SONNETS.

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THE SETTING SUN.

____

THIS scene, how beauteous to a musing mind,

That now swift slides from my enchanted view;

The Sun sweet setting yon far hills behind,

In other worlds his visits to renew:

What spangled glories all around him shine;

What nameless colours, cloudless and serene,

(A heav’nly prospect, brightest in decline,)

Attend his exit from this lovely scene.

So sets the Christian’s sun, in glories clear;

So shines his soul at his departure here: 10

No clouding doubts, nor misty fears arise,

To dim Hope’s golden rays of being forgiven;

His Sun, sweet setting in the clearest skies,

In Faith’s assurance wings the soul to heaven.

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THE PRIMROSE.

____

WELCOME, pale Primrose! starting up between

Dead matted leaves of ash and oak, that strew

The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through,

Mid creeping moss and ivy’s darker green;

How much thy presence beautifies the ground:

How sweet thy modest, unaffected pride

Glows on the sunny bank, and wood’s warm side.

And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found,

The school-boy roams enchantedly along,

Plucking the fairest with a rude delight: 10

While the meek shepherd stops his simple song,

To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight;

O’erjoy’d to see the flowers that truly bring

The welcome news of sweet returning Spring.

₁₉₄

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CHRISTIAN FAITH.

____

WHAT antidote or charm on earth is found,

To alleviate or soften fate’s decree?

To fearless enter on that dark profound,

Where life emerges in eternity?

Wisdom, a rushlight vainly boasting power

To cheer the terrors Sin’s first visit gave,

Denies existence at that dreadful hour,

And shrinks in horror from a gaping grave.

O Christianity, thou charm divine!

That firmness, faith, and last resource is thine: 10

With thee the Christian joys to lose his breath,

Nor dreads to find his mortal strength decay;

But, dear in friendship, shakes the hand of Death,

And hugs the pain that gnaws his life away.

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THE MOON.

____

HOW sweet the Moon extends her cheering ray

To damp the terrors of the darksome night,

Guiding the lonely traveller on his way,

Pointing the path that leads his journey right.

Hail! welcome! blessing! to thy silver light,

That charms dull night, and makes its horrors gay.

So shines the Gospel to the Christian’s soul;

So, by its light and inspiration given,

He (spite of sin and Satan’s black control)

Through all obstructions steers his course to heaven. 10

So did the Saviour his design pursue,

That we, unworthy sinners, might be bless’d;

So suffer’d death, its terrors to subdue,

And made the grave a wish’d-for place of rest.

₁₉₆

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THE GIPSY’S EVENING BLAZE.

____

TO me how wildly pleasing is that scene

Which doth present, in evening’s dusky hour,

A group of Gipsies, centred on the green,

In some warm nook where Boreas has no pow’r;

Where sudden starts the quivering blaze behind

Short, shrubby bushes, nibbled by the sheep,

That mostly on these short sward pastures keep;

Now lost, now seen, now bending with the wind:

And now the swarthy Sybil kneels reclin’d;

With proggling stick she still renews the blaze, 10

Forcing bright sparks to twinkle from the flaze.

When this I view, the all-attentive mind

Will oft exclaim (so strong the scene pervades),

“Grant me this life, thou Spirit of the Shades!”

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A SCENE.

____

THE Landscape’s stretching view, that opens wide,

With dribbling brooks, and river’s wider floods,

And hills, and vales, and darksome lowering woods,

With green of varied hues, and grasses pied;

The low brown cottage in the shelter’d nook;

The steeple, peeping just above the trees

Whose dangling leaves keep rustling in the breeze;

And thoughtful shepherd bending o’er his hook;

And maidens stripp’d, haymaking too, appear;

And Hodge a whistling at his fallow plough; 10

And herdsman hallooing to intruding cow:

All these, with hundreds more, far off and near,

Approach my sight; and please to such excess,

That language fails the pleasure to express.

₁₉₈

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TO THE GLOW-WORM.

____

TASTEFUL Illumination of the night,

Bright scatter’d, twinkling star of spangled earth!

Hail to the nameless colour’d dark-and-light,

The witching nurse of thy illumin’d birth.

In thy still hour how dearly I delight

To rest my weary bones, from labour free;

In lone spots, out of hearing, out of sight,

To sigh day’s smother’d pains; and pause on thee,

Bedecking dangling brier and ivied tree,

Or diamonds tipping on the grassy spear; 10

Thy pale-fac’d glimmering light I love to see,

Gilding and glistering in the dew-drop near:

O still-hour’s mate! my easing heart sobs free,

While tiny bents low bend with many an added tear.

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THE ANT.

____

THOU little Insect, infinitely small

What curious texture marks thy minute frame!

How seeming large thy foresight, and withal,

Thy labouring talents not unworthy fame,

To raise such monstrous hills along the plain,

Larger than mountains, when compar’d with thee:

To drag the crumb dropp’d by the village swain,

Huge size to thine, is strange, indeed, to me.

But that great Instinct which foretels the cold,

And bids to guard ’gainst winter’s wasteful power, 10

Endues this mite with cheerfulness to hold

Its toiling labours through the sultry hour:

So that same soothing power, in misery,

Cheers the poor Pilgrim to Eternity.

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TO HOPE.

____

AH, smiling cherub! cheating Hope, adieu!

No more I’ll listen to your pleasing themes;

No more your flattering scenes with joy renew,

For ah, I’ve found them all delusive dreams:

Yes, mere delusions all; therefore, adieu!

No more shall you this aching heart beguile;

No more your fleeting joys will I pursue,

That mock’d my sorrows when they seem’d to smile,

And flatter’d tales that never will be true: 10

Tales, only told to aggravate distress

And make me at my fate the more repine,

By whispering joys I never can possess,

And painting scenes that never can be mine.

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A WINTER SCENE.

____

HAIL, Scenes of desolation and despair,

Keen Winter’s overbearing sport and scorn!

Torn by his rage, in ruins as you are,

To me more pleasing than a Summer’s morn

Your shatter’d state appears;—despoil’d and bare,

Stripp’d of your clothing, naked and forlorn:—

Yes, Winter’s havock! wretched as you shine,

Dismal to others as your fate may seem,

Your fate is pleasing to this heart of mine,

Your wildest horrors I the most esteem. 10

The ice-bound floods that still with rigour freeze,

The snow-cloth’d valley, and the naked tree,

These sympathising scenes my heart can please,

Distress is their’s—and they resemble me.

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EVENING.

____

NOW glaring daylight’s usher’d to a close;

And nursing Eve her soothing care renews,

To welcome weary labour to repose,

And cherish nature with reviving dews.

Hail, cooling sweets! that breathe so sweetly here;

Hail, lovely Eve! whose hours so lovely prove;

Thy silent calm! to solitude so dear;

And oh, this darkness! dearer still to love.

Now the fond lover seeks thy silent plains,

And with his charmer in fond dalliance strays, 10

Vowing his love, and telling jealous pains

Which doubtful fancies in their absence raise.

Ah! though such pleasures centre not in me,

I love to wander and converse with thee.

₂₀₃

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TO THE WINDS.

____

HAIL, gentle Winds! I love your murmuring sound;

The willows charm me, wavering to and fro;

And oft I stretch me on the daisied ground,

To see you crimp the wrinkled flood below:

Delighted more as brisker gusts succeed,

And give the landscape round a sweeter grace,

Sweeping in shaded waves the ripening mead,

Puffing their rifled fragrance in my face.

Painters of Nature! ye are doubly dear; 10

Her children dearly love your whispering charms:

Ah, ye have murmur’d sweet to many an ear

That now lies dormant in Death’s icy arms;

And at this moment many a weed ye wave,

That hides the Bard in his forgotten grave.

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NATIVE SCENES.

____

O NATIVE Scenes, for ever, ever dear!

So blest, so happy as I here have been,

So charm’d with nature in each varied scene,

To leave you all is cutting and severe.

Ye hawthorn bushes that from winds would screen,

Where oft I’ve shelter’d from a threaten’d shower,

In youth’s past bliss, in childhood’s happy hour,

Ye woods I’ve wandered, seeking out the nest;

Ye meadows gay that rear’d me many a flower,

Where, pulling cowslips, I’ve been doubly blest, 10

Humming gay fancies as I pluck’d the prize:

Oh, fate unkind! beloved Scenes, adieu!

Your vanish’d pleasures crowd my swimming eyes,

And make the wounded heart to bleed anew.

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TO A FAVOURITE TREE.

____

OLD, favourite Tree! art thou too fled the scene?

Could not thy ’clining age the axe delay,

And let thee stretch thy shadows o’er the green,

And let thee die in picturesque decay?

What hadst thou done to meet a tyrant’s frown?

Small value was the ground on which thou stood;

But gain’s rude rage it was that cut thee down,

And dragg’d thee captive from thy native wood.

So gay in summer as thy boughs were dress’d,

So soft, so cool, as then thy leaves did wave; 10

I knew thee then, and knowing am distress’d:

And like as Friendship leaning o’er the grave,

Loving you all, ye trees, ye bushes, dear,

I wander where ye stood, and shed my bosom-tear.

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APPROACH OF SPRING.

____

SWEET are the omens of approaching Spring,

When gay the elder sprouts her winged leaves;

When tootling robins carol-welcomes sing,

And sparrows chelp glad tidings from the eaves.

What lovely prospects wait each wakening hour,

When each new day some novelty displays;

How sweet the sun-beam melts the crocus flower,

Whose borrow’d pride shines dizen’d in his rays:

Sweet, new-laid hedges flush their tender greens;

Sweet peep the arum-leaves their shelter screens; 10

Ah! sweet is all which I’m denied to share:

Want’s painful hindrance sticks me to her stall;—

But still Hope’s smiles unpoint the thorns of Care,

Since Heaven’s eternal Spring is free for all.

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SUMMER.

____

THE oak’s slow-opening leaf, of deepening hue,

Bespeaks the power of Summer once again;

While many a flower unfolds its charms to view,

To glad the entrance of his sultry reign.

Where peep the gaping, speckled cuckoo-flowers,

Sweet is each rural scene she brings to pass;

Prizes to rambling school-boys’ vacant hours,

Tracking wild searches through the meadow grass:

The meadow-sweet taunts high its showy wreath,

And sweet the quaking grasses hide beneath. 10

Ah, ’barr’d from all that sweetens life below,

Another Summer still my eyes can see

Freed from the scorn and pilgrimage of woe,

To share the Seasons of Eternity.

₂₀₈

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THE RIVER GWASH.

____

WHERE winding Gwash whirls round its wildest scene,

On this romantic bend I sit me down;

On that side view the meadow’s smoothing green,

Edg’d with the peeping hamlet’s checquering brown;

Here the steep bank, as dropping headlong down;

While glides the stream a silver streak between,

As glide the shaded clouds along the sky,

Bright’ning and deep’ning, losing as they’re seen,

In light and shade: to where old willows lean,

Thus their broad shadow runs the river by, 10

With tree and bush replete, a wilder’d scene,

And moss and ivy speckling on my eye.

Oh, thus while musing wild, I’m doubly blest,

My woes unheeding, and my heart at rest.

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TO RELIGION.

____

THOU sacred light, that right from wrong discerns;

Thou safeguard of the soul, thou heaven on earth;

Thou undervaluer of the world’s concerns,

Thou disregarder of its joys and mirth;

Thou only home the houseless wanderers have;

Thou prop by which the pilgrim’s woes are borne;

Thou solace of the lonely hermit’s cave,

That beds him down to rest on fate’s sharp thorn;

Thou only hope to sorrow’s bosom given;

Thou voice of mercy when the weary call; 10

Thou faith extending to thy home in heaven;

Thou peace, thou rest, thou comfort, all in all:

O sovereign good! on thee all hopes depend,

Till thy grand source unfolds its realizing end.

₂₁₀

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ANXIETY.

____

ONE, o’er heaths wandering in a pitch dark night,

Making to sounds that hope some village near;

Hermit, retreating to a chinky light,

Long lost in winding cavern dark and drear;

A slave, long banish’d from his country dear,

By freedom left to seek his native plains;

A soldier, absent many a long, long year,

In sight of home ere he that comfort gains;

A thirsty labouring wight, that wistful strains

O’er the steep hanging bank to reach the stream; 10

A hope, delay so lingeringly detains,

We still on point of its disclosure seem:

These pictures weakly ’semble to the eye

A faint existence of Anxiety.

₂₁₁

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EXPECTATION.

____

WHEN Expectation in the bosom heaves,

What longing, anxious views disturb the mind;

What fears, what hopes, distrust and then believe

That something which the heart expects to find!

How the poor prisoner, ere he’s doom’d to die,

Within his gloomy cell of dreary woe,

How does he watch, with Expectation’s eye,

The lingering, long suspense of fate to know.

Alas, poor soul! though different bonds confine;

The walls his prison is, the world is mine: 10

So do I turn my weary eyes above,

So do I look and sigh for peace to come,

So do I long the grave’s dark end to prove,

And anxious wait my long, long journey home.

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TO MY OATEN REED.

____

THOU Warble wild, of rough, rude melody!

How oft I’ve woo’d thee, often thrown thee by;

In many a doubtful rapture touching thee,

Waking thy rural notes in many a sigh:

Fearing the wise, the wealthy, proud and high,

Would scorn as vain thy lowly extasy;

Deeming presumptuous thy uncultur’d themes.

Thus vainly courting Taste’s unblemish’d eye,

To list a simple Labourer’s artless dreams,

Haply I wander into wide extremes. 10

But O thou sweet, wild-winding rhapsody,

Thou jingling charm that dost my heart control;

I take thee up to smother many a sigh,

And lull the throbbings of a woe-worn soul.

₂₁₃

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GLOSSARY.

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GLOSSARY.

____

BANGS, v. n. moves with violence.

Battled, part. bespattered with mud.

Battered, v. n. fought his way.

Beetling, part. striking with a heavy wooden mallet, called a beetle.

Bevering, adj. drinking, (from Bevere, Ital. to drink: whence Beverage, and the Beaver of a helmet.)

Bird-boy, sub. a boy who frightens birds from the corn.

Booing and mooing, part. expressing the noise of cattle when they bellow.

Bum, v. n. to rush with a murmuring sound. (Dict. Boom.)

Chaps, sub. young fellows.

Chelp, v. a. to chirp, or make a chattering noise like a bird.

Clammed, part. exhausted for want of food.

’Clining, for declining.

Conceit, v. n. to think extravagantly.

Crampt, adj. limited, confined.

Crumbles, sub. crumbs.

Crumping, adj. crushing, with a low, abrupt noise.

Culling, part. for culled, chosen.

Cumbergrounds, sub. a name for useless trees. “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground.”

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Dinged on the nose,—taunted, reproved.

Dinner-tin, a tin vessel containing his dinner.

Dithering, part. shaking with cold.—(Ash’s Dict. Didder.)

Drowking, part. drooping, faint with drouth.

Eggs on, v. n. urges forward.

’Fex, a petty oath.

Flaze, sub. a smoky flame,—by contraction probably of flash and haze.

Flops, v. a. outspreads, as it were broad wings.

Fluskered, v. n. flew with sudden and disordered motion.

Folds, sub. inclosures made with hurdles, wherein sheep are penned at night.

Gad, sub. the gad-fly.

Gie, for give.

’Gin, for begin.

Glowered, v. n. stared. (So BURNS.)

Goss, sub. gorse, furze.

Hing, v. a. to hang. (So CHAUCER.)

Hob, sub. the ledge or shelf of a fire-grate.

Kerchup,—the noise of partridges calling to each other.

’Lotted, for allotted.

Lump away, v. n. to beat with a heavy sound.

Lunge, v. n. to lurch, to hide, to skulk.

Matey, sub. for mate.

Matty, matted,—twisted, interwoven.

Mauls, v. a. rudely pushes aside.

’Minds, for reminds.

Mounting, part. equipping.

Mulls, sub. the name by which milk-maids call their cows.

Mun, v. n. must.

₂₁₈ Nappy, sub. ale.

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Nauntles, v. n. meekly elevates.

’Neath, for beneath.

’Nighted, for benighted.

Palms, sub. the English palm, or sallow.

Pinks, v. a. imbues with a pink colour.

Pint, v. a. to drink a pint of ale.

’Plaining, for complaining.

’Prehensions, for apprehensions.

Proggling, adj. meddling, poking.

Quawking, part. the noise of crows, croaking, cawing.

Ragg’d muffins, sub. raggamuffins.

Ridings, sub. the broad green-sward roads which intersect a wood.

Roll, sub. a large, heavy wooden roller for breaking clods.

Rocking, part, walking with alternate sideway motion.

Scrigg’d, v. a. forced, or squeezed out.

Searches, sub. researches.

’Semble, for resemble.

Shool, v. a. to carry for a pretence.

’Sides, for besides.

Siled, v. n. fainted, sunk gradually.

Slive, v. n. to creep about, (Ash’s Dict.) to do any thing slyly.

Slove, præt. of slive,—whence sloven.

Sloomy, adj. dully,—perhaps a contraction of slow and gloomy.

Snifting and snufting, part. snuffing.

Soodles, v. n. goes unwillingly.

Spinney, sub. a natural wood,—a hedge-row thicket,—a young coppice. (Ash’s Dict.)

Stubs, sub. stubble.

Sprouts, v. a. puts forth.

Stall, sub. a shed, a temporary hut.

₂₁₉ Standard, adj. trees or plants that grow unsupported.

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Streaked, part. stretched. So used by CHAPMAN.

Swaliest, adj. coolest. (Bailey’s Dict.)

Swish, sub. a dash, as of water falling.

Taunts, v. a. tosses, as if scornfully.

T’int, a contraction of “it is not.”

Tinty, adj. tinted.

Tools, sub. farming utensils.

Tootling, adj. the noise made with the tongue in playing on the flute.

Unmatch’d, adj. used here for unequally matched.

’Veigled, for inveigled.

’Venturer, for adventurer.

Waterpudge, sub. or podge, a puddle. (Johnson’s Dict.)

Wealed, præt. of weal, to raise marks on the skin with a whip.

Whanged, præt, threw down with violence.

Witchen, sub. quick-beam, or quicken-tree. (See Ash’s Dict.) The quick-beam, wild sorb, or witchen,

is a species of wild ash. (Evelyn’s Sylva.)

THE END.

_________________________

T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street,

Cheapside, London.

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