SONNETS WRITTEN AMONG THE MOUNTAIN SCENERY OF CUMBERLAND. Who that has ever visited this region of our British Alps, and of our British Tempè too, can fail to bear away an ineffaceable impression of its sublimity and beauty? Yet must that impression be always imperfect. It cannot be too frequently renewed. The writer has seen it in its vernal promise, beneath the summer glow, amidst its autumnal sear, the sear of a ruddy though expiring sacrifice, -the mountains in every disposition of light, the valleys in every change of hue, —and knows not what season or hour, what reflection or aspect, are to be preferred. These lines would not have appeared, but that they had obtained the very high honour of Professor Wilson's approbation-long a sojourner among these scenes, -their eloquent rhopsodist and most musical bard-Blackwood's Mag., Oct. 1837. 1. YE Mountain Surges! Mimic Mountain Main! How doth one pulse your every sweep control! Ye stand, like adamants, in columned piles Protecting Beauty shrined in these soft lakes and isles! Ye are not one alike! In fork and fell,— To spurn most distant each retiring dell! And moulded to detail this Spectacle! And were this all, how noble 't were to gaze, To call each height by its own rank and shape, While with a rising joyance of amaze We saw, as sudden pass and gorge should gape, A scale to try where still in richer blaze Earth shoots sublime to Heaven's blue waves her loftiest Cape! III. But ye are more! The Monuments of power! The hills remove,-how moveless is His Throne ! Your Strength is His! He stamps your Symbol-art, And writes it on your Tablets of unmouldering stone! IV. live once more,— My soul swells through you! On you Through all their grand and ever-varying range The great Jehovah's fixed and loved abode. Tabor rejoice!-O Calvary, what throes Are Thine! Fair Olivet, from Thee ascends our God! Ye to me always were a life intense! My youth disported on your cliffs at ease, My cheek, unfurrowed then! flushed in your breeze ;While infancy reposed 'neath your defence, Still would mine eye trace out the uplands whence Ye left our nether earth, and then combined The curtains of unknown magnificence ! How my mind teemed with your sublimity ! -Its transcendental thoughts were then its life,— And as it wrought itself a passage free, Present and past, like flow and ebb in strife, Chafed up its yearnings to their last degree! And my heart strangely grew with feelings new and rife! VI. Ye are not strewn in vain! Ye have a voice, Articulate, sonorous, often sweet, When silvery runnels tinkle, mix, and greet :- And the reverberating Thunder wakes, And the deep-groaning belted Forest shakes,- Who tunes your mighty music! Low incline Plains, Streams, and Woods, with you shall vie in zeal,— VII. Since eye first rested on your wondrous heaps, What looks of youth and age, of grief and joy, And yet the fondest in its burial sleeps, What awful changes roll on at your base! Firm and trustworthy, 't is the wind and cloud : And Hope is the poor offspring of a dream, The husbandman the empty air has ploughed,The pilgrim faints o'er the false mirage-stream,-— And there is only left, the bier, the grave, the shroud ! VIII. Blest trance of calm! A sabbath evening stays, O sweet among these grandeurs 't is to find SONNETS COMPOSED AT THE SEA-SIDE AND IN VIEW OF FLAMBOROUGH HEAD. THE SEA. WHATE ER man images of profound and great! In tide and main and ocean, Thou roll'st round! In gentlest ripple,-heave by cape, through strait ! Wafting each gale which life and health hath borne ! M M |