BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art,
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of
pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors :-
No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair Love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever, or else swoon to death.
HEY say that thou wert lovely on thy bier,
More lovely than in life; that when the thrall
Of earth was loosed, it seemed as though a pall
Of years were lifted, and thou didst appear,
Such as of old amidst thy home's calm sphere
Thou sat'st, a kindly Presence felt by all
In joy or grief, from morn to evening-fall,
The peaceful Genius of that mansion dear.
Was it the craft of all-persuading Love
That wrought this marvel? or is Death indeed
A mighty master, gifted from above
With alchemy benign, to wounded hearts
Minist'ring thus, by quaint and subtle arts,
Strange comfort, whereon after-thought may feed?
TO THE SOUTH AMERICAN PATRIOTS,
ON THE DISPERSION OF THE LATE EXPEDITION FROM SPAIN: APRIL, 1819.
EJOICE, ye heroes! Freedom's old ally,
Unchanging Nature, who hath seen the powers
Of thousand tyrannies decline like flowers,
Your triumph aids with eldest sympathy:-
The breeze hath swept again the stormy sky
That wooed Athenian waves with tenderest kiss
And breathed, in glorious rage, o'er Salamis !
Leaguing with deathless chiefs, whose spirits high
Shared in its freedom-now, from long repose
It wakes to dash unmastered Ocean's foam
O'er the proud navies of your tyrant foes;
Nor shall it cease in ancient might to roam,
Till it hath borne your contest's glorious close
To every breast where freedom finds a home.
ON THE DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE.
'HO shall lament to know thy aching head
Hath found its pillow ?-that in long repose
Great Death, the noblest of thy kingly foes,
Hath laid thee, and, with sacred veil outspread,
Guards thee from basest insults? Thou hast led
A solitary course,―among the great
A regal hermitress, despoiled of state,
Or mocked and fretted by one tattered shred
Of melancholy grandeur: thou didst wed
Only to be more mournfully alone!
But now, thy sad regalities o'erthrown,
No more an alien from the common fate,
Thou hast one human blessing for thine own-
A place of rest in Nature's kindliest bed.
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD 1795-1854
TO CHARLES DICKENS,
ON HIS "OLIVER TWIST."
OT only with the Author's happiest praise
Thy work should be rewarded: 'tis akin
To Deeds of men who, scorning ease to win
A blessing for the wretched, pierce the maze
Which heedless ages spread around the ways
Where fruitful Sorrow tracks its parent Sin;
Content to listen to the wildest din
Of passion, and on fellest shapes to gaze,
So they may earn the power which intercedes
With the bright world and melts it; for within
Wan Childhood's squalid haunts, where basest needs.
Make tyranny more bitter, at thy call
An angel face with patient sweetness pleads
For infant suffering to the heart of all.
HE fame of those pure bards whose fancies lie
Like glorious clouds in summer's calmest even,
Fringing the western skirts of darkening heaven,
And sprinkled o'er with hues of rainbow dye,
Awakes no voice of thunder, which may vie
With mighty chiefs' renown ;-from ages gone,
In low undying strain it lengthens on,
Earth's greenest solitudes with joy to fill,—
Felt breathing in the silence of the sky,
Or trembling in the gush of new-born rill,
Or whispering o'er the lake's undimpled breast;
Yet blest to live when trumpet notes are still,
To wake a pulse of earth-born ecstasy
In the deep bosom of eternal rest.
HEN we were idlers with the loitering rills,
The need of human love we little noted:
Our love was nature; and the peace that floated
On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills,
To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills:
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted,
That, wisely doating, asked not why it doated,
And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills.
But now I find how dear thou wert to me;
That man is more than half of nature's treasure,
Of that fair beauty which no eye can see,
Of that sweet music which no ear can measure;
And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure,
The hills sleep on in their eternity.
WHAT was 't awakened first the untried ear
Of that sole man who was all human kind?–
Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind,
Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere?
The four mellifluous streams which flowed so near,
Their lulling murmurs all in one combined?
The note of bird unnamed? The startled hind
Bursting the brake-in wonder, not in fear,
Of her new lord? Or did the holy ground
Send forth mysterious melody to greet
The gracious pressure of immaculate feet?
Did viewless seraphs rustle all around,
Making sweet music out of air as sweet?
Or his own voice awake him with its sound?
HITHER is gone the wisdom and the power
That ancient sages scattered with the notes
Of thought-suggesting lyres? The music floats
In the void air; even at this breathing hour,
In every cell and every blooming bower
The sweetness of old lays is hovering still;
But the strong soul, the self-constraining will,
The rugged root that bare the winsome flower
Is weak and withered. Were we like the Fays
That sweetly nestle in the foxglove bells,
Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipped shells
Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays,
Then might our pretty modern Philomels
Sustain our spirits with their roundelays.
LONG time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and waking,
I waked to sleep no more; at once o'ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is gray,
For I have lost the race I never ran :
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, though I be old:
Time is my debtor for my years untold.
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