We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,

When such are wanted.

The poet's darling.

Thou unassuming commonplace
Of Nature.

Oft on the dappled turf at ease

I sit, and play with similes,

Loose type of things through all degrees.

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven
This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,

And memory of Earth's bitter leaven
Effaced forever.

To the Daisy.

Ibid.

To the same Flower.

Ibid.

Thoughts suggested on the Banks of the Nith.

Long after it was heard no more.

Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;
Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,
Frozen by distance.

A famous man is Robin Hood,
The English ballad-singer's joy.

Because the good old rule

Sufficeth them, the simple plan,

Ibid.

Address to Kilchurn Castle.

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.

Rob Roy's Grave.

Ibid.

The Eagle, he was lord above,

And Rob was lord below.

Rob Roy's Grave.

A brotherhood of venerable trees.

Sonnet composed at

Castle.

Let beeves and home-bred kine partake
The sweets of Burn-mill meadow;
The swan on still St. Mary's Lake
Float double, swan and shadow!

Every gift of noble origin

Yarrow Unvisited.

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.

A remnant of uneasy light.

These Times strike Monied Worldlings.

Oh for a single hour of that Dundee

The Matron of Jedborough.

Who on that day the word of onset gave !1

Sonnet, in the Pass of Killicranky.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,

Or but a wandering voice?

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight,
A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair,
Like twilights too her dusky hair,
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn.

To the Cuckoo.

She was a Phantom of Delight.

A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

Ibid.

1 It was on this occasion [the failure in energy of Lord Mar at the battle of Sheriffmuir] that Gordon of Glenbucket made the celebrated exclamation, "Oh for an hour of Dundee!". MAHON: History of England, vol. i. p. 184. Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo,

The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe!

BYRON: Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza 12.

The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command.

She was a Phantom of Delight.

That inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude.

I wandered lonely.

To be a Prodigal's favourite, then, worse truth,
A Miser's pensioner, behold our lot!

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!1

A light to guide, a rod

To check the erring, and reprove.

The Small Celandine.

Ode to Duty.

Ibid.

Give unto me, made lowly wise,

The spirit of self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give,

And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!

Ibid.

The light that never was, on sea or land;

The consecration, and the Poet's dream.

Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm. Stanza 4.

Shalt show us how divine a thing

A woman may be made.

To a Young Lady. Dear Child of Nature.

But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.

Where the statue stood

Of Newton, with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind forever

Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.

1 See Milton, page 239.

Ibid.

The Prelude. Book iii.

One great society alone on earth:

The noble living and the noble dead.

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain
And Fear and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain.

-

Book xi.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Character of the Happy Warrior.

Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives.

Ibid.

But who, if he be called upon to face

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for humankind,

Is happy as a lover.

Ibid.

And through the heat of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.

Ibid.

Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray.

Like, but oh how different!

Ibid.

Yes, it was the Mountain Echo.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours.

Miscellaneous Sonnets. Part i. xxxiii.

Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

1 See Milton, page 235.

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Miscellaneous Sonnets. Part i. xxxiii.

Maidens withering on the stalk.1

Personal Talk. Stanza 1.

Sweetest melodies

Are those that are by distance made more sweet.2 Stanza 2.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good.

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

The gentle Lady married to the Moor,

And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
A power is passing from the earth.

Stanza 3.

Ibid.

Stanza 4.

Lines on the expected Dissolution of Mr. Fox.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 2.

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

Ibid.

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Stanza 5.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.

Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter darkness,

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

1 See Shakespeare, page 57.

Stanza 5.

2 See Collins, page 390.