Stream of the lake! of bloody men,
Who thirst the guilty fight to try--
Who seek for joy in mortal pain,
Music in misery's thrilling cry--
Thou tell'st: peace yields no joy to them,
Nor harmless Pleasure's golden smile;
Of evil deed the cheerless fame
Is all the meed that crowns their toil.

Not such would prove if Pleasure shone--
Stream of the deep and peaceful lake!--
His course, whom Hardship urges on,
Through cheerless waste and thorny brake.
For, ah! each pleasing scene he loves,
And peace is all his heart's desire;
And, ah! of scenes where Pleasure roves,
And Peace, could gentle minstrel tire?

Stream of the lake! for thee await
The tempests of an angry main;
A brighter hope, a happier fate,
He boasts, whose present course is pain.
Yes, even for him may death prepare
A home of pleasure, peace, and love;
Thus blessed by hope, little his care.
Though rough his present course may prove.

The minister paused as he concluded, and looked puzzled. "Pretty well, I
daresay," he said; "but I do not now read poetry. You, however, use a
word that is not English--'Thy winding _marge_ along.' Marge!--What is
marge?" "You will find it in Johnson," I said. "Ah, but we must not use
all the words we find in Johnson." "But the poets make frequent use of
it." "What poets?" "Spenser." "Too old--too old; no authority now," said
the minister. "But the Wartons also use it." "I don't know the Wartons."
"It occurs also," I iterated, "in one of the most finished sonnets of
Henry Kirke White." "What sonnet?" "That to the river Trent.

'Once more, O Trent! along thy pebbly marge,
A pensive invalid, reduced and pale,
From the close sick-room newly set at large,
Woos to his woe-worn cheek the pleasant gale.'

It is, in short, one of the common English words of the poetic
vocabulary." Could a man in quest of patronage, and actually at the time
soliciting a favour, possibly contrive to say anything more imprudent?
And this, too, to a gentleman so much accustomed to be deferred to when
he took up his ground on the _Standards_, as sometimes to forget,
through the sheer force of habit, that he was not a standard himself! He
coloured to the eyes; and his condescending humility, which seemed, I
thought, rather too great for the occasion, and was of a kind which my
friend Mr. Stewart never used to