If in such shades, beneath their murmuring,
Thou late hast passed the happier hours of spring,
With sadness thou wilt mark the fading year;
Chiefly if one with whom such sweets at morn
Or eve thou'st shared, to distant scenes shall stray.
O Spring, return! return, auspicious May!
But sad will be thy coming, and forlorn,
If she return not with thy cheering ray,
Who from these shades is gone, gone far away."

[13] _Cf._ Scott's "Harp of the North, that mouldering long hast hung,"
etc. "Lady of the Lake," Canto I.

[14] "Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?"
--"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."

[15] No. xxix., August, 1819, "Remarks on Don Juan."

[16] "Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise.
When sense and wit with poesy allied,
No fabled graces, nourished side by side. . . .
Then, in this happy isle, a Pope's pure strain
Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;
A polished nation's praise aspired to claim,
And raised the people's, as the poet's fame. . . .
[But] Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
Resign their hallowed bays to Walter Scott."
--"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."