Avaunt-avaunt-what! yield we to your cold Weakness. We crown you with grim thoughts,—and quake Before the very tyrants that we make. Our Reason-or whate'er that be-and how And if we err, and darkling grope and vain, By which we bind her to the Titan's stone. From ignorance spring earth's errors-raise the powers Shadows avaunt! were all the monsters armed By hell or monkish madness, round the ring In which lone Reason sits abstract and charmed; Yea, all pale Priestcraft from her caves could bring, Creep from her hollow womb;—were the sweet skies B B To lose all love, and murmur from the stars- "TREMBLE”—The Unknown within me should defy On God; our God is Love!—and greet the levin IF THE POOR MADE LAWS FOR THE RICH. If the poor made laws for the rich-the rich, What a change in our jails would be! Which would be for the best? and which-oh, which, Bring the most to the gallows tree? They would pass a nobleman vagrant bill, For the fellows who idly roam; The Travellers' club would be sent to the Mill, Old Bks would be shot with a good spring-gun, "Most libellous trash," the books that blind The eyes of the mass they'd call; Murray's Review would be damnably fined, And they'd ruin great Captain H—ll. They'd make it a capital crime to pay Our younger sons would be shipped to "the Bay," And the Bishop of worse! 371 TO WORDSWORTH. How glorious and how beautiful a life Must thine have been among the hills and streams! From the far world, and its eternal strife, But one grey shadow cast upon thy dreams, Yet linger-and the Ascræan's verse* be true, Who o'er the sinless pastures led their herds; And undiurnal melody which breathes A pastoral sweetness from the golden time; *Hesiod, who tells us (Opera et Dies, verse 121, 'Avτàρ èπeí KEV TOUTO, &c.) that the mortals of the golden age became, after death, good spirits wandering over earth, and regarding the acts of men. So cling thy fancies in their green embrace And, with a loving yet a solemn grace, 66 Musing on Man," amid the mountains lone, What must have past in thy unfathomed breast !— How, on the lyre within, must many a tone, Solemn and deep, have risen-unconfest, And from the full and silent Heart of Things, Higher thy theme than Cæsars', or the Pomp Borne o'er the dusty earth in weary gaud; Ambition's mask, and Glory's brazen tromp, The embattled Murder, and the ermined Fraud ! And earthlier fires before the Rhean blaze Man in his simple grandeur, which can take From Power but poor increase; the Truth which lies Upshining in "the Well of homely Life;" The Winds, the Waters, and their Mysteries The Morn and moted Noon, the Stars which make Breathed Sanctity and Music-inspiration, But that which burns-the Centre of Creation A Love, a Mystery, and a Fear—the unseen Source of all worship since the world hath been! How must thy lone and lofty soul have gone Than a Great Poet whom the world disowns, |