And fair to sight is she-and still
Each day doth sightlier grow,
Upon the ruins of the Ape,
My ancient play-fellow!

The tale of Sphinx, and Theban jests,
I true in me perceive;

I suffer riddles; death from dark
Enigmas I receive:

Whilst a hid being I pursue,

That lurks in a new shape,
My darling in herself I miss-
And, in my Ape, THE APE.

In tabulam eximii pictoris B. HAYDONI, in quâ Solymai, adveniente Domino, palmas in viâ prosternentes mirâ arte depinguntur

(1820)

Quid vult iste equitans? et quid oclit ista virorum
Palmifera ingens turba, et vox tremebunda Hosanna,
Hosanna Christo semper semperque canamus.

Palma fuit Senior pictor celeberrimus olim ;
Sed palmam cedat, modò si foret ille superstes,
Palma, Haydone, tibi: tu palmas omnibus aufers.
Palma negata macrum, donataque reddit opimum.
Si simul incipiat cum famâ increscere corpus,
Tu citò pinguesces, fies et, amicule, obesus.
Affectat lauros pictores atque poetæ

Sin laurum invideant (sed quis tibi ?) laurigerentes,
Pro lauro palmâ viridante tempora cingas.

CARLAGNULUS.

Translation of the Latin Verses on Mr. Haydon's Picture

What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing
Him on his way with palms, Hosannas singing?

Hosanna to the Christ, HEAVEN-EARTH-should still be ringing,

In days of old, old Palma won renown:

But Palma's self must yield the painter's crown,

Haydon, to thee. Thy palm put every other down.

If Flaccus' sentence with the truth agree,

That "palms awarded make men plump to be,"

Friend Horace, Haydon soon in bulk shall match with thee.

Painters with poets for the laurel vie :

But should the laureat band thy claims deny,

Wear thou thy own green palm, Haydon, triumphantly.

SONNET

To Miss Burney, on her Character of Blanch in “Country Neighbours," a Tale

(1820)

Bright spirits have arisen to grace the BURNEY name,
And some in letters, some in tasteful arts,

In learning some have borne distinguished parts;
Or sought through science of sweet sounds their fame:
And foremost she, renowned for many a tale

Of faithful love perplexed, and of that good
Old man, who, as CAMILLA's guardian, stood

In obstinate virtue clad like coat of mail.
Nor dost thou, SARAH, with unequal pace

Her steps pursue. The pure romantic vein
No gentler creature ever knew to feign
Than thy fine Blanch, young with an elder grace,
In all respects without rebuke or blame,
Answering the antique freshness of her name.

TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR

(1820)

Your easy Essays indicate a flow,

Dear Friend, of brain which we may elsewhere seek ;
And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe,
That Wednesday is the sweetest of the week.
Such observation, wit, and sense, are shewn,
We think the days of Bickerstaff returned;
And that a portion of that oil you own,
In his undying midnight lamp which burned.

I would not lightly bruise old Priscian's head,
Or wrong the rules of grammar understood;
But, with the leave of Priscian be it said,
The Indicative is your Potential Mood.
Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translator-
H[unt], your best title yet is INDICATOR.

ON SEEING MRS. K- B——, AGED UPWARDS
OF EIGHTY, NURSE AN INFANT

A sight like this might find apology
In worlds unsway'd by our Chronology;
As Tully says, (the thought's in Plato)—
"To die is but to go to Cato."

Of this world Time is of the essence,-
A kind of universal presence;

And therefore poets should have made him
Not only old, as they've pourtray'd him,
But young, mature, and old-all three
In one-a sort of mystery—

('Tis hard to paint abstraction pure.)
Here young-there old-and now mature-
Just as we see some old book-print,
Not to one scene its hero stint ;
But, in the distance, take occasion
To draw him in some other station.
Here this prepost'rous union seems
A kind of meeting of extremes.
Ye may not live together. Mean ye
To pass that gulf that lies between ye
Of fourscore years, as we skip ages
In turning o'er historic pages?
Thou dost not to this age belong :
Thou art three generations wrong:

Old Time has miss'd thee: there he tarries !

Go on to thy contemporaries!

Give the child up. To see thee kiss him

Is a compleat anachronism.

Nay, keep him. It is good to see

Race link'd to race, in him and thee.

The child repelleth not at all

Her touch as uncongenial,

But loves the old Nurse like another-
Its sister-or its natural mother;
And to the nurse a pride it gives

To think (though old) that still she lives
With one, who may not hope in vain
To live her years all o'er again!

TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING (By Mary Lamb. ? 1827)

Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears,
And call up smiles into thy pallid face,

Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race :

In few brief months thou hast done the work of years.
To young beginnings natural are these fears.

1

A right good scholar shalt thou one day be,
And that no distant one; when even she,
Who now to thee a star far off appears,
That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid-
The language-loving Sarah 1 of the Lake-
Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make
Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid,
A recompense most rich for all their pains,
Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.

LINES

Addressed to Lieut. R. W. H. Hardy, R.N., on the Perusal of his Volume of Travels in the Interior of Mexico

'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair,
Secure at home, to read descriptions rare
Of venturous traveller in savage climes ;

His hair-breadth 'scapes, toil, hunger-and sometimes
The merrier passages that, like a foil

To set off perils past, sweetened that toil,

And took the edge from danger; and I look
With such fear-mingled pleasure thro' thy book,

1 Daughter of S. T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the Abipones. [Note in Blackwood.]

Adventurous Hardy! Thou a diver1 art,

But of no common form; and for thy part

Of the adventure, hast brought home to the nation
Pearls of discovery-jewels of observation.

ENFIELD, January, 1830.

LINES

[For a Monument Commemorating the Sudden Death by Drowning of a Family of Four Sons and Two Daughters]

1

(1831)

Man weeps the doom,

Tears are for lighter griefs.

That seals a single victim to the tomb.

But when Death riots-when, with whelming sway,
Destruction sweeps a family away;

When infancy and youth, a huddled mass,
All in an instant to oblivion pass,

And parents' hopes are crush'd; what lamentation
Can reach the depth of such a desolation?
Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up and trust,
That HE who lays their mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal spirit in his keeping-
In Jesus' sight they are not dead but sleeping.

TO C. ADERS, ESQ.

On his Collection of Paintings by the old German Masters

(1831)

Friendliest of men, ADERS, I never come
Within the precincts of this sacred Room,
But I am struck with a religious fear,

Which says

"Let no profane eye enter here."
With imagery from Heav'n the walls are clothed,
Making the things of Time seem vile and loathed.
Spare Saints, whose bodies seem sustain'd by Love,
With Martyrs old in meek procession move.

Captain Hardy practised this art with considerable success. [Note in Athenæum.]