"LOOK AT YON OAK THAT LIFTS ITS STATELY HEAD, AND DALLIES WITH THE AUTUMNAL STORM, WHOSE RAGE-SOUTHEY

BEWARE A SPEEDY FRIEND, THE ARABIAN SAID,-(SOUTHEY)

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

TEMPESTS THE GREAT SEA-WAVES; SLOWLY IT ROSE, SLOWLY ITS STRENGTH INCREASED THROUGH MANY AN AGE."-SOUTHEY.

But oh, the joy! the blessed sight!
When in that burning waste the travellers
Saw a green meadow, fair with flowers besprent,

AND WISELY WAS IT HE ADVISED DISTRUST."-R. SOUTHEY.

"FOR THEN I SOON WOULD WING MY EAGER FLIGHT TO THAT LOVED HOME WHERE FANCY EVEN NOW HATH FLED,

"THE FLOWER THAT BLOSSOMS EARLIEST FADES THE FIRST."-SOUTHEY.

MY LIBRARY.

Azure and yellow like the beautiful fields
Of England, when amid the growing grass

The blue-bell bends, the golden king-cup shines,
And the sweet cowslip scents the genial air,

In the merry month of May!

O joy! the travellers

Gaze on each other with hope-brightened eyes,

For sure through that green meadow flows
The living stream! And lo! their famished beast

Sees the restoring sight!

Hope gives his feeble limbs a sudden strength,

He hurries on!....

425

[From "Thalaba, the Destroyer,”—a wild and wonderful poem, of rare imaginative power, rising in many places to a high dramatic interest.]

66 OH, THOU SWEET LARK, THAT I HAD WINGS LIKE THEE."-R. SOUTHEY.

AND HOPE LOOKS ONWARD THROUGH A TEAR, COUNTING THE WEARY HOURS THAT HOLD HER HERE."-SOUTHEY.

426

"I MARVEL NOT, O SUN! THAT UNTO THEE

JOHN STERLING.

Their virtues love, their faults condemn,

Partake their hopes and fears,
And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with an humble mind.

My hopes are with the Dead, anon

My place with them will be,
And I with them shall travel on

Through all futurity;

Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.
[From Southey's "Miscellaneous Poems."}

AND POUR HIS PRAYERS OF MINGLED AWE AND LOVE;

FOR LIKE A GOD THOU ART, AND ON THY WAY

John Sterling.

[JOHN STERLING, says an able critic,* must have been a man of genius, as he certainly was of the greatest promise. His friends remember him as a marvellous talker; and his gentle disposition endeared him to all who knew him. The writings which he published in his life-time, and those which have been given to the world since, indicate rather what the author might have done, with good health and a settled purpose, than the finished compositions of a writer in full vigour of understanding, enjoying tranquillity of mind and body. Sterling possessed neither. He was delicate from his boyhood, and for many years of his life wholly occupied in eluding the resolute pursuit of disease and death.

He was born in Kaimes Castle, in the Isle of Bute, on the 20th of July 1806; received his preliminary education at various private schools, and completed it at the Universities of Glasgow (1821-23) and Cambridge (1824-27). At the latter, his tutor was Julius Hare, afterwards Archdeacon of Lewes, who, in his memoir of Sterling, does justice to his great mental gifts, his generous nature, and noble aspirations. On leaving Cambridge, he began to contribute to The Athenæum; and his papers are characterized by Carlyle as "crude, imperfect, yet singularly beautiful and attractive." In 1830 he was married; but a few weeks after was seized with a dangerous pulmonary illness, and, accompanied by his wife, repaired in quest of health to the West Indian island of St. Vincent, where his mother had some property. He returned to England in 1834; took orders; became curate of Hurstmonceaux in Sussex; dissatisfied with himself, and ill in

* Essays from The Times, Second Series.

IN ADORATION MAN SHOULD BOW THE KNEE,

OF GLORY SHEDDEST, WITH BENIGNANT RAY, BEAUTY, AND LIFE, AND JOYAUNCE FROM ABOVE."-SOUTHEY.

"MAN'S A KING, HIS THRONE IS DUTY,-(Sterling)

CARISBROOK CASTLE.

427

mind and body, threw up that duty; embraced the profession of letters;
visited France and Italy; and, still fiercely pursued by ill health, retired at
last to Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, where the heavy calamity of losing
his wife and mother, within two months of each other, finally broke him
down. He expired on the 18th of September 1844. His epitaph might fitly
be taken from Carlyle's noble eulogium:* "True, above all, one may call
him; a man of perfect veracity in thought, word, and deed. Integrity to-
wards all men-nay, integrity had ripened with him into chivalrous gener-
osity; there was no guile or baseness anywhere found in him. A more
perfectly transparent soul I have never known."]

"EARTH, OF MAN THE BOUNTEOUS MOTHER, FEEDS HIM STILL WITH CORN AND WINE;

CARISBROOK CASTLE.

[Carisbrook Castle is situated on a considerable knoll, about one mile
from Newport, in the Isle of Wight. Here Charles I. was imprisoned in
1647; and here his daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, died, September 8,
1650. "The castle," says Sterling, "is of large extent, tolerably preserved,
and draped with a good deal of ivy. But the want of great height prevents
it from bearing that look of indomitable command which, in some cases,
makes an ancient fortress resemble the last of the Anakim, bidding defiance
to the feebler race that crawl around its feet. The view from the top of the
keep is pretty and cheerful, without any peculiar wildness or extreme
beauty, beyond that of the slightly broken country, quiet and varied ver-
dure, and happy-looking dwellings. I was shown the window through
which Charles I. tried to escape. I threw my general impressions of the
place into the following lines:"-]

HE storm-bent towers that many an age
Mocked at feudal warfare's rage,
Buttress, keep, and battlement,

All with feeble eld o'erspent,
Weary, tottering, and hoary,
Now in gray and quiet glory

Rest from the toils that crowd their story.

Here no longer now endures

The frown of threatening embrasures :
Every loop-holed wall decaying,

Every turret earthward swaying,

* Carlyle, "Life of Sterling."

SINCE HIS WORK ON EARTH BEGAN."-J. Sterling.

HE WHO BEST WOULD AID A BROTHER, SHARES WITH HIM THESE GIFTS DIVINE."-STERLING.

"SOW THY SEED, AND REAP IN GLADNESS! MAN HIMSELF IS ALL A SEED;-(STERLING)

428

"THE MEANEST WEEDS TO SOME PERHAPS RECALL-(STERLING

HOPE AND HARDSHIP, JOY AND SADNESS, SLOW THE PLANT TO RIPENESS LEAD."-STERLING.

ENTRANCE TO CARISBROOK CASTLE.

Here the beacon-faggots nigh,
Piled to blaze against the sky,
Gleams no more the flickering brand,-
And no more the warder's eye
Bends its eager straining look
O'er the battle-shaken land,*
From the heights of Carisbrook.

* The Isle of Wight was several times invaded by the French.

A FIELD BELOVED, OR CHILDISH GARDEN SMALL."-STERLING.