When sacred call the master sent away,
And gave the happy summer-holiday!
Some, lightly sped where on the orchard steep
The shaken apples fell in pattering heap,
And lent their busy aid to gather in,
And fill'd their pouches too—a venial sin!
Some, by the river-bank as gaily fared,
And held deep converse with the laughing laird.
Some, to the glen with nut-hook in their hands;
Telling their tales the while, in merry bands,
Drew the brown cluster down with breaking crush,
Or stain'd their lips with brambles from the bush.
Some, more retir'd (and I might be of these)
Lay on the wild bank, 'mid the hum of bees,
Reading some legend old of Scottish fame,
The Bruce, the Douglas, and each warrior name;
Then homewards with the setting sun, to hear
The solemn ev'ning duly clos'd with prayer!
O why should pleasure youth's wild eye allure
From Nature's guardian arms to scenes less pure?
Why should our manhood be ambition's slave,
Or creep the drudge of avarice to the grave?
Why should the sun on man's unconscious gaze,
Pour from the eastern hill his living rays?
Or why his softening splendour gild the west,
Nor raise one wish that such may be our rest?
Ah! far at sea, and wanderers from the shore,
Mature still calls us, but we hear no more!
Yet where her pensive look reflection throws,
Remember'd forms of beauty yield repose;
On them she pauses, and with filling eye,
Plans the blest refuge of futurity!
Thus to the scenes in which our childhood past,
Memory returns with love that still can last;
Wherever, since, our vagrant course has been,
Whatever troubled hours have come between,
Those simple beauties, which could first engage
Our hearts, still please through each succeeding age;
Nor are they yet so sunk in meaner care,
That nature's image quite its impress there!"
There is much feeling in the following passage:
"Can I forget the hallow'd hour I past
In Grasmere chapel, in the lonely waste,
Driven by the rains that patter'd on the lake,
(Perhaps no holier cause) repose to take?
The simple people to each separate hand
Divided, youths and maids in different band;
Of the great power of God, their pastor spoke;
Responsive from the hills loud thunders broke,
From the black-smoking hills whose wavering line
Through lead-bound panes was dimly seen to shine.
I felt the voice of Man and Nature roll
The deep conviction on my bending soul!
What if, amid the rural tribe, unknown,
From Wordsworth's eye some moral glory shone,
Some beam of poesy and good combin'd,
That found the secret foldings of my mind?"
We shall finish our quotations from this part of the volume, with a short, vivid, and accurate, picture of one of the most beautiful scenes in the south of Scotland.
"How laugh'd thine eyes, when from the bushy dell,
Where sunk in shade retiring Leader fell,
Our wheels slow wound us up the open height,
Whence Tweed's rich valley burst upon the sight.
Below, the river roll'd in spreading pride,
The lofty arch embrac'd its auburn tide:
Bright in the orient gleam the waters shone,
Here flowing free, there ridg'd with shelving stone:
Each side the banks with fields and trees were green,
High waving on the hills were harvests seen;
The nodding sheaf mov'd heavily along,
And jocund reapers sang their morning song,
Calm slept the clouds on cloven Eildon laid,
And distant Melrose peep'd from leafy shade."
The translations are, we think, more unequal than the original compositions, some of them being excessively bad, and others most admirable. The cause of this seems to have been an occasional desire to indulge in fantastic ingenuity of versification and expression, in which the worthy Translator not unfrequently exhibits a most portentous forgetfulness of common sense, and employs a sort of language to our ears wholly unintelligible. When not beset by these unlucky fits of ingenuity, he catches the spirit of the original with great felicity; and his translations, or rather imitations of Horace, are indisputably the most elegant and graceful of any in the English language. He has proved, by his translations of several of the Odes, "how gracefully any short and classical composition may be arranged in a form which at once ensures brevity, and unites elegance with the most varied and perfect melody of versification." What can be finer than the air he has thrown over the S2d Ode of Book I. "Possimus si quid," &c.
"O lyre, if vacant in die leafy shade,
We've us'd thy ministry in many a strain,
Not speedily to die, come yet again,
And let the Latian song thy chords pervade:
By him of Lesbos first harmonious made,
The warrior bard, who, on the tented plain,
