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Expostulation and Reply.

1.

'Why, William, on that old gray stone, Thus for the length of half a day, Why, William, sit you thus alone,

And dream your time away?

2.

3.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

4.

'Where are your books?—that light be- He, too, is no mean preacher :

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!

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The sun, above the mountain's head, A freshening lustre mellow

Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.

5.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless-
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

6.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

7.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect.

8.

Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

To a Butterfly.

1.

Stay near me-do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find in thee,
Historian of my infancy!

Float near me; do not yet depart !
Dead times revive in thee:

Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family!

2.

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I.
Together chased the Butterfly!

A very hunter did I rush

Upon the prey with leaps and springs I followed on from brake to bush ;

Through all the long green fields has spread, But she, God love her! feared to brush

His first sweet evening yellow.

The dust from off its wings.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1772-1834.

Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer, I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,

Into the mighty vision passing-there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my Heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded-and the silence came-
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?-
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element!

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,

Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous Mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,

To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise;

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,

Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Epitaph for Himself.

Stop, Christian passer-by! Stop, child of God!
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he-
Oh! lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C.!
That he who many a year, with toil of breath,
Found death in life, may here find life in death!

Mercy for praise-to be forgiven for fame,

He asked and hoped through Christ-do thou the same.

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The Source of the Ganges.-From The Curse of Kehama.'

None hath seen its secret fountain;
But on the top of Meru mountain
Which rises o'er the hills of earth,
In light and clouds, it hath its mortal birth.
Earth seems that pinnacle to rear
Sublime above this worldly sphere,
Its cradle, and its altar, and its throne;
And there the new-born River lies
Outspread beneath its native skies,
As if it there would love to dwell
Alone and unapproachable.
Soon flowing forward, and resigned
To the will of the Creating Mind,
It springs at once, with sudden leap,
Down from the immeasurable steep.

From rock to rock, with shivering force rebounding,
The mighty cataract rushes; Heaven around,
Like thunder, with the incessant roar resounding,
And Meru's summit shaking with the sound.
Wide spreads the snowy foam, the sparkling spray
Dances aloft; and ever there, at morning,
The earliest sunbeams haste to wing their way,
With rainbow wreaths the holy flood adorning;
And duly the adoring Moon at night
Sheds her white glory there,

And in the watery air
Suspends her halo-crowns of silver light.

A mountain valley in its blessed breast
Receives the stream, which there delights to lie,
Untroubled and at rest,

Beneath the untainted sky.

There in a lovely lake it seems to sleep,
And thence, through many a channel dark and deep,
Their secret way the holy Waters wind.

Opening Stanzas of' Thalaba.'

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:

In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

Who, at this untimely hour,
Wanders o'er the desert sands?
No station is in view,

Nor palm-grove islanded amid the waste.

The mother and her child,

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