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;
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.
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 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
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!
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,
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.
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!
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So "Bonny Doon" but tarry ;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
STOP, mortal! Here thy brother lies, The poet of the poor.
His books were rivers, woods, and skies,
The meadow and the moor;
His teachers were the torn heart's wail,
The tyrant, and the slave,
The street, the factory, the jail,
The palace, and the grave!
Sin met thy brother everywhere!
And is thy brother blamed?
From passion, danger, doubt, and care
He no exemption claimed.
The meanest thing, earth's feeblest worm,
He feared to scorn or hate;
Bnt, honoring in a peasant's form
The equal of the great,
He blessed the steward, whose wealth makes
The poor man's little more;
Yet loathed the haughty wretch that takes From plundered labor's store.
A hand to do, a head to plan,
A heart to feel and dare,
Tell man's worst foes, here lies the man
Who drew them as they are.
REAR high thy bleak majestic hills,
Thy sheltered valleys proudly spread,
And, Scotia, pour thy thousand rills,
And wave thy heaths with blossoms red;
But, ah! what poet now shall tread
Thy airy heights, thy woodland reign,
Since he, the sweetest bard, is dead,
That ever breathed the soothing strain?
As green thy towering pines may grow,
As clear thy streams may speed along,
As bright thy summer suns may glow,
As gayly charm thy feathery throng;
But now unheeded is the song,
And dull and lifeless all around, For his wild harp lies all unstrung,
And cold the hand that waked its sound.
What though thy vigorous offspring rise, —
In arts, in arms, thy sons excel;
Though beauty in thy daughters' eyes,
And health in every feature dwell;
Yet who shall now their praises tell
In strains impassioned, fond, and free,
Since he no more the song shall swell
To love and liberty and thee!
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