loved;

A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, Himself like what he had been: on the sea And his cheek change tempestuously; his And on the shore he was a wanderer!

heart

There was a mass of many images Unknowing of its cause of agony.

Crowded like waves upon me; but he was But she in these fond feelings had no share: A part of all, — and in the last he lay Her sighs were not for him! to her he was Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Even as a brother, but no more: 'twas much, Couch'd among fallen columns, in the shade For brotherless she was, save in the name Of ruin'd walls that had survived the names Her infant friendship had bestow'd on him; Of those who rear'd them: by his sleeping side Herself the solitary scion left

Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Of a time-honour'd race. It was a name

Were fasten'd near a fountain; and a man, Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not, Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,

and why? While many of his tribe slumber'd around, Time taught him a deep answer when she And they were canopied by the blue sky

loved

So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, Another! even now she loved another;

That God alone was to be seen in heaven. And on the summit of that hill she stood

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Loo afar , if yet her lover's steed

The lady of his love was wed with one Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew. Who did not love her better: in her home,

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. A thousand leagues from his, her native home, There was an ancient mansion, and before She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, Its walls there was a steed caparison'd:

Daughters and sons of beauty, but, behold! Within an antique oratory stood

Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The boy of whom I spake; he was alone, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon

And an unquiet drooping of the eye, He sate him down; and seized a pen, and traced As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. Words which I could not guess of; then he lean's What could her grief be? she had all she His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as't were With a convulsion, then arose again,

And he who had so loved her was not there And, with his teeth and quivering hands, did To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,

tear

Or ill-repress'd affliction, her pure thoughts. What he had written; but he shed no tears. What could her grief be? she had loved And he did calm himself, and fix his brow Into a kind of quiet: as he paused

Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved; The lady of his love re-entered there;

Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd She was serene and smiling then,

Upon her mind, a spectre of the past. She knew she was by him beloved! she knew, A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. For quickly comes such knowledge, that his The wanderer was return'd. I saw him stand

heart

Before an altar, with a gentle bride: Was darken'd with her shadow; and she saw

Her face was fair, but was not that which That he was wretched, but she saw not all.

made He rose, and, with a cold and gentle grasp, The starlight of his boyhood! as he stood He took her hand; a moment o'er his face Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came A tablet of unutterable thoughts

The selfsame aspect, and the quivering shock Was traced,

and then it faded as it came: That in the antique oratory shook He dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow His bosom in its solitude; and then,

steps

As in that hour, a moment o'er his face Retired,

but not as bidding her adieu; The tablet of unutterable thoughts For they did part with mutual smiles: he pass'd Was traced, and then it faded as it came; From out the massy gate of that old hall, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke And mounting on his steed he went his way, The fitting vows,

but heard not his own And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more!

words; A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. And all things reel'd around him! he could see The boy was sprung to manhood : in the wilds Not that which was, nor that which should have Of fiery climes he made himself a home,

been; And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt But the old mansion, and the accustom'd hall, With strange and dusky aspects; he was not And the remember'd chambers, and the place,

him not,

and yet

The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the And the quick spirit of the universe

shade,

He held his dialogues; and they did teach All things pertaining to that place and hour, To him the magic of their mysteries : And her who was his destiny came back, To him the book of night was open'd wide, And thrust themselves between him and the light: And voices from the deep abyss reveal'd What business had they there at such a time? A marvel and a secret, - Be it so.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. My dream was past: it had no further change.
The lady of his love, -oh! she was changed It was of a strange order, that the doom
As by the sickness of the soul: her mind Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, Almost like a reality: the one
They had not their own lustre, but the look o To end in madness, both in misery!
Which is not of the earth: she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others’ sight — familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy! but the wise

Farewell.
Have a far deeper madness; and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift:

Farewell! if ever fondest prayer
What is it but the telescope of truth?

For others' weal avail'd on high, Which strips the distance of its phantasies,

Mine will not all be lost in air And brings life near in utter nakedness,

But waft thy name beyond the sky. Making the cold reality too real!

'Twere vain to speak, to weep, to sigh: A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.

Oh! more than tears of blood can tell, The wanderer was alone as heretofore;

When wrung from guilt's expiring eye, The beings which surrounded him were gone,

Are in that word - Farewell! Farewell! Or were at war with him! he was a mark For blight and desolation, compass'd round With hatred and contention : pain was mix'd These lips are mute, these eyes are dry; In all which was served up to him, until,

But in my breast, and in my brain, Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,

Awake the pangs that pass not by, He fed on poisons, and they had no power,

The thought that ne'er shall sleep again. But were a kind of nutriment: he lived

My soul nor deigns, nor dares complain, Through that which had been death to many men, Though grief and passion there rebel; And made him friends of mountains! with the I only know we loved in vain,

stars

I only feel Farewell! Farewell!

Southey.

Robert Southey ward am 12. August 1774 in Bristol geboren, studirte zu Oxford Theologie und fasste darauf den Plan mit Coleridge und Lorell nach Amerika zu gehn und dort eine Pantisowacy zu gründen. Es wurde jedoch Nichts daraus und Southey machte nun eine Reise nach Lissabon, von der er nach sechs Monaten zurückkehrte, sich vermählte und fortan literarischen Beschäftigungen lebte. Während der Jahre 1800 und 1801 besuchte er nochmals Spanien und Portugal und wurde darauf bei seiner Zurückkunft Secretair des damaligen Kanzlers der Schatz

kammer von Irland, Carry, legte aber 1803 dieses Amt nieder und zog sich nach Keswick in Cumberland zurück. 1813 erhielt er die Bestallung eines Hofpoeten, ohne die Verpflichtung indessen den Geburtstag des Königs alljährlich mit einer Ode zu feiern und 1834 eine Pension von 300 Pfund Sterling. Er starb 1843.

Southey hat sehr viele poetische wie prosaische Schriften hinterlassen. Seine dichterischen Leistungen umschliessen mehrere epische Poesieen von grösserem Umfange, wie z. B. Thalaba, Madae, the curse of Kehama, Roderick; ein Trauerspiel Wat Tyler, viele lyrische Gedichte u. s. W. Eine treffliche Auswahl aus denselben für die Jugend erschien London 1831 in 12. Gesammelt kamen seine poetischen Werke London 1820, 14 Bde in 8. heraus. Die Eigenschaften, welche ihn als Dichter auszeichnen, sind Reichthum der Phantasie, Geist, Lebendigkeit, Witz und Gefühl, aber es fehlt ihm an Ruhe und Besonnenheit; er lässt sich zu sehr vom Augenblicke hinreissen und giebt zu viel auf den ersten Eindruck. Er glänzt zu oft auf Kosten der Wahrheit und bleibend ist daher selten eine seiner Gestalten. Zu häufig bringt er bloss rhetorische Schönheit statt poetischer und glaubt zu genügen, wenn er die nackten Seiten seiner Stoffe durch schimmernden Flitter verhüllt. Uebrigens ist er vollkommener Herr der Sprache, aber mehr ihr launenhafter Tyrann als ihr wohlwollender Gebieter.

Noch weit bedeutender als seine Dichtungen, sind seine Biographieen, namentlich seine Lebensbeschreibung Nelson's; hier ist er auch in den kleinsten Theilen ein bewährter Meister und ein edles Vorbild.

Sunrise.

I marvel not, o Sun! that unto thee
In adoration man should bow the knee,

And pour his prayers of mingled awe and love;
For like a God thou art, and on thy way
Of glory sheddest with benignant ray,

Beauty, and life, and joyance from above.
No longer let these mists thy radiance

shroud,
These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless

day; But shed thy splendour through the opening

cloud And cheer the earth once more. The languid

flowers Lie odourless, bent down with heavy rain, Earth asks thy presence,

saturate with

showers! O lord of light! put forth thy beams again,

For damp and cheerless are the gloomy hours.

To school the little exile goes,

Torn from his mother's arms, What then shall soothe his earliest woes,

When novelty hath lost its charms? Condemn'd to suffer through the day

Restraints which no rewards repay, And cares where love has no concern: Hope lengthens as she counts the hours

Before his wish'd return.
From hard controul and tyrant rules,
The unfeeling discipline of schools,

In thought he loves to roam,
And tears will struggle in his eye
While he remembers with a sigh

The comforts of his home.

Youth comes; the toils and cares of life

Torment the restless mind;
Where shall the tired and harass'd heart

Its consolation find?
Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells,

Life's summer prime of joy?
Ah no! for hopes too long delay'd,
And feelings blasted or betray'd,

The fabled bliss destroy;
And Youth remembers with a sigh

The careless days of Infancy.

Remembrance.

Man hath a weary pilgrimage As through the world he wends, On every stage from youth to age

Still discontent attends; With heaviness he casts his eye

Upon the road before, And still remembers with a sigh

The days that are no more.

Maturer Manhood now arrives,

And other thoughts come on,
But with the baseless hopes of Youth

Its generous warmth is gone:
Cold calculating cares succeed,
The timid thought, the wary deed,

The dull realities of truth;

Back on the past he turns his eye;

Till she sunk with very weakness. Her old Remembering with an envious sigh

mother The happy dreams of Youth.

Omitted no kind office, working for her,

Albeit her hardest labour barely earn'd
So reaches he the latter stage

Enough to keep life struggling, and prolong Of this our mortal pilgrimage,

The pains of grief and sickness. Thus she lay With feeble step and slow;

On the sick bed of poverty, worn out New ills that latter stage await,

With her long suffering and those painful thoughts And old Experience learns too late

Which at her heart were rankling, and so weak, That all is vanity below.

That she could make no effort to express
Life's vain delusions are gone by,

Affection for her infant; and the child,
Its idle hopes are o'er,

Whose lisping love perhaps had solaced her, Yet Age remembers with a sigh

Shunn'd her as one indifferent. But she too
The days that are no more.

Had grown indifferent to all things of earth;
Finding her only comfort in the thought
Of that cold bed wherein the wretched rest.
There had she now, in that last home been laid,
And all was over now,

sickness and grief, Her shame, her suffering, and her penitence:

Their work was done. The school-boys as they Hannah.

sport

In the church-yard, for awhile might turn away Passing across a green and lonely lane From the fresh grave till grass should cover it; A funeral met our view. It was not here Nature would do that office soon; and none A sight of every day, as in the streets

Who trod upon the senseless turf would think Of some great city, and we stopt and ask'd Of what a world of woes lay buried there! Whom they were bearing to the grave. A girl, They answer'd, of the village, who had pined Through the long course of eighteen painful

months
With such slow wasting, that the hour of death
Came welcome to her. We pursued our way

The Ebb tide.
To the house of mirth, and with that idle talk
Which passes o'er the mind and is forgot,

Slowly thy flowing tide
We wore away the time. But it was eve Came in, old Avon! scarcely did mine eyes,
When homewardly I went, and in the air As watchfully I roam'd thy green-wood side,
Was that cool freshness, that discolouring shade Behold the gentle rise.
Which makes the eye turn inward: hearing then
Over the vale the heavy toll of death

With many a stroke and strong
Sound slow, it made me think upon the dead; The labouring boatmen upward plied their oars,
I question'd more, and learnt her mournful tale. And yet the eye beheld them labouring long
She bore unhusbanded a mother's pains;

Between thy winding shores.
And he who should have cherish'd her, far off
Sail'd on the seas. Left thus a wretched one,

Now down thine ebbing tide
Scorn made a mock of her, and evil tongues The unlabour'd boat falls rapidly along;
Were busy with her name. She had to bear The solitary helmsman sits to guide,
The sharper sorrow of neglect from him

And sings an idle song.
Whom she had loved so dearly. Once he wrote,
But only once that drop of comfort came

Now o'er the rocks that lay
To mingle with her cup of wretchedness; So silent late the shallow current roars;
And when his parents had some tidings from bim, Fast flow thy waters on their sea-ward way,
There was no mention of poor Hannah there,

Through wider-spreading shores.
Or 'twas the cold inquiry, more unkind
Than silence. So she pined and pined away,

Avon! I gaze and know
And for herself and baby toil'd and toil'd; The lesson emblem'd in thy varying way;
Nor did she, even on her death-bed, rest It speaks of buman joys that rise so slow,
From labour, knitting there with lifted arms,

So rapidly decay.

Kingdoms which long have stood, What a cold sickness made her blood run back And slow to strength and power attain'd at last, When first she heard the tidings of the fight: Thus from the summit of high fortune's flood Man does not know with what a dreadful hope Ebb to their ruin fast.

She listened to the names of those who died:

Man does not know, or, knowing, will not
Thus like thy flow appears

heed,
Time's tardy course to manhood's envied stage; With what an agony of tenderness
Alas! how hurryingly the ebbing years She gazed upon her children, and beheld
Then hasten to old age!

His image who was gone. O God! be Thou,
Who art the widow's friend, her comforter!

The Victory.

The Battle of Blenheim.

Hark,

It was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done,
And be before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something lurge and round,
Which he beside the rivulet

In playing there had found;
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

how the church bells' thundering har

mony
Stuns the glad ear! tidings of joy have come,
Good tidings of great joy! two gallant ships
Met on the element; they met, they fought
A desperate fight! good tidings of great joy!
Old England triumph'd ! yet another day
Of glory for the ruler of the waves !
For those who fell, 'twas in their country's cause,
They have their passing paragraphs of praise,
And are forgotten!

There was one who died
In that day's glory, whose obscurer name
No proud historian's page will chronicle.
Peace to his honest soul! I read his name,
'Twas in the list of slaughter, and blest God
The sound was not familiar to mine ear.
But it was told me, after, that this man
Was one whom lawful violence had forced
From his own home, and wife, and little ones,
Who by his labour lived; that he was one
Whose uncorrupted heart could keenly feel
A husband's love, a father's anxiousness;
That, from the wages of his toil, he fed
The distant dear ones, and would talk of them
At midnight, when he trod the silent deck
With him he valued; talk of them, of joys
Which he had known, oh God! and of the

hour
When they should meet again, till his full heart,
His manly heart, at last would overflow
Even like a child's with very tenderness.
Peace to his honest spirit! suddenly

and merciful the ball of death,
For it came suddenly and shatter'd him,
And left no moment's agonizing thought
On those he loved so well.

He, ocean deep,
Now lies at rest. Be Thou her comforter
Who art the widow's friend! Man does not know

It came,

"It was the English,” Kaspar cried,

“Who put the French to rout;
"But what they kill'd each other for,