So by th’insulted Female's name he Self-questioned in her sleep ; and some swore, 50 have said Ruin (and rais'd her reeking dagger high) We lived, ere yet this robe of flesh we Not to the Tyrants but the Tyranny !! wore. O my sweet baby! when I reach my door, SONNET If heavy looks should tell me thou art dead, ON RECEIVING A LETTER INFORMING (As sometimes, through excess of hope, ME OF THE BIRTH OF A SON I fear) I think that I should struggle to believe When they did greet me father, sudden Thou wert a spirit, to this nether awe sphere Weigh'd down my spirit : I retired and Sentenced for some more venial crime knelt to grieve; Seeking the throne of grace, but inly felt Did'st scream, then spring to meet No heavenly visitation upwards draw Heaven's quick reprieve, My feeble mind, nor cheering ray impart. While we wept idly o'er thy little Ah me! before the Eternal Sire I bier ! brought Th’unquiet silence of confused thought And shapeless feelings : my o’erwhelmed heart SONNET Trembled, and vacant tears stream'd down my face. TO A FRIEND WHO ASKED, HOW I And now once more, O Lord ! to thee FELT WHEN THE NURSE FIRST I bend, PRESENTED MY INFANT TO ME Lover of souls ! and groan for future Charles ! my slow heart was only sad, grace, when first That ere my babe youth's perilous maze I scanned that face of feeble infancy : have trod, For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst Thy overshadowing Spirit may descend, All I had been, and all my child And he be born again, a child of God. might be ! But when I saw it on its mother's arm, while Bent o'er its features with a tearful COMPOSED ON A JOURNEY HOMEWARD; smile) THE AUTHOR Then I was thrilled and melted, and HAVING RECEIVED most warm INTELLIGENCE OF THE BIRTH OF A SON, SEPT. 20, 1796 Impressed a father's kiss : and all beguiled OFT o'er my brain does that strange Of dark remembrance and presageful fancy roll fear, Which makes the present (while the I seemed to see an angel-form appearflash doth last) 'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild ! Seem a mere semblance of some un- So for the mother's sake the child was known past, dear, Mixed with such feelings, as perplex the And dearer was the mother for the soul child. 1796. ash; Beneath the cypress, or the yew more TO A YOUNG FRIEND dark, [CHARLES LLOYD] Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock ; ON HIS PROPOSING TO DOMESTICATE In social silence now, and now, and now to WITH THE AUTHOR unlock Composed in 1796 The treasured heart ; arm linked in friendly arm, A MOUNT, not wearisome and bare and Save if the one, his muse's witching steep, charm But a green mountain variously up- Muttering brow-bent, at unwatched dispiled, tance lag ; Where o'er the jutting rocks soft mosses Till high o'er head his beckoning creep, friend appears, Or coloured lichens with slow oosing And from the forehead of the topmost weep; crag 30 Where cypress and the darker yew Shouts eagerly : for haply there upstart wild ; rears And, 'mid the summer torrent's gentle That shadowing Pine its old romantic dash limbs, Dance brightened the red clusters of the Which latest shall detain the enamoured sight Beneath whose boughs, by those still Seen from below, when eve the valley sounds beguiled, dims, Calm Pensiveness might muse herself to Tinged yellow with the rich departing sleep; light ; Till haply startled by some fleecy And haply, basoned in some unsunned dam, cleft, That rustling on the bushy clift above A beauteous spring, the rock's collected With melancholy bleat of anxious love, tears, Made meek enquiry for her wandering Sleeps sheltered there, scarce wrinkled lamb: by the gale ! Such a green mountain 'twere most Together thus, the world's vain turmoil sweet to climb, left, E’en while the bosom ached with loneli- Stretched on the crag, and shadowed by ness the pine, 40 How more than sweet, if some dear friend And bending o'er the clear delicious should bless fount, The adventurous toil, and up the path Ah! dearest youth! it were lot sublime divine Now lead, now follow : the glad land- To cheat in moralising scape round, mood, Wide and more wide, increasing without While west-winds fanned our temples bound ! toil-bedewed : Then downwards slope, oft pausing, O then 'twere loveliest sympathy, to from the mount, mark To some lone mansion, in some woody The berries of the half-uprooted ash Dripping and bright; and list the torrent's Where smiling with blue eye, Domestic dash, Bliss IO a our noons 20 dale, 68 ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG MAN OF FORTUNE-SONNET 50 of age, Gives this the Husband's, that the ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG MAN Brother's kiss ! OF FORTUNE [C. LLOYD] Thus rudely versed in allegoric lore, WHO ABANDONED HIMSELF TO AN INThe Hill of Knowledge I essayed to DOLENT AND CAUSELESS MELANCHOLY trace ; That verdurous hill with many a resting HENCE that fantastic wantonness of woe, place, O Youth to partial Fortune vainly dear! And many a stream, whose warbling To plundered Want's half-sheltered hovel waters pour go, To glad, and fertilise the subject Go, and some hunger-bitten infant hear plains ; Moan haply in a dying mother's ear : That hill with secret springs, and nooks Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps untrod, brood And many a fancy-blest and holy sod O'er the rank church-yard with sear elmWhere Inspiration, his diviner strains leaves strewed, Low-murmuring, lay; and starting from Pace round some widow's grave, whose the rock's dearer part Stiff evergreens, (whose spreading foliage Was slaughtered where o'er his unmocks coffined limbs Want's barren soil, and the bleak frosts The flocking flesh-birds screamed! Then, while thy heart And Bigotry's mad fire-invoking rage!) 60 Groans, and thine eye a fiercer sorrow O meek retiring spirit! we will climb, dims, Cheering and cheered, this lovely hill Know (and the truth shall kindle thy sublime; And from the stirring world up-lifted What Nature makes thee mourn, she young mind) high bids thee heal! (Whose noises, faintly wafted on the wind, O abject ! if, to sickly dreams resigned, To quiet musings shall attune the mind, All effortless thou leave life's commonweal And oft the melancholy theme supply), A prey to tyrants, murderers of manThere, while the prospect through the kind. 1796. gazing eye Pours all its healthful greenness on the soul, SONNET We'll smile at wealth, and learn to smile [TO CHARLES LLOYD] at fame, Our hopes, our knowledge, and our joys THE piteous sobs that choke the virgin's the same, breath As neighbouring fountains image each For him, the fair betrothed youth, who the whole : lies Then when the mind hath drunk its fill Cold in the narrow dwelling, or the cries of truth With which a mother wails her darling's We'll discipline the heart to pure death, delight, These from our nature's common impulse Rekindling sober joy's domestic flame. spring, They whom I love shall love thee, Unblamed, unpraised; but o'er the honoured youth ! piled earth Now may Heaven realize this vision Which hides the sheeted corse of greybright! 1796. hair'd worth, 70 young breast a If droops the soaring youth with slacken'd Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved wing; bard, If he recall in saddest minstrelsy Who to the Illustrious 1 of his native Each tenderness bestow'd, each truth Land imprest, So properly did look for patronage.' Such grief is Reason, Virtue, Piety ! Ghost of Mæcenas ! hide thy blushing And from the Almighty Father shall face ! descend They snatched him from the sickle and Comforts on his late evening, whose the plough To gauge ale-firkins. Mourns with no transient love the aged friend. 1796. Oh ! for shame return ! On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian mount, TO A FRIENI There stands a lone and inelancholy tree, [CHARLES LAMB] Whose aged branches to the midnight blast WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION Make solemn music : pluck its darkest OF WRITING NO MORE POETRY bough, Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be DEAR Charles ! whilst yet thou wert a exhaled, babe, I ween And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's That Genius plunged thee in that wizard tomb. fount Then in the outskirts, where pollutions Ilight Castalie : and (sureties of thy faith) grow, That Pity and Simplicity stood by, Pick the rank henbane and the dusky And promised for thee, that thou shouldst flowers renounce Of night-shade, or its red and tempting The world's low cares and lying vanities, fruit, Steadfast and rooted in the heavenly These with stopped nostril and gloveMuse, guarded hand And washed and sanctified to Poesy. Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine, Yes—thou wert plunged, but with forget- The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility! ful hand 1796. Held, as hy Thetis erst her warrior son: And with those recreant unbaptized heels Thou'rt flying from thy bounden minis ON A LATE CONNUBIAL RUPteries TURE IN HIGH LIFE [PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES] take thou heed : I sigh, fair injured stranger! for thy fate; For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed boy, But what shall sighs avail thee? thy And I have arrows 1 mystically dipped poor heart, Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy | Mid all the “pomp and circumstance' of Burns dead? state, And shall he die unwept, and sink to Shivers in nakedness. Unbidden, earth start . Without the meed of one melodious tear'? 1 Verbatim from Burns's Dedication of his Poems to the Nobility and Gentry of the Cale1 Vide Pind. Olymp. ii. 150. donian Hunt. 21 Sad recollections of Hope's garish dream, For what is freedom, but the unfettered That shaped a seraph form, and named use it Love, Of all the powers which God for use had Its hues gay-varying, as the orient beam given? Varies the neck of Cytherea's dove. But chiefly this, him first, him last to view To one soft accent of domestic joy Through meaner powers and secondary Poor are the shouts that shake the things high-arched dome; Those plaudits that thy public path annoy, Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his blaze. Alas! they tell thee-Thou'rt a wretch For all that meets the bodily sense I at home! deem :/:.- 3.1 O then retire, and weep! Their very woes Symbolical, one mighty alphabet Solace the guiltless. Drop the pearly For infant minds; and we in this low flood world On thy sweet infant, as the full-blown Placed with our backs to bright Reality, rose, That we may learn with young unwounded Surcharged with dew, bends o'er its ken neighbouring bud. The substance from its shadow. Infinite Love, And ah! that Truth some holy spell Whose latence is the plenitude of All, might lend Thou with retracted beams, and selfTo lure thy wanderer from the syren's eclipse bon Then bid your souls inseparably blend Like two bright dew-drops meeting in But some there are who deem thema flower. 1796. selves most free When they within this gross and visible sphere THE DESTINY OF NATIONS Chain down the winged thought, scoffing A VISION ascent, AUSPICIOUS Reverence! Hush all meaner Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat song, Ere we the deep preluding strain have With noisy emptiness of learned phrase, Their subile fluids, impacts, essences, 31 poured To the Great Father, only Rightful King, Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and , all Eternal Father! King Omnipotent ! The Will, the Word, the Breath, the Those blind omniscients, those almighty slaves, Living God. Untenanting creation of its God. Such symphony requires best instrument. Seize, then, my soul ! from Freedom's But properties are God: the naked trophied dome mass The harp which hangeth high between (If mass there be, fantastic guess or ghost) the shields Acts only by its inactivity, Of Brutus and Leonidas! With that Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier Strong music, that soliciting spell, force think back That as one body seems the aggregate Man's free and stirring spirit that lies Of atoms numberless, each organized ; 40 entranced. So by a strange and dim similitude 10 |
