A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,

15
That in a few short moments I retrace
(As in a map the voyager his course)
The windings of my way through many years.
Short as in retrospect the journey seems,
It seem'd not always short; the rugged path 20
And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn
Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.
Yet feeling present evils, while the past
Faintly impress the mind, or not at all,
How readily we wish time spent revoked,

25 That we might try the ground again, where once (Through inexperience as we now perceive,) We miss'd that happiness we might have found. Some friend is gone, perhaps his son's best friend A father, whose authority, in show

30 When most severe, and mustering all its force, Was but the graver countenance of love; Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might lower, And utter now and then an aweful voice, But had a blessing in its darkest frown,

35 Threatening at once and nourishing the plant. We loved, but not enough the gentle hand That rear'd us. At a thoughtless age

allured

But seeming now when all those days are o'er
The sounds of joy, once heard, and heard no more.

Bowles. At Ostend.

In whose look severe,
When angry most he seem'd, and most severe,
What else but favour, grace, and mercy shone ?

Par, Lost, X. 1094.

50

By every gilded folly, we renounced
His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent

40
That converse which we now in vain regret.
How gladly would the man recall to life
The boy's neglected sire! a mother too,
That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,
Might he demand them at the gates of death. 45
Sorrow has since they went subdued and tamed
The playful humour; he could now endure,
(Himself grown sober in the vale of tears,)
And feel a parent's presence no restraint.
But not to understand a treasure's worth 3
Till time has stolen away the slighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is.
The few that

pray at all

pray

oft amiss, And seeking grace to improve the prize they hold 55 Would urge a wiser suit, than asking more.

The night was winter in his roughest mood, The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon Upon the southern side of the slant hills, And where the woods fence off the northern blast, 60 The season smiles, resigning all its rage, And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue Without a cloud, and white without a speck The dazzling splendour of the scene below. Again the harmony comes o'er the vale,

65 And through the trees I view the embattled tower

3 Bestow a tear, nor think thy sorrow lost

Another and another should it cost :
The real worth of virtue ne'er is known
Till vanished from before our eyes and gone.

Vincent Bourne.

Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread
The walk still verdant under oaks and elms, 70
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof though moveable through all its length
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,
And intercepting in their silent fall
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. 75
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes and more than half suppress’d.
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From
spray

to

spray, where'er he rests he shakes 80 From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. Stillness accompanied with sounds so soft Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart 85 May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and wisdom", far from being one,

* I do not fancy this relative, mendicant, and precarious understanding; for though we could become learned by other men's reading, I am sure a man can never become wise but by his own wisdom. —Cotton's Montaigne, i. 24. No man is the wiser for his learning, it may

administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with man.-Selden's Table Talk.

The curious hand of knowledge doth but pick
Bare simples. Wisdom pounds them for the sick,
Knowledge, when Wisdom is too weak to guide her,
Is like a headstrong horse that throws the rider.

F. Quarles,

Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men, 90
Wisdom 5 in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
Till smooth'd and squared and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. 95
Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much ;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall’d.

100 Some to the fascination of a name 6 Surrender judgement hood-wink’d. Some the style?

5

Of unmade happiness
The rude material, Wisdom add to this
Wisdom, the sole artificer of bliss.

Young. Sutire vi.
But knowledge is a food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain ;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.

Pur. Lost, vii. 126. 6 What woeful stuff this madigral would be

In some starved hackneyed sonneteer or me!
But let a Lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens ! how the style refines !

Pope. Essay on Crit. 418. 7 Others for language all their care express,

And value books, as women men, for dress :
Their praise is still—the style is excellent,
The sense they humbly take upon content. Ib. 305.
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire. Ib. 540.

115

Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error, leads them by a tune entranced.
While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear 105
The insupportable fatigue of thought,
And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.
But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,

110
And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,
Not shy as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation, seize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.

What prodigies can power divine perform More grand, than it produces year by year, And all in sight of inattentive man!

120 Familiar with the effect we slight the cause, And in the constancy of nature's course, The regular return of genial months, And renovation of a faded world, See nought to wonder at. Should God again, 125 As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race Of the undeviating and punctual sun, How would the world admire! But speaks it less An agency divine, to make him know His moment when to sink and when to rise 130 Age after age, than to arrest his course ? All we behold is miracle, but seen So duly, all is miracle in vain. Where now the vital energy that moved, While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph

135