794, and I will detail, rather as a matter of literary biography than for any other reason, the circumstances under which it was produced. During the latter part of the summer of 1793, having passed a month in the Isle of Wight, in view of the fleet which was then preparing for sea off Portsmouth at the commencement of the war, I left the place with melancholy forebodings. The American war was still fresh in memory. The struggle which was beginning, and which many thought would be brought to a speedy close by the irresistible arms of Great Britain being added to those of the allies, I was assured in my own mind would be of long continuance, and productive of distress and misery beyond all possible calculation. This conviction was pressed upon me by having been a witness, during a long residence in revolutionary France, of the spirit which prevailed in that country. After leaving the Isle of Wight, I spent two days in wandering on foot over Salisbury Plain, which, though cultivation was then widely spread through parts of it, had upon the whole a still more impressive appearance than it now retains. The monuments and traces of antiquity, scattered in abundance over that region, led me unavoidably to compare what we know or guess of those remote times with certain aspects of modern society, and with calamities, principally those consequent upon war, to which, more than other classes of men, the poor are subject. In those reflections, joined with particular facts that had come to my knowledge, the following stanzas originated. In conclusion, to obviate some distraction in the minds of those who are well acquainted with Salisbury Plain, it may be proper to say, that of the features described as belonging to it, one or two are taken from other desolate parts of England. |