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School, where crown'd monarchs might have learn'd of him
Who sway'd it, how to reign! Cloud-cradled stream,
That in his soul are eloquent as a dream!
Path-pencill'd hill, now clad in broomy light!
Where oft in youth he waked the violets cold,
When you, love-listening stars, confess'd the might
Of earthly beauty, and o'er Mary Gould
Redden'd with passion, while his tale he told !
Rose, yet unblown! thou future woodbine flower!
Majestic foxglove, still to summer true!

Blush of the hawthorn! glad May's sunny shower!
Scenes long beloved, and objects dear, adieu !
From you, from earth, grey Enoch turns his view;
He longs to pass away, and soon will pass.
But not with him will toil and sorrow go.
Men drop, like leaves they wither, and, alas,
Are seen no more; but human toil and woe
Are lasting as the hills, or ocean's flow,
Older than Death, and but with Death shall die!
"Ye sister trees, with branches old and dry!
Tower'd ye not huge as now, when Enoch Wray,
A happy lad, pursued the butterfly

O'er broomy banks, above the torrent's spray,
Whence still ye cast the shadow of your sway?
Lo,-grey-hair'd Oaks, that sternly execrate
The poor man's foes, albeit in murmurs low;
Or, with a stormy voice, like that of fate,
Smiting your wrinkled hands, in wrath and woe,
Say to th' avenging lightnings, 'Why so slow?'
Lo, that glad boy is now a man of pain!
Once more, he totters through the vernal fields;
Once more he hears the corncrake on the plain;
The vale invites him, where the goldring builds,
And the wild bank that primrose fragrance yields;
He cannot die, without a sad adieu

To one sweet scene that to his heart is dear;
Yet-would he dream his fears may not be true,
And miss a draught of bitterest sorrow here--
His feet will shun the mill-dam, and the wier
O'er which the stream its idle brawling sends.

"But, lo, tow'rds Albert's mill the Patriarch wends!
(His own hands rear'd the pile: the very wheels
Were made by him; and where the archway bends,
His name, in letters of hard stone, appeals

To time and memory.) With mute step, he steals
Along the vale, but does not hear the mill!
'Tis long since he was there. Alas, the wave
Runs all to waste, the mighty wheel is still!

Poor Enoch feels as if become a slave;
And o'er his heart the long grass of the grave
Already trembles! To his stealthy foot,
Around the door thick springs the chance-sown oat.
While prene their plumes the water hen and coot;
Fearless and fierce, the rat and otter float,
Catching the trout in Albert's half-sunk boat;
And, pendent from each bucket fat weeds dip
Their slimy verdure in the listless stream.
'Albert is ruin'd, then!' his quivering lip
Mutters in anguish, while with paler beam
His sad eye glistens; "tis, alas, no dream!
Heav'n, save the blood of Enoch Wray from shame,
Shame undeserved, the treadmill of the soul !'”

Stunned by this blow, but not into stone, is the Village Patriarch.

Albert was blameless; for he had been always "strong, laborious,

frugal, just;" but all over the land,

"in April's fickle sky, The wretched rich and not less wretched

poor

Changed places miserably; and the bad Throve, while the righteous begg'd from door to door!"

The shame of having an unprincipled or profligate son has not fallen on Enoch Wray, and there is on earth to comfort him still a Mary Gould. Therefore he yet walks erect before men's eyes, in spite of this blow falling on the burthen of a hundred years. But behold him on his knees! In the churchyard "reading with his fingers"

Pages with silent admonition fraught." Many of the inscriptions there his own chisel had wrought! Nay, some of them had been even the effusions of his own fervid and pious heartfor the Village Patriarch had been one of Nature's elegiac poets, unknown but within the narrow neigh bourhood of its tombstones. He crawls from slab to slab-and his memory_touches many an affecting record. To such a visitant they must be all affecting

"John Stot, Charles Lamb, Giles

Humble, Simon Flea,

And Richard Green, here wait for
Alice me!"

Enoch thinks perhaps for a moment of the escape he made from Alice's clutches a few weeks agobut his fine finger-nor shall poetry ever blind it-travels over a very different memorial-more pathetic than any that was ever writ in Greek.

at sea.

The churchyard belongs to the church in which Enoch Wray was married-married to Mary Gouldand doubtless she was buried hereyet Enoch is busying himself with other matters, and has forgotten where she lies. For had he remembered Mary Gould, would he not have gone, first of all, up to her grave, and nowhere else have knelt ? Not so thought Ebenezer Elliott, and he knew Enoch Wray far better than either you or I-he had known him all his-that is all Eben's-life, and in the poem you will find it writ.

"But to one grave the blind man's eyes are turn'd,
Move where he may-and yet he seeks it not.
He communes with the poor, the lost, the mourn'd,
The buried long, by all, but him, forgot:

The hated?-no; his bosom never burn'd

With fire so base: the dreaded? No, he spurn'd
Fear, as unworthy of the human breast.
Why does he pause on his dark pilgrimage?
Hath he forgot what love remembers best?
Oh, stoop and find, in this familiar page,
The mournful story, dearest to his age!
'Here Lucy rests, who in this vale of tears

Dwelt thirty weeks:-Here waits the judgment-day
Her brother James, who died, aged fifty years:

Here slumbers sinless Anne, who lived a day:

Children of Mary, and of Enoch Wray.'

His finger pauses, like a trembling wand,
Held o'er desponding hope by mercy. Lo!
Another line, cut by another hand,

On the cold stone, from which he riseth slow;
But it is written on his heart of woe;

'Mary! thou art not lost, but gone before.'

"Oh, no!-not lost.

The hour that shall restore

Thy faithful husband, Mary, is at hand;

Ye soon shall meet again, to part no more;
By angels welcomed to their blissful land,
And wander there, like children, hand in hand,
To pluck the daisy of eternal May."

Enoch leaves the churchyard in trouble, to be brought back in a few days in peace; for now

"It is the evening of an April day.

Lo, for the last time, in the cheerful sun
Our father sits, stooping his tresses grey,

To hear the stream, his ancient neighbour, run,
Young as if time had yesterday begun.

Heav'n's gates are like an Angel's wing, with plumes
Of glorious green, and purply gold, on fire:

Through rifts of mountainous clouds, the light illumes
Hill-tops, and woods, that pilgrim-like retire;
And, like a giant's torch, burns Morthern spire.
Primrosy odours, violet-mingled, float

O'er blue-bells and ground ivy, on their wings
Bearing the music of the blackbird's note;
Beneath the dewy cloud, the woodlark sings,
But on our father's heart no gladness flings.
Mary bends o'er him, mute. Her youngest lad
Grasps, with small hand, his grandsire's finger fast;
Well knows the old man that the boy is sad;

And the third Mary, as she hurries past,
Trembles, and looks towards the town aghast.
Enoch hears footsteps of unwelcome sound,
While at his feet the sightless mastiff lies;

And, lo, the blind dog, growling, spurns the ground!
'Two strangers are approaching,' Enoch cries;
But Mary's throbbing heart alone replies.

A stern, Good day, sir!' smites his cheek more pale;
A rude collision shakes him in his chair;
The Bible of his sires is mark'd for sale!

But degradation is to him despair;

The hour is come which Enoch cannot bear!
But he can die -and in his humble grave,
Sweet shall his long rest be, by Mary's side;
And o'er his coffin uninscribed shall wave
The willow-tree, beneath the dark tower's pride
Set by his own sad hand, when Mary died."

Enoch Wray is dead; and we are left to think on the Village Patriarch, his character, his life, and his death. Do not we always do so-kindly or cruelly-whenever we chance to hear that any Christian man or woman of our acquaintance has died? "Ah! is he dead!" "Can it be that she is cut off?" And a hundred characters of the deceased are drawn extempore, which, it is as well to know, find no lasting record-that obituary being all traced in letters of air. But we are not disposed to write Enoch Wray's epitaph, on the very day of his death-nor yet on the very day of his burial. Some time, shorter or longer, elapses-after the disappearance of the deceased-before you see a man like a schoolmaster earnestly engaged with suitable tools in engraving an imperishable record of filial, or parental, or conjugal affection, on a new handsome burial

stone, that looks as if there were none other besides itself in the churchyard-though the uprights are absolutely jostling one another till they are in danger of being upset on the flats-slabs once horizontal, but now sunk, with one side invisible, into a soil which, if not originally rich, has been excellently well manured, yet is suffered to produce but dockens, nettles, and worse than weeds (can it be fiorin ?) the rank grass of wretchedness, that never fades, because it never flourishes, thatching the narrow house, but unable— though the inmates never utter a complaint-even in the driest weather, to keep out damp. That is rather a disagreeable image-and of the earth earthy; but here are some delightful images-of the heavens heavenly; and, in the midst of them, for a while let us part.

"He hears, in heav'n, his swooning daughter shriek.
And when the woodbine's cluster'd trumpet blows;
And when the pink's melodious hues shall speak,
In unison of sweetness with the rose,
Joining the song of every bird, that knows
How sweet it is of wedded love to sing;
And when the fells, fresh bathed in azure air,
Wide as the summer day's all golden wing,
Shall blush to heav'n, that Nature is so fair,
And man condemn'd to labour in despair;-
Then, the gay gnat, that sports its little hour;
The falcon, wheeling from the ancient wood;
The red-breast, fluttering o'er its fragrant bower;
The yellow-bellied lizard of the flood;

And dewy morn, and evening-in her hood
Of crimson, fringed with lucid shadows grand-
Shall miss the Patriarch; at his cottage door
The bee shall seek to settle on his hand,
But from the vacant bench haste to the moor,
Mourning the last of England's high-soul'd poor,
And bid the mountains weep for Enoch Wray!
And for themselves!-albeit of things that last
Unalter'd most; for they shall pass away
Like Enoch, though their iron roof seem fast
Bound to the eternal future, as the past!
The Patriarch died; and they shall be no more.
Yes, and the sailless worlds, which navigate
Th' unutterable deep that hath no shore,

Will lose their starry splendour, soon or late,
Like tapers, quench'd by Him whose will is fate!
Yes, and the Angel of Eternity,

Who numbers worlds, and writes their names in light,
Ere long, oh, earth, will look in vain for thee,
And start, and stop, in his unerring flight,
And, with his wings of sorrow and affright-
Veil his impassion'd brow, and heav'nly tears!"

COMBINATIONS.