After some thirty years, spent in such bliss As this earth can afford, where still we miss Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old As we whom thou hast left! That wish was cold. O far more aged and wrinkled, till folks say, Looking upon thee reverend in decay,
"This Dame, for length of days, and virtues rare, With her respected Grandsire may compare.” Grandchild of that respected Isola,
Thou shouldst have had about thee on this day Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate
Their Pride grown up to woman's grave estate. But they have died, and left thee, to advance Thy fortunes how thou mayest, and owe to chance
The friends which nature grudged. And thou wilt find,
Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind
To thee and thy deservings. That last strain Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again Another cheerful goblet, while I say "Health, and twice health, to our lost Isola."
By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk; The fair Maria, as a vestal, still;
And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. With soft and Lady speech the first applies The mild correctives that to grace belong To her redundant friend, who her defies With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, What music from your happy discord rises, While your companion hearing each, and seeing, Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes; This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike, That harmonies may be in things unlike!
I was not trained in Academic bowers, And to those learned streams I nothing owe Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; Mine have been anything but studious hours. Yet can I fancy, wandering mid thy towers, 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; And my 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. What praise is thine, O mistress of the passions; 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 is 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 HEC 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 blessings; 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 Leaves 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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