4. I hate you, ye cold compositions of art, Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove; I court the effusions that spring from the heart, Which throbs, with delight, to the first kiss of love. 5. Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes, Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move: Arcadia displays but a region of dreams; What are visions like these, to the first kiss of love? 6. Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth, From Adam, till now, has with wretchedness strove; Some portion of Paradise still is on earth, And Eden revives, in the first kiss of love. 7. When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past For years fleet away with the wings of the dove The dearest remembrance will still be the last, Our sweetest memorial, the first kiss of love. December 23, 1806. [First printed, January, 1807.] CHILDISH RECOLLECTIONS. "I cannot but remember such things were, And were most dear to me."- Macbeth. WHEN slow Disease, with all her host of pains, Chills the warm tide, which flows along the veins; When Health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing, And flies with every changing gale of spring; Yet less the pang when, through the tedious hour, Remembrance sheds around her genial power, Calls back the vanish'd days to rapture given, When Love was bliss, and Beauty form'd our heaven; Or, dear to youth, pourtrays each childish scene, Those fairy bowers, where all in turn have been. As when, through clouds that pour the summer storm, The orb of day unveils his distant form, Gilds with faint beams the crystal dews of rain And dimly twinkles o'er the watery plain; 20 Thus, while the future dark and cheerless gleams, The Sun of Memory, glowing through my dreams, Though sunk the radiance of his former blaze, To scenes far distant points his paler 1[Newton Hanson relates that on one occasion he accompanied his father to Harrow on Speech Day to see his brother, Hargreaves Hanson, and Byron. "On our arrival at Harrow, we set out in search of Hargreaves and Byron, but the latter was not at his tutor's. Three or four lads, hearing my father's inquiries, set off at full speed to find him. They soon discovered him, and, laughing most heartily, called out, 'Hallo, Byron! here's a gentleman wants you. And what do you think? He had got on Drury's hat. I can still remember the arch cock of Byron's eye at the hat, and then at my father, and the fun and merriment it caused him and all of us whilst, during the day, he was perambulating the highways and byeways of Ida with the hat on. 'Harrow Speech Day and the Governor's Hat' was one of the standing rallying-points for Lord Byron ever after."] High, through those elms with hoary branches crown'd, Fair IDA's bower adorns the landscape round; There Science, from her favour'd seat, surveys The vale where rural Nature claims her praise; To her awhile resigns her youthful train, Who move in joy, and dance along the plain; 1 Dr Drury. This most able and excellent man retired from his situation in March, 1805, after having resided thirty-five years at Harrow the last twenty as headmaster; an office he held with equal honour to himself, and advantage to the very extensive school over which he presided. Panegyric would here be superfluous; it would be useless to enumerate qualifications which were never doubted. A considerable contest took place between three rival candidates for his vacant chair: of this I can only say Si mea cum vestris valuissent vota, Pelasgi! Non foret ambiguus tanti certaminis hares. 2 This alludes to a character printed in a former private edition [Poems on Various Oc casions] for the perusal of some friends, which, with many other pieces, is withheld from the present volume. To draw the attention of the public to insignificance would be deservedly rep robated; and another reason, though not of equal consequence, may be given in the following couplet: "Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a Butterfly upon a wheel? -POPE, Prologue to the Satires. [See the lines "On a Change of Masters at ! Great Public School," p. 6.] |