Lines: Written by H. C. in the Fly-Leaf of a Copy of Lucretius Presented by Him to Mr. Wordsworth

In the far north, for many a month unseen,
The blessed sun scarce lifts his worshipp'd head ;
No hardy herb records where he hath been ;

But pale cold snows, with dim abortive sheen.
Show like the winding-sheet of Nature dead.
Yet ofttimes there the boreal morning gleams.

Flickering and rustling through the long, long night ;
So hid from truth, and its all-cheering beams.
The mind, benighted, dawns with gorgeous dreams,
Cold, restless, false, unprofitably bright.

If such delusion held thy earthly thought,
Lucretius, still thou wast a lofty mind ;
For, spurning all that hopes and fears had taught,
Thy venturous reason, hopeless, fearless, sought
In its own pride its proper bliss to find.
Oh ! was it fear of what might be in realms

Of blank privation made thee seek the peace
That the dead faith affords ? — fear that dishelms
The vessel of the soul, and quite o'erwhelms
The spiritual life, that rather would surcease,
Or be an atom, motion, air, or flame,
Whose essence perishes by change of form,
Than wander through the abyss without an aim.
Duty, or joy — to feel itself the same.
Though naked, bodiless, weak, amid the storm '?