1

Vigour to the Zephyr's wing
Her nectar-breathing kisses fling;
And he the glitter of the dew
Scatters on the rose's hue.
Bashful lo! she bends her head,
And darts a blush of deeper red!

Too well those lovely lips disclose
The triumphs of the opening rose;
O fair! O graceful! bid them prove
As passive to the breath of love.
In tender accents, faint and low,
Well-pleased I hear the whisper'd "No!"
The whisper'd "No!"-how little meant!
Sweet falsehood that endears consent!
For on those lovely lips the while
Dawns the soft relenting smile,

And tempts with feign'd dissuasion coy
The gentle violence of Joy.

1794.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

ISTER of love-lorn poets, Philomel!
How many bards in city garret pent,
While at their window they with
downward eye

Mark the faint lamp-beam on the kennell❜d mud,

1 Vigour to, &c.] The same ideas occur in the last stanza of Songs of the Pixies.

And listen to the drowsy cry of watchmen,1 (Those hoarse, unfeather'd nightingales of time!)

How many wretched bards address thy name, And hers, the full-orb'd queen that shines above.

But I do hear thee, and the high bough mark,
Within whose mild moon-mellow'd foliage hid,
Thou warblest sad thy pity-pleading strains.
O, I have listen'd, till my working soul,
Waked by those strains to thousand phantasies,
Absorb'd, hath ceased to listen! Therefore oft
I hymn thy name: and with a proud delight
Oft will I tell thee, minstrel of the moon,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
That all thy soft diversities of tone,
Though sweeter far than the delicious airs
That vibrate from a white-arm'd lady's harp,
What time the languishment of lonely love
Melts in her eye, and heaves her breast of

snow,

Are not so sweet as is the voice of her,
My Sara-best-beloved of human kind!
When breathing the pure soul of tenderness,
She thrills me with the husband's promised
name!

1794.

1 Cry of watchmen.] Probably written at first "drowsy watchman's cry; " but the line being then found to rhyme with the line but one above, it was thus clumsily altered, and the line following added.

TO A YOUNG LADY,

WITH A POEM ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

UCH on my early youth I love to dwell,

Ere yet I bade that friendly dome
farewell,

Where first, beneath the echoing cloisters pale,
I heard of guilt and wonder'd at the tale!
Yet though the hours flew by on careless wing,
Full heavily of sorrow would I sing.
Aye as the star of evening flung its beam.
In broken radiance on the wavy stream,
My soul amid the pensive twilight gloom
Mourn'd with the breeze, O Lee Boo!1 o'er thy
tomb.

Where'er I wander'd, pity still was near, Breathed from the heart and glisten'd in the tear:

No knell that toll'd but fill'd my anxious eye, And suffering Nature wept that one should die! 2

1 Lee Boo!] Lee Boo, the son of Abba Thule, Prince of the Pelew Islands, came over to England with Captain Wilson, died of the small-pox, and is buried in Greenwich churchyard. See Keate's Account.-C.

Among Bowles's poems will be found one, entitled Abba Thule's Lament for his son Prince Le Boo, with an interesting note.

In 1794 Coleridge writes,-" Abba Thule has marked beauties." See note to the sonnet To Bowles.

2 And suffering, &c.] Southey's Retrospect.-C.

Thus to sad sympathies I soothed my breast, Calm, as the rainbow in the weeping west: When slumbering Freedom, roused by high disdain,

With giant fury burst her triple chain!

Fierce on her front the blasting dog-star glow'd;

Her banners, like a midnight meteor, flow'd;
Amid the yelling of the storm-rent skies
She came, and scatter'd battles from her eyes!
Then exultation waked the patriot fire
Aud swept with wild hand the Tyrtæan lyre:
Red from the tyrant's wound I shook the lance,
And strode in joy the reeking plains of France!

Fall'n is the oppressor,' friendless, ghastly, low, And my heart aches, though mercy struck the blow.

With wearied thought once more I seek the shade,

Where peaceful virtue weaves the myrtle braid.
And O! if eyes whose holy glances roll,
Swift messengers, and eloquent of soul;
If smiles more winning and a gentler mien
Than the love-wilder'd maniac's brain hath seen,
Shaping celestial forms in vacant air,

If these demand the impassion'd poet's care-
If mirth and soften'd sense and wit refined,
The blameless features of a lovely mind;
Then haply shall my trembling hand assign
No fading wreath to beauty's saintly shrine.

1

Oppressor.] The poem alluded to in the title is The Fall of Robespierre, of which the Dedication bears date, Sept. 22,

1794.

Nor, Sara! thou these early flowers refuseNe'er lurk'd the snake beneath their simple hues;

No purple bloom the Child of Nature brings From flattery's nightshade: as he feels he sings.

Sept., 1794.

DOMESTIC PEACE.*

ELL me, on what holy ground
May Domestic Peace be found?
Halcyon daughter of the skies,
Far on fearful wing she flies,
From the pomp of sceptred state,
From the rebel's noisy hate.
In a cottaged vale she dwells
Listening to the Sabbath bells!
Still around her steps are seen
Spotless honour's mecker mien,
Love, the sire of pleasing fears,
Sorrow smiling through her tears,
And, conscious of the past employ,
Memory, bosom-spring of joy."

*First printed in The Fall of Robespierre, in 1794: possibly written earlier.

Still around joy.] Compare the concluding paragraphs of Lines on an Autumnal Evening.