ANNE HATHAWAY.

TO THE IDOL OF MY EYE AND DELIGHT OF MY HEART,
ANNE HATHAWAY.

WOULD ye be taught, ye feathered throng,
With love's sweet notes to grace your song,
To pierce the heart with thrilling lay,
Listen to mine Anne Hathaway!
She hath a way to sing so clear,
Phoebus might wondering stop to hear.
To melt the sad, make blithe the gay,
And nature charm, Anne hath a way;
She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway;

To breathe delight Anne hath a way.
When Envy's breath and rancorous tooth
Do soil and bite fair worth and truth,
And merit to distress betray,

To soothe the heart Anne hath a way.
She hath a way to chase despair,
To heal all grief, to cure all care,
Turn foulest night to fairest day.
Thou know'st, fond heart, Anne hath a way;
She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway;

To make grief bliss, Anne hath a way.

Talk not of gems, the orient list,
The diamond, topaz, amethyst,
The emerald mild, the ruby gay;
Talk of my gem, Anne Hathaway!
She hath a way, with her bright eye,
Their various lustres to defy,
The jewels she, and the foil they,
So sweet to look Anne hath a way;
She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway;

To shame bright gems, Anne hath a way.

But were it to my fancy given

To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;
For though a mortal made of clay,
Angels must love Anne Hathaway;
She hath a way so to control,
To rapture, the imprisoned soul,

TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON.
THE Muse's fairest light in no dark time,
The wonder of a learned age; the line
Which none can pass; the most proportioned
wit,

To nature, the best judge of what was fit;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen;
The voice most echoed by consenting men ;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome,
Returning all her music with his own ;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art :
Here lies Ben Jonson! every age will look
With sorrow here, with wonder on his book.
JOHN CLEVELAND.

TO MACAULAY.

THE dreamy rhymer's measured snore Falls heavy on our ears no more;

And by long strides are left behind
The dear delights of womankind,
Who wage their battles like their loves,
In satin waistcoats and kid gloves,
And have achieved the crowning work
When they have trussed and skewered a Turk.
Another comes with stouter tread,
And stalks among the statelier dead.
He rushes on, and hails by turns
High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns;
And shows the British youth, who ne'er
Will lag behind, what Romans were
When all the Tuscans and their Lars
Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

TO H. W. L.,

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867.

I NEED not praise the sweetness of his song,

Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he

wrong

The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along,
Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name
Is blown about the world, but to his friends
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame,
And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim
To murmur a God bless you! and there ends.

As I muse backward up the checkered years

Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears, But hush this is not for profaner ears;

Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the

cost.

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core,

As naught but nightshade grew upon earth's ground;

Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door, Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound.

Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with

sun,

So through his trial faith translucent rayed
Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed
A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun.

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay

And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, He shall not go, although his presence may,

And the next age in praise shall double this.

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet

As gracious natures find his song to be; May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet Falling in music, as for him were meet Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

VERSES BY HENRY MARTEN,

THE REGICIDE.

[Confined in prison by Charles II., where he died in 1981, after thirty years' imprisonment. The initial letters of the lines form an acrostic.]

HERE or elsewhere (all's one to you to me !) Earth, air, or water gripes my ghostless dust, None knowing when brave fire shall set it free. Reader, if you an oft-tried rule will trust, You'll gladly do and suffer what you must.

My life was worn with serving you and you,
And death is my reward, and welcome, too;
Revenge destroying but itself; while I
To birds of prey leave my old cage and fly.
Examples preach to the eye, -care, then, mine

says

Not how you end but how you spend your days.

HENRY MARTEN.

INSCRIPTION FOR MARTEN'S PRISON

ROOM.

[The immolation of this republican judge was celebrated in the following lines by the youthful Southey during his short experience as a democratic regenerator. In their original publication they were called: "Inscription for the Apartment in Chorastine Castle where Henry Morten the Regicide was imprisoned thirty Years." After Southey became Poet Laureate he endeavored to suppress the poem, but unsuccessfully.]

For thirty years secluded from mankind,
Here Marten lingered. Often have these walls
Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison: not to him

Did nature's fair varieties exist :
He never saw the sun's delightful beams,
Save when through yon high bars it poured a sad
And broken splendor. Dost thou ask his crime?
He had rebelled against the king, and sat
In judgment on him; for his ardent mind
Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,
And peace and liberty. Wild dreams, but such
As Plato loved; such as, with holy zeal,
Our Milton worshipped. Blessed hopes! awhile
From man withheld, even to the latter days,
When Christ shall come and all things be fulfilled.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

INSCRIPTION FOR BROWNRIGG'S CELL.

A PARODY.

[Canning, who was retained by the other side, parodied Southey's honest lines in the "Anti-Jacobin," November 20, 1797, by the following verses, entitled: "Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg the 'Prentice-cide was confined previous to her Execution."]

FOR one long term, or ere her trial came,

Here Brownrigg lingered. Often have these cells
Echoed her blasphemies, as with shrill voice
She screamed for fresh geneva. Not to her
Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,
St. Giles, its fair varieties expand;

Till at the last in slow-drawn cart she went
To execution. Dost thou ask her crime?
She whipped two female 'prentices to death,
And hid them in the coal-hole. For her mind
Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage
schemes !

Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine
Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog
The little Spartans; such as erst chastised
Our Milton, when at college. For this act
Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! but time
shall come

When France shall reign, and laws be all repealed.

SMOLLETT.

GEORGE CANNING.

WHENCE could arise the mighty critic spleen,
The muse a trifler, and her theme so mean?
What had I done that angry heaven should send
The bitterest foe where most I wished a friend?
Oft hath my tongue been wanton at this name,
And hailed the honors of thy matchless fame.
For me let hoary Fielding bite the ground,
So nobler Pickle stands superbly bound;
From Livy's temples tear the historic crown,
Which with more justice blooms upon thy own.
Compared with thee, be all life-writers dumb,
But he who wrote the life of Tommy Thumb.
Who ever read the Regicide but sware
The author wrote as man ne'er wrote before?
Others for plots and underplots may call,
Here's the right method, have no plot at all!

JOHN CHURCHILL.

TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS HOOD.

TAKE back into thy bosom, earth,
This joyous, May-eyed morrow,
The gentlest child that ever mirth
Gave to be reared by sorrow!

'Tis hard - while rays half green, half gold, Through vernal bowers are burning,

And streams their diamond mirrors hold
To summer's face returning,

To say we 're thankful that his sleep
Shall nevermore be lighter,

In whose sweet-tongued companionship
Stream, bower, and beam grew brighter!

But all the more intensely true

His soul gave out each feature Of elemental love, each hue And grace of golden nature, The deeper still beneath it all

Lurked the keen jags of anguish ; The more the laurels clasped his brow Their poison made it languish. Seemed it that, like the nightingale

Of his own mournful singing, The tenderer would his song prevail While most the thorn was stinging. So never to the desert-worn

Did fount bring freshness deeper Than that his placid rest this morn

Has brought the shrouded sleeper. That rest may lap his weary head

Where charnels choke the city, Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed The wren shall wake its ditty; But near or far, while evening's star Is dear to hearts regretting, Around that spot admiring thought Shall hover, unforgetting.

BARTHOLOMEW SIMMONS.

BURNS.

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM.

No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,

They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant !
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!

The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,

And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning.

The dews that washed the dust and soil From off the wings of pleasure,