As when one parent spring supplies Two streams which from one fountain rise, How soon, diverging from their source, Our vital streams of weal or woe, Nor mingle as before: Now swift or slow, now black or clear And both shall quit the shore. Our souls, my friend! which once supplied 'Tis mine to waste on love my time, For sense and reason (critics know it) Poor LITTLE! sweet, melodious bard! That he, who sang before all, He who the lore of love expanded.- And yet, while Beauty's praise is thine, Thy soothing lays may still be read, Still I must yield those worthies merit, Bad rhymes, and those who write them; I really will not fight them. (2) Perhaps they would do quite as well (1) These stanzas were written soon after the appearance of a severe critique, in a northern review, on a new publication of the British Anacreon. -[See Edinburgh Review, July, 1807, article on "Epistles, Odes, and other Poems, by Thomas Little, Esq."-E] (2) A bard (horresco referens) defied his reviewer to mortal combat. If this example becomes prevalent, our periodical censors must be dipped in the river Styx: for what else can secure them from the numerous host of their enraged assailants? N Ꮞ . Now, Clare, I must return to you; In truth, dear Clare, in fancy's flight My muse admires digression. your fate I think I said 'twould be May regal smiles attend you! Yet since in danger courts abound, From snares may saints preserve you And grant your love or friendship ne'er From any claim a kindred care, But those who best deserve you! Not for a moment may you stray O'er roses may your footsteps move, Oh! if you wish that happiness And virtues crown your brow; Be still as you were wont to be, And though some trifling share of praise, LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCHYARD OF HARROW. (2) SPOT of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh, Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky; Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod; (1) "Of all I have ever known, Clare has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance."-Diary, 1821. (2) On losing his natural daughter, Allegra, in April, 1822, Lord Byron sent her remains to be buried at Harrow, "where," he says, in a letter to Mr. Murray, "I once hoped to have laid my own." "There is," he adds, " a spot in the church-yard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey), where I used to sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot; but as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better be deposited in the church; "— and it was so accordingly.-E. With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore, Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still, away; Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline, But, ah! without the thoughts which then were mine: How do thy branches, moaning to the blast, Invite the bosom to recall the past, And seem to whisper, as they gently swell, "Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell! ” And unremember'd by the world beside. September 2. 1807. |