A pond half hid in rushes,-some old trees,-
A garden, an old house, (which by degrees
An unpruned vine is covering,)-straggling flowers,--
And ruined arbours open to the showers.

This place to me is not for such things dear;

But here my boyhood dawned, and here,-oh! here,
I and my mother wandered-long ago!

3.-To

"AH! why do I love thee?
Tell me, sweetheart, why.
Is it for that forehead broad?
Or that azure eye?

Very blue it is, I own;

Yet, 'tis not for that alone.

Like a streaming morning

Are those tresses bright;
Like the Phoenix' spicy nest
Is that bosom white,

Which the fever'd fancy warms;

Yet I think of other charms.

Not of fawn-like movements,-
Breast of swan-like hue,-

Not of tresses,-forehead,-eyes,—
(Though they be so blue)"

"Then, why hast thou loved me?"
"Why?-because I knew

Thou wast tender, faithful, firm,
And in all things true.

Much I loved thy grace, thy youth;
But I loved, beyond the rest,
That which hideth in thy breast,
-Thy undecaying Truth!"

4.-A DREAM.

I SAW the Shepherd who doth fold the flocks

Of dreams, and 'loose them through the regioned brain,
Floating along on the calm atmosphere.

His feet were winged, like as great Hermes' were,

And in his hand an ebon wand he waved,

Driving before him that preposterous brood,

Our torment,-dæmons, beasts, and headless things,
Monsters enormous, ghastlier than the grave,
Beauty was there, and horror, shapes all winged
And flaming, horses winged, (like that which struck
Clear Aganippe from the barren hill,)

White Nightmare, and dark Incubus, and owls
That hoot songs frightful to the ear of sleep.

Then, following,-like the maiden Moon at night,—

In stately beauty did my Lady pass,

And shed such virtue from those serious eyes
Which won me to her side, that all the array
Of mischief-making sleep fled far away,
And I awoke to love and poetry!

5.-A HYMN OF EVIL SPIRITS.

THE moon is shining on her way;

The planets, yet undimm'd by sleep,
Drink light from the far-flaming day,
Who still is hid beyond the deep:
But here both men and spirits weep,
And earth all mourneth into air,
Because there liveth nothing fair

Or great, save on the azure steep.

And on that hill of Heaven, none
Of human strength or thought may climb;
For there bright angels lie alone

Reposing since the birth of time:
They bask beneath His looks sublime;
But nought of ease or hope is here,
Where sleep is link'd to dreams of fear,
And error to the pains of crime.

The moon is come,- but she shall
The stars are in their azure nest;

go:

The jaded wind shall cease to blow;
But when shall we have hope or rest?
Now some are smit, aud some are blest;
But what to us is smile or sigh?

Though Peace, the white-wing'd dove, be nigh,
It ne'er must be the Spirit's guest!

Behold!-The young and glistening Hour
Comes riding through the gate of morn,
And we awhile must quit our power,
And vanish from a world we scorn.
Joy!-Flattering sin begins to dawn
From man's false lips and woman's eyes,
And hopes and hearts are racked and torn
In God's green earthly paradise!

6.-A REVEL.

Host. Bring me a goblet, wide and deep and large,
Such as would drown a Bacchant, or make mad
The groves of Cybele,-a huge deep glass,
Where my fierce senses may repose, or die.
More wine! Methinks some red phantasma fills
My sight, as though mine eyes grew blind with blood.
Look at the flashing cups and crimson drink!
Bring forth the goblet! Ha!-a cup indeed!—
Yet, would 'twere richer! "Tshould be massy brass ;
And on its broad bright sides gallantly carved

Should spring a vintage, or the Pythian games

In struggling silver,-or a feast of Gods,
All gold, but imaged like a poet's dream!
Fill up the brave Greek goblet. Bid it blush

In Burgundy for lying dry so long.

Enough! enough!-Brave cup, though shouldst have rocked
The Indian Bacchus on his panther's back!

That time is gone; but still thy power survives.

1 Guest.

Look, sirs,-Between these wreathed arms there lie
Beautiful peril, and the taste that feeds

The tongue with eloquence, the eye with light-
But drink, and forget all thought!

Drink Drink!

Who is here that dares to think?
Thinking is all folly.

So is patience, so is care,
Noisy fear, and dumb despair,
And pale melancholy.

Drink! Drink!

Let us laugh but never think!
Drinking is our duty————

2 Guest. Peace! thou art full of discord: thus 't should run :-
It doth fill the brain with care,
Pallid Hope and dark Despair;
And the world of beauty
Fadeth, like a vision dim,
From the troubled sight of him
Who doth drown his soul in wine.
Wine! It is a crimson devil,
Dragging, by some villain rule,
Down unto its loathsome level

All that venture, sage and fool,
All that's good and all that's fair,
With the things that foulest are.
Wine! It is the poet's bane,
Dashing all his dreams with pain,
Filling all his Heaven bright
With a red and turbid light.
'Tis a Spirit who doth strain
Upwards ever-but in vain :
For,-as doth the spark that flashes
Perish in the cold black ashes-
As the strained bow returns
When on high the arrow spurns
Ether, and no longer bends-
As the dart itself descends
From its high and feather'd flight—
As the cheek whose angry light
Fadeth when the passion's cold,
And resumes its colour old,-
So the Drinker, who inherits
For a time fantastic spirits,
And the madness of the brain,
Shall resume his woes again,-
Shall unbend, and fall, and die,
Sooner than he soareth high!

CONVERSATIONS WITH AN AMBITIOUS STUDENT

IN ILL HEALTH, NO. II.

CONVERSATION THE SECOND.

WHEN I called on L the third day after the conversation I have attempted to record, though with the partial success that must always attend the endeavour to retail dialogue on paper, I found him stretched on his sofa, and evidently much weaker than when I had last seen him. He had suffered the whole night from violent spasms in the chest, and, though now free from pain, was labouring under the exhaustion which follows it. But nothing could wholly conquer in him a certain high-wrought, rather than cheerful, elasticity of mind, and in illness it was more remarkable than in health; for I know not how it was, but in illness his thoughts seemed to stand forth more prominent, to grow more transparent, than they were wont in the ordinary state of the body. He had also of late, until his present malady, fallen into an habitual silence, from which only at moments he could be aroused. Perhaps now, however, when all his contemplations were bounded to a goal apparently near at hand, and were tinged with the grave (though in him no gloomy) colours common to the thoughts of death-that secret yearning for sympathythat desire to communicate-inherent in man, became the stronger, for the short date that seemed allowed for their indulgence. Wishes long hoarded, reflections often and deeply revolved, finding themselves cut off from the distant objects which they had travailed to acquire, seemed wisely to lay down their burthen, and arrest their course upon a journey they felt they were never destined to complete. “I have been reading," said L- (after we had conversed for some minutes about himself)" that divine work on The Advancement of Learning.' What English writer (unless it be Milton in his prose works,) ever lifted us from this low earth like Bacon? How shrink before his lofty sentences all the meagre consolation and trite commonplace of lecturers and preachers,-it is, as he has beautifully expressed it, upon no "waxen wings" that he urges the mind through the great courses of heaven. He makes us feel less earthly in our desires, by making us imagine ourselves wiser,—the love of a divine knowledge inspires and exalts us. And so nobly has he forced even our ignorance to contribute towards enlarging the soul-towards increasing our longings after immortality-that he never leaves us, like other philosophers, with a sense of self-littleness and dissatisfaction. With the same hand that limits our progress on earth, he points to the illimitable glories of heaven. Mark how he has done this in the passage I will read to you. As he proceeds in his sublime vindication of knowledge, from the discredits and disgraces it hath received all from ignorance, but ignorance, severally acquired, appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines; sometimes in the severity and arrogance of politicians; sometimes in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.' Proceeding in this august and majestical defence, he states the legitimate limits of knowledge, as follows: first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as to forget our mortality; secondly, that we make application of our know

ledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, not distaste or repining; thirdly, that we do not presume, by the contemplation of Nature, to attain to the mysteries of God.' After speaking of the two first limits, he comes as follows to the last. And for the third point, it deserveth to be a little stood upon, and not to be lightly passed over; for if any man shall think, by view and inquiry into these sensible and material things, to attain that light, whereby he may reveal unto himself the nature or will of God, then indeed is he spoiled by vain philosophy; for the contemplation of God's creatures and works produceth (having regard to the works and creatures themselves) knowledge; but (having regard to God) no perfect knowledge, but wonder, which is broken knowledge. And therefore (note how wonderfully. this image is translated, and how beautifully applied,) it was most aptly said by one of Plato's school, that the sense of man carrieth a resemblance with the sun, which, as we see, openeth and revealeth all the celestial globe; but then again it obscureth the stars and celestial globe so doth the sense discover natural things, but it darkeneth and shutteth up divine." Tell me now, and speak frankly, not misled by the awe and antique splendour of the language alone,-tell me whether you do not feel, in the above passages, not humbled by your ignorance, but transported and raised by its very conviction; for, by leaving the mysteries of heaven, and heaven alone, unpenetrated by our knowledge, what do we, in reality, but direct the secret and reverent desires of our hearts to that immortal life, which shall put the crown upon the great ambition of knowledge, and reveal those mysteries which are shut out from us in this narrow being. Here then there is nothing to lower us in our imaginations,—nothing to chill us in the ardour of our best aspirings,-nothing to disgust us with the bounds of knowledge, or make us recoil upon ourselves with the sense of vanity, of emptiness, of desolation. It is this-this peculiar prerogative of the conviction of our inborn immortality, to take away from us that bitterness at the checks and arrests of knowledge, of which the wise of all ages have complained,-to give wings to our thoughts at the very moment they are stopped on their earthly course, to ennoble us from ourselves at the moment when self languishes and droops: it is this prerogative, I say, which has always seemed to me the greatest advantage which a thinking man, who believes in our immortality, has over one who does not. And though, fortunately for mankind, and for all real virtue, the time is rapidly passing away for attempting to measure the conduct of others by the proportion in ich their opinions resemble our own, yet it must be confessed, tha he who claims this prerogative has a wonderful advantage over him O rejects it-in the acquisition of noble and unworldly thought-in the stimulus to wisdom, and the exalting of the affections, theisions, and the desires! It seems to me as if not only the Form, but the SOUL or Man was made "to walk erect, and to look upon the star

A-(after some pause.)-Whether or not that it arises from this sentiment, comon (however secretly nursed) to the generality of men; this sentiment, that the sublimest sources of emotion and of wisdom remain as ye nknown, there is one very peculiar characteristic in all genius of the highest order; viz. even its loftiest attempts Jan.-VOL. XXXI. NO. CXXI.

C