Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake? K FROM THE GERMAN. NOW'ST thou the land where the pale citrons grow, The golden fruits in darker foliage glow? Soft blows the wind that breathes from that blue sky! Still stands the myrtle and the laurel high! Know'st thou it well that land, beloved Friend? Thither with thee, O, thither would I wend! FANCY IN NUBIBUS. OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS. ! IT is pleasant, with a heart at ease, O' Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please, Or let the easily persuaded eyes Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold 'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight, [land! Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. THE TWO FOUNTS. STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER RECOVERY WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS FROM A SEVERE ATTACK OF PAIN. T WAS my last waking thought, how it could be endure; [he When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure. Methought he fronted me with peering look In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin Of Pleasure only will to all dispense, As on the driving cloud the shiny bow, As though the spirits of all lovely flowers, Ev'n so, Eliza ! on that face of thine, (The soul's translucence thro' her crystal shrine!) Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own, A beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing, Who then needs wonder, if (no outlet found Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam Till audibly at length I cried, as though In every look a barbed arrow send, THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN. PREFATORY NOTE. A prima facie tp require explanation or apology. It was PROSE composition, one not in metre at least, seems written in the year 1798, near Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, at which place (sunctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and recollections) the author had taken up his residence in order to enjoy the society and close neighbourhood of a dear and honoured friend, T. Poole, Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connexion with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were suggested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the contents for each of the three books or cantos, of which the work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook the first canto: I the second: and which ever had done first, was to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by; yet at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile moot the question which of the two things was the more impracticable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and simple to imitate the death of Abel? Methinks I see his grand and noble countenance as at the moment when having despatched my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened to him with my manuscript that look of humorous despondency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme-which broke up in a laugh and the Ancient Mariner was written instead. Years afterwards, however, the draft of the plan and proposed incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favour in the eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic work could not but have weighed with me, even though no parental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in realizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off the "Fortunate Isles" of the Muses: and then other and more momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer anchorage and a securer port. I have in vain tried to recover the lines from the palimpsest tablet of my memory and I can only offer the introductory stanza, which had been committed to writing for the purpose of procuring a friend's judgment on the metre, as a specimen. Encinctured with a twine of leaves, The moon was bright, the air was free, Has he no friend, no loving mother near? "A CANTO II. LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight." Their road was through a forest of fir-trees; at its entrance the trees stood at distances from each other, and the path was broad, and the moonlight and the moonlight shadows reposed upon |