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SPIRIT OF THE

Public Journals.

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LINES ON THE VIEW FROM ST. LEONARD'S.

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL.

Hail to thy face and odours, glorious Sea!
'Twere thanklessness in me to bless thee not,
Great beauteous Being! in whose breath and smile
My heart beats calmer, and my very mind
Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer
Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world!
Though like the world thou fluctuatest, thy din
To me is peace--thy restlessness repose.
E'en gladly I exchange your spring-green lanes
With all the darling field-flowers in their prime,
And gardens haunted by the nightingale's
Long trills and gushing ecstacies of song
For these wild headlands and the sea mew's clang--
With thee beneath my window, pleasant Sea,
I long not to o'erlook Earth's fairest glades
And green savannahs--Earth has not a plain
So boundless or so beautiful as thine;
The eagle's vision cannot take it in.
The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space,
Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;--
It is the mirror of the stars, where all
Their host within the concave firmament,
Gay marching to the music of the spheres,
Can see themselves at once--

Nor on the stage
Of rural landscape are their lights and shades
Of more harmonious dance and play than thine.
How vividly this moment brightens forth,
Between grey parallel and leaden breadths,
A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league,
Flush'd like the rainbow or the ringdove's neck,
And giving to the glancing sea-bird's wing
The semblance of a meteor.

Mighty Sea!
Cameleon-like thou changest, but there's love
In all thy change, and constant sympathy
With yonder Sky--thy mistress; from her brow
Thou tak'st thy moods and wear'st her colours on
Thy faithful bosom; morning's milky white,
Noon's sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve;
And all thy balmier hours' fair Element,
Have such divine complexion--crisped smiles,
Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings,
That little is the wonder Love's own Queen
From thee of old was fabled to have sprung--

Creation's common! which no human power
Can parcel or inclose; the lordliest floods
And cataracts that the tiny hands of man
Can tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dew
To thee that could'st subdue th