Encircled by the wave, where to the breeze
The haggard Cormorant shrieks. And far beyond
Where the great ocean mingles with the sky
Are seen the cloud-like Islands* grey in mists.

Thy awful height Bolerium is not loved
By busy Man, and no one wanders there
Save He who follows Nature: He who seeks
Amidst thy craigs and storm-beat rocks to find
The marks of changes teaching the great laws
That raised the globe from Chaos. Or He whose soul
Is warm with fire poetic, He who feels

When Nature smiles in beauty, or sublime

Rises in majesty. He who can stand
Unaw'd upon thy summit clad in tempests

And view with raptured mind the roaring deep

Rise o'er thy foam-clad base, while the black cloud:
Bursts with the fire of Heaven.

He whose heart

Is warm with love and mercy, He whose eye
Drops the bright tear when anxious Fancy paints

the Land's End. The upper stratum is composed of granite, the lower with the surrounding rocks of Shistus,

* The Islands of Scilly.

Upon his mind the image of the Maid,

The blue-eyed Maid who died beneath thy surge.
Where yon dark cliff* o'ershadows the blue main
THEORA died amidst the stormy waves,

And on its feet the sea-dews wash'd her corpse
And the wild breath of storms shook her black locks.

Young was THEORA, bluer was her eye

Than the bright azure of the moonlight night,

Fair was her cheek as is the ocean cloud

Red with the morning ray.

Amidst the groves.

And greens and nodding rocks that overhang
The grey Killarney, passed her morning days
Bright with the beams of joy.

To Nature and to God she gave

To Solitude

her youth.

Hence were her passions tuned to harmony.

Her azure eye oft glistened with the tear

Of sensibility, and her soft cheek

Glow'd with the blush of rapture. Hence she loved To wander midst the green wood silvered o'er

By the bright moonbeam. Hence she loved the rocks

* A Rock near the Land's End, called the Irish Lady.

Crown'd with the nodding ivy: and the lake
Fair with the purple morning, and the sea
Expansive mingling with the arched sky.
Kindled by genius in her bosom glowed
The sacred fire of freedom.

Hence she scorn'd

The narrow laws of custom that controul

Her feeble sex.

Great in her energies

She roamed the fields of Nature, scann'd the laws That move the ruling atoms, changing still,

Still rising into life. Her eagle eye

Piercing the blue immensity of space

Held converse with the lucid sons of Heaven
The day-stars of creation, or pursued

The dusky planets rolling round the sun
And drinking in his radiance, light and life.
Such was the Maiden! such was she who fled
Her native shores.

Dark in the midnight cloud

When the wild blast upon its pinions bore
The dying shrieks of Erin's injured sons,*

*The Irish Lady was shipwrecked at the Land's End about the time of the massacre of the Irish Protestants by the Catholics, in the reign of Charles the First.

She 'scaped the murderer's arm.

The British bark

Bore her across the ocean. From the west

The whirlwind rose, the fire-fraught clouds of Heaven Were mingled with the wave. The shattered bark Sunk at thy feet Bolerium: and the white surge Closed on green Erin's daughter.

DOMICILIARY VERSES.

DECEMBER 1795.

Invitingly yon single-storied cot

Peeps o'er the frosted heath. The broad, brown door,
Scaled of its white-wash, is so low that he
Who steps in upright, steps in jeopardy

To smite his forehead. Two projecting walls
Fence in the roomy fire-place. Close by each
Is set an oaken bench, on whose hard sides,
His sore impatience many a lubber loon,
Keen for his meal, has notched. Here, when silently
Coating the green and lozenged panes, thick snow
Bedims the scanty daylight, nestles the snug
Family, delighted up the chimney's shaft,
Illumining the chasm, to trace the spark's
Ascent; or touch with timid finger-tip
The faggot's hissing ooze, and snift the fumes.