ANACREONTICS.-A FRAGMENT.-SONNETS.-SKIPPING-ROPE. 247 OCCASIONAL POEMS. NO MORE.* Oя sad No More! Oh sweet No More! By a mossed brookbank on a stone And both my eyes gushed out with tears. Surely all pleasant things had gone before, Lowburied fathom deep beneath with thee, NO MORE! ANACREONTICS. WITH roses musky breathed, With a silken cord I bound it.. A FRAGMENT. WHERE is the Giant of the Sun, which stood In the midnoon the glory of old Rhodes, A perfect Idol with profulgent brows Farsheening down the purple seas to those Who sailed from Mizraim underneath the star Named of the Dragon-and between whose limbs Of brassy vastness broadblown Argosies Drave into haven? Yet endure unscathed Of changeful cycles the great Pyramids Broadbased amid the fleeting sands, and sloped Into the slumbrous summer noon; but where, Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscerned? Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile? Thy shadowing Idols in the solitudes, Awful Memnonian countenances calm Looking athwart the burning flats, far off Seen by the highnecked camel on the verge Journeying southward? Where are thy monuments Piled by the strong and sunborn Anakim Over their crowned brethren ON and ОPH? Thy Memnon when his peaceful lips are kist With earliest rays, that from his mother's eyes Flow over the Arabian bay, no more Breathes low into the charmed ears of morn Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath gone The Pharoahs are no more: somewhere in death They sleep with staring eyes and gilded lips, Wrapped round with spiced cerements in old grots Rockhewn and sealed for ever. [down: This and the two following poems are from the Gem, a literary annual for 1831. SONNET.* Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh. Like a lone cypress, through the twilight hoary, Into my night, when thou art far away SONNET.* CHECK every outflash, every ruder sally Of thought and speech; speak low and give up wholly Thy spirit to mild-minded melancholy; And all the haunted place is dark and holy. THE SKIPPING-ROPE.t How lightly whirls the skipping-rope! Go, get you gone, you muse and mope- Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope, There, take it, take my skipping-rope, THE NEW TIMON AND THE POETS.‡ We know him, out of Shakspeare's art, And those fine curses which he spoke; The old Timon, with his noble heart, That, strongly loathing, greatly broke. Friendship's Offering, 1833. + Omitted from the edition of 1842. 248 NEW TIMON.-AFTER-THOUGHT.-BRITONS, GUARD YOUR OWN. STANZAS.* WHAT time I wasted youthful hours, As towards the gracious light I bow'd, They seem'd high palaces and proud, Hid now and then with sliding cloud. He said, "The labor is not small; SONNET TO WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY.t FAREWELL, Macready, since to-night we part. Full-handed thunders often have confest Thy power, well-used to move the public breast. We thank thee with one voice, and from the heart Farewell, Macready: since this night we part. Go, take thine honors home: rank with the best, Garrick, and statelier Kemble, and the rest Who made a nation purer thro' their art. Thine is it, that our Drama did not die, Nor flicker down to brainless pantomime, And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see. Farewell, Macready; moral, grave, sublime. Our Shakspeare's bland and universal eye Dwells pleased, thro' twice a hundred years, ou BRITONS, GUARD YOUR OWN.‡ RISE, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead; [thee. Read by Mr. John Forster at a dinner given to Mr. Macready March 1, 1851, on his retirement from the stage. The Examiner, 1852. THE THIRD OF FEBRUARY, 1852.-HANDS ALL ROUND. Would unrelenting, Kill all dissenting, Till we were left to fight for truth alone. Britons, guard your own. Call home your ships across Biscayan tides, To blow the battle from their oaken sides. Why waste they yonder Their idle thunder? Why stay they there to guard a foreign throne? Seamen, guard your own. We were the best of marksmen long ago, We won old battles with our strength, the bow. Now practice, yeomen, Like those bowmen, Till your balls fly as their shafts have flown. Yeomen, guard your own. His soldier-ridden Highness might incline To take Sardinia, Belgium, or the Rhine: Shall we stand idle, Nor seek to bridle His rude aggressions, till we stand alone? Make their cause your own. Should he land here, and for one hour prevail, There must no man go back to bear the tale: No man to bear it Swear it! we swear it! Although we fight the banded world alone, We swear to guard our own. THE THIRD OF FEBRUARY, 1852.* My lords, we heard you speak; you told us all That England's honest censure went too far; That our free press should cease to brawl, Not sting the fiery Frenchman into war. It was an ancient privilege, my lords, To fling whate'er we felt, not fearing, into words. We love not this French God, this child of Hell, Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise; But though we love kind Peace so well, We dare not, e'en by silence, sanction lies. It might safe be our censures to withdraw; And yet, my lords, not well; there is a higher law. As long as we remain, we must speak free, Though all the storm of Europe on us break; No little German state are we, But the one voice in Europe; we must speak; That if to-night our greatness were struck dead, There might remain some record of the things wo said. If you be fearful, then must we be bold. Our Britain can not salve a tyrant o'er. Better the waste Atlantic roll'd On her and us and ours forevermore. What! have we fought for freedom from our prime, At last to dodge and palter with a public crime? Shall we fear him? our own we never feared. From our first Charles by force we wrung our claims, Prick'd by the Papal spur, we rear'd, And flung the burthen of the second James. I say we never fear'd! and as for these, We broke them on the land, we drove them on the [seas. And you, my lords, you make the people muse, Were those your sires who fought at Lewes ? Is this the manly strain of Runnymede ? O fall'n nobility, that, overawed, 249 Would lisp in honey'd whispers of this monstrous fraud. We feel, at least, that silence here were sin. Have left the last free race with naked coasts! They knew the precious things they had to guard: For us, we will not spare the tyrant one hard word. Though niggard throats of Manchester may bawl, What England was, shall her true sons forget? We are not cotton-spinners all, But some love England, and her honor yet. And these in our Thermopylæ shall stand, And hold against the world the honor of the land. HANDS ALL ROUND.* FIRST drink a health, this solemn night, Who loves his native country best. God the tyrant's hope confound! To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends, And the great name of England, round and round. A health to Europe's honest men! Heaven guard them from her tyrants' jails! From wronged Poerio's noisome den, From ironed limbs and tortured nails! Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods. God the tyrant's cause confound! What health to France, if France be she, But fire, to blast, the hopes of men. God the tyrant's cause confound! To France, the wiser France, we drink, my friends, And the great name of England, round and round. Gigantic daughter of the West, We drink to thee across the flood, God the tyrant's cause confound! To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends, O rise, our strong Atlantic sons, When war against our freedom springs! FOUR years ago Mr. Sullivan requested me to write a little song-cycle, German fashion, for him to exercise his art upon, He had been very successful in setting such old songs as "Orpheus with his lute," and I drest up for him, partly in the old style, a puppet whose almost only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance to Mr. Sullivan's instrument. I am sorry that my four-year-old puppet should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of these days; but the music is now completed, and I am bound by my promise. |