"Man wants but little, have below:
"For wants that little. Long? Iis not with me exactly so: But the so, in the gang.
My wants are many, and if toks,
Would muster many a score: And ware each wish a mint
I still should long for
Washington 21. August 1841.
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;
TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON. THE Muse's fairest light in no dark time, The wonder of a learnéd 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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
INSCRIPTION FOR BROWNRIGG'S CELL.
[Canning, who was retained by the other side, parodied Southey's honest lines in the "Anti-Jacobin," November 20, 1797, by the fol lowing 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.
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!
"T is hard while rays half green, half gold, Through vernal bowers are burning,
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.
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,
The sky, that flecked the ground of toil With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day, The early harvest mowing, The sky with sun and clouds at play, And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying;
And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple's shadow, And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow !
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping; The good dog listened while I read, And wagged his tail in keeping.
I watched him while in sportive mood I read "The Twa Dogs' " story, And half believed he understood The poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed, New glory over Woman; And daily life and duty seemed No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor :
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, Of loving knight and lady, When farmer boy and barefoot girl Were wandering there already?
I saw through all familiar things The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even, That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon.
I matched with Scotland's heathery hills The sweet-brier and the clover; With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, Their wood-hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, I saw the Man uprising; No longer common or unclean, The child of God's baptizing.
With clearer eyes I saw the worth Of life among the lowly; The Bible at his Cotter's hearth Had made my own more holy.
And if at times an evil strain,
To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,
It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings !
Lament who will the ribald line Which tells his lapse from duty, How kissed the maddening lips of wine, Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between The erring one and Heaven, That he who loved like Magdalen, Like her may be forgiven.
Not his the song whose thunderous chime Eternal echoes render,
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, And Milton's starry splendor;
But who his human heart has laid To Nature's bosom nearer? Who sweetened toil like him, or paid To love a tribute dearer ?
Through all his tuneful art, how strong The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
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