Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap;
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap,
And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers.
Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech,
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain;
skull teems with notions infinite.
Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach
Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein,
And half had staggered that stout Stagirite!
TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN THE BLIND BOY."
RARE artist! who with half thy tools, or none,
Canst execute with ease thy curious art,
And press thy powerful'st meanings on the heart,
Unaided by the eye, expression's throne!
While each blind sense, intelligential grown
Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight;
Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might,
All motionless and silent seem to moan
The unseemly negligence of nature's hand,
That left them so forlorn.
O mistress of the passions;
What praise is thine, artist fine!
Who dost our souls against our sense command, Plucking the horror from a sightless face,. Lending to blank deformity a grace.
WHO first invented work, and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of business in the green fields, and the town-
To plough, loom, anvil, spade—and oh! most sad,
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblessed, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel-
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-
In that red realm from which are no returnings;
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye,
He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day.
THEY talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,
That like a mill-stone on a man's mind doth press,
Which only works and business can redress;
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.
But might I, fed with silent meditation,
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation—
Improbus Labor, which my spirits hath broke—
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit;
Fling in more days than went to make the gem
That crowned the white top of Methusalem;
Yea, on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky,
The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity.
DEUS NOBIS HÆC OTIA FECIT.
ROGERS, of all the men that I have known
But slightly, who have died, your Brother's loss Touched me most sensibly. There came across My mind an image of the cordial tone
Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest
I more than once have sat; and grieve to think,
That of that threefold cord one precious link
By Death's rude hand is severed from the rest.
Of our old gentry he appeared a stem—
A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer-
He kept in terror, could respect the Poor,
And not for every trifle harass them,
As some, divine and laic, too oft do.
This man's a private loss, and public too.
"SUCK, baby, suck! mother's love grows by giving; Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.
Kiss, baby, kiss! mother's lips shine by kisses;
Choke the warm breath that else would fall in bless
Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings.
Hang, baby, hang! mother's love loves such forces, Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging."
So sang a withered Beldam energetical,
And banned the ungiving door with lips prophetical.
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