II. LOVE AND BEAUTY. BEAUTY and Love and are they not the same? The one is both, and both are but the one, Of one same essence, differing but in name. Holy of holies! mystery sublime! Who truly loves is beautiful to see, And scatters Beauty wheresoe'er he goes They fill all space; they move the wheels of Time; And evermore from their dread unity Through all the firmaments Life's ocean flows. WILLIAM SOTHEBY. THE WINTER'S MORN. ARTIST unseen! that, dipt in frozen dew, Rivers and lakes of lucid crystal made, Of secret grottos underneath the wave, Where Nereids roof with spar the amber cave ; Or bowers of bliss, where sport the fairy train, Who, frequent by the moonlight wanderer seen, Circle with radiant gems the dewy green. HENRY KIRKE WHITE. I. ON HEARING THE SOUNDS OF AN EOLIAN HARP. So ravishingly soft upon the tide Of the infuriate gust it did career, It might have soothed its rugged charioteer, And sunk him to a zephyr, then it died, Melting in melody, and I descried, Borne to some wizard stream, the form appear Poured his lone song, to which the surge replied; II. RETIREMENT. GIVE me a cottage on some Cambrian wild, Where, far from cities, I may spend my days, And, by the beauties of the scene beguiled, May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways. While on the rock I mark the browsing goat, List to the mountain-torrent's distant noise, Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note, I shall not want the world's delusive joys; But with my little scrip, my book, my lyre, Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more ; And, when, with time, shall wane the vital fire, I'll raise my pillow on the desert shore, And lay me down to rest where the wild wave Shall make sweet music o'er my lonely grave. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.* TO NIGHT. MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, And, lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? * The well-known and estimable Anglo-Spaniard, who was born of an English family which had emigrated to the Peninsula, and who came back to the country of his ancestors with other Spanish patriots fleeing from the tyranny of the infamous Ferdinand the Second. Coleridge pronounced this sonnet "the best in the English language." Perhaps if he had said the best in English poetry, the judgment might have appeared less disputable. In language some little imperfections are discernible, which do not detract, however, from its singular merits even in that respect, especially considering |