THE MINSTREL; OR, THE PROGRESS

OF GENIUS.

BOOK II

T.

OF chance or change O let not man complain,
Else shall he never never cease to wail:

For from the imperial dome, to where the swain
Kears the lone cottage in the silent dale,
All feel th' assault of fortune's fickle gale;
Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doom'd;
Earthquakes have rais'd to heaven the humble
vale,

And gulfs the mountain's mighty mass entomb'd, And where th' Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloom'd.1

11.

But sure to foreign climes we need not range, Nor search the ancient records of our race, To learn the dire effects of time and change, Which in ourselves, alas! we daily trace.

1 See Plato's Timæus.

Yet at the darken'd eye, the wither'd face,
Or hoary hair, I never will repine:

But spare, O Time, whate'er of mental grace, Of candour, love, or sympathy divine, Whate'er of fancy's ray, or friendship's flame is mine!

III.

So I, obsequious to truth's dread command, Shall here without reluctance change my lay, And smite the gothic lyre with harsher hand, Now when I leave that flowery path for aye Of childhood, where I sported many a day, Warbling and sauntering carelessly along; Where every face was innocent and gay, Each vale romantic, tuneful every tongue, Sweet, wild, and artless all, as Edwin's infant song

IV.

"Perish the lore that deadens young desire," Is the soft tenor of my song no more: Edwin, though lov'd of Heaven, must not

aspire

To bliss which mortals never knew before. On trembling wings let youthful fancy soar, Nor always haunt the sunny realms of joy; But now and then the shades of life explore. Though many a sound and sight of woe annoy, And many a qualm of care his rising hopes destroy.

V.

Vigour from toil, from trouble patience grows The weakly blossom, warm in summer bower, Some tints of transient beauty may disclose. But soon it withers in the chilling hour. Mark yonder oaks! Superior to the power Of all the warring winds of heaven they rise, And from the stormy promontory tower, And toss their giant arms amid the skies, While each assailing blast increase of strength supplies.

VI.

And now the downy cheek and deepen'd voice
Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime;
And walks of wider circuit were his choice,
And vales more wild, and mountains more sub.

lime.

One evening, as he fram'd the careless rhyme, It was his chance to wander far abroad, And o'er a lonely eminence to climb, Which heretofore his foot had never trode; A vale appear'd below, a deep retir❜d abode.

VII.

Thither he hied, enamour'd of the scene.
For rocks on rocks, pil'd, as by magic spell,

Here scorch'd with lightning, there with ivy

green,

Fenc'd from the north and east this savage dell:

Southward a mountain rose with easy swell,
Whose long long groves eternal murmur made
And toward the western sun a streamlet fell,
Where, through the cliffs, the eye, remote, sur

vey'd

Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold

array'd.

VIII.

Along this narrow valley you might see

The wild deer sporting on the meadow ground, And, here and there, a solitary tree,

Or mossy stone, or rock with woodbine crown'd. Oft did the cliffs reverberate the sound Of parted fragments tumbling from on high; And from the summit of that craggy mound The perching eagle oft was heard to cry, Or on resounding wings to shoot athwart the sky.

IX.

One cultivated spot there was that spread Its flowery bosom to the noonday beam, Where many a rosebud rears its blushing head, And herbs for food with future plenty teem. Sooth'd by the lulling sound of grove and stream, Romantic visions swarm on Edwin's soul: He minded not the sun's last trembling gleam, Nor heard from far the twilight curfew tollWhen slowly on his ear these moving accents stole: