"That young maid in face does carry A resemblance strong of Mary."

Margaret, at nearer sight,

Own'd her observation right;
But they did not far proceed

Ere they knew 'twas she indeed.

She-but, ah! how changed they view her From that person which they knew her! Her fine face disease had scarr'd,

And its matchless beauty marr'd;

But enough was left to trace

Mary's sweetness-Mary's grace.
When her eye did first behold them,
How they blush'd!—but when she told them
How on a sick-bed she lay
Months, while they had kept away,
And had no inquiries made
If she were alive or dead;
How, for want of a true friend,
She was brought near to her end,
And was like so to have died,
With no friend at her bedside;
How the constant irritation,
Caused by fruitless expectation
Of their coming, had extended

The illness, when she might have mended-
Then, oh then, how did reflection
Come on then with recollection!
All that she had done for them,
How it did their fault condemn.

But sweet Mary, still the same,
Kindly eased them of their shame;
Spoke to them with accents bland,
Took them friendly by the hand;
Bound them both with promise fast
Not to speak of troubles past;
Made them on the spot declare
A new league of friendship there;
Which, without a word of strife,
Lasted thenceforth long as life.
Martha now and Margaret

Strove who most should pay the deb

Which they owed her, nor did vary
Ever after from their Mary

TO A RIVER IN WHICH A CHILD WAS
DROWNED.

SMILING river, smiling river,

On thy bosom sunbeams play;
Though they're fleeting and retreating,
Thou hast more deceit than they.

In thy channel, in thy channel,
Choked with ooze and grav'lly stones,
Deep immersed, and unhearsed,

Lies young Edward's corse: his bones

Ever whitening, ever whitening,
As thy waves against them dash;
What thy torrent in the current

Swallow'd, now it helps to wash.

As if senseless, as if senseless
Things had feeling in this case;
What so blindly and unkindly

It destroy'd, it now does grace.

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES.

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women;
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces—

How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

A VISION OF REPENTANCE.

I SAW a famous fountain, in my dream,
Where shady pathways to a valley led;
A weeping willow lay upon that stream,

And all around the fountain brink were spread Wide-branching trees, with dark-green leaf rich clad, Forming a doubtful twilight-desolate and sad.

The place was such, that whoso enter❜d in,
Disrobed was of every earthly thought,
And straight became as one that knew not sin,

Or to the world's first innocence was brought;
Enseem'd it now, he stood on holy ground,
In sweet and tender melancholy wrapp'd around.
A most strange calm stole o'er my soothed sprite;
Long time I stood, and longer had I stay'd,
When, lo! I saw, saw by the sweet moonlight,
Which came in silence o'er that silent shade,
Where, near the fountain, SOMETHING like DESPAIR
Made, of that weeping willow, garlands for her hair

And eke with painful fingers she inwove

66

Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn

The willow garland, that was for her love,
And these her bleeding temples would adorn."
With sighs her heart nigh burst, salt tears fast fell,
As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well.

DEDICATION.*

ΤΟ

S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

MY DEAR COLERIDGE,

You will simile to see the slender labours of your friend designated by the title of works; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have kindly undertaken the trouble of collecting them, and from their judgment could be no appeal.

It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a volume containing the early pieces, which were first published among your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken-who snapped the three-fold cord— whether yourself (but I know that was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions-or whether (which is by much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was author of the separation-I cannot tell; but wanting the support of your friendly elm, (I speak for myself,) my vine has, since that time, put forth few or no fruits; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in a manner, dried up and extinct; and you will find your old associate, in his second volume, dwindled into prose and criticism.

Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come upon us, (except with some more healthy-happy spirits,) life itself loses much of its poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, and look another way. You yourself write no Christables or Ancient Mariners now.

Some of the sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances which 1 should be sorry should be ever totally extinct-the memory

"Of summer days and delightful years"—

**** Inn-when life

even so far back as to those old suppers at our old *** was fresh and topics exhaustless-and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.

"What words have I heard Spoke at the Mermaid !"

The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same who stood before me three-and-twenty years ago-his hair a little confessing the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain-his heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds."

One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the antique in the

• Prefixed to the author's works published in 1818.