Then for a beam of joy to light In Memory's sad and wakeful eye! Shall song its witching cadence roll? Yea, even the tenderest air repeat, What visions rise! to charm, to melt! But thou serenely silent art! By heaven and love was taught to lend A milder solace to the heart, The sacred image of a friend. All is not lost! if, yet possest, To me that sweet memorial shine:- Melt o'er the loved departed form, She looks! she lives! this tranced hour Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid A treasure to my soul has given, Where Beauty's canonized shade No spectre forms of pleasure fled, Thy soft'ning, sweet'ning tints restore ; For thou canst give us back the dead, E'en in the loveliest looks they wore. Then blest be Nature's guardian Muse, Whose hand her perish'd grace redeems! Whose tablet of a thousand hues The mirror of creation seems. From Love began thy high descent; And call thee brightest of the Nine! DRINKING-SONG OF MUNICH. SWEET Iser! were thy sunny realm And flowery gardens mine, Thy waters I would shade with elm To prop the tender vine: My golden flagons I would fill With rosy draughts from every hill; And under every myrtle bower, My gay companions should prolong The laugh, the revel, and the song, To many an idle hour. Like rivers crimson'd with the beam Of yonder planet bright, Our balmy cups should ever stream No care should touch the mellow heart, For wine can triumph over woe, And Love and Bacchus, brother powers, Could build in Iser's sunny bowers A paradise below. LINES ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER. Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains; From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal. Is this Improvement?-where the human breed Nor call that evil slight; God has not given My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde! LINES ON REVISITING CATHCART. ОH! scenes of my childhood, and dear to my heart, Then, then, every rapture was young and sincere, Ere the sunshine of bliss was bedimm'd by a tear, And a sweeter delight every scene seem'd to lend, That the mansion of peace was the house of a FRIEND. Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart, All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart; Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease, For a stranger inhabits the mansion of peace. But hush'd be the sigh that untimely complains, While Friendship and all its enchantment remains, While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime, Untainted by chance, unabated by time. THE "NAME UNKNOWN ;” IN IMITATION OF KLOPSTOCK. Or wilt thou write the "Name Unknown," Delicious Idol of my thought! Though sylph or spirit hath not taught Thy rosy blush, thy meaning eye, Are ever present to my heart; Then fly, my days, on rapid wing, A power in mystic silence seal'd, A guardian angel unreveal'd, TRAFALGAR. WHEN Frenchmen saw, with coward art, That pierced Britain's noblest heart, And quench'd her brightest star, Their shout was heard,-they triumph'd now, And thought the British oak would bow, But fiercer flamed old England's pride, LINES WRITTEN IN SICKNESS. OH, death! if there be quiet in thine arms, But strike me, ere a shriek can echo, dumb, Nor pull me downwards to mortality, When it were fitter I should take a flight But whither? Holy Pity, hear, oh hear! And lift me to some far-off skyey sphere, Where I may wander in celestial light: Might it be so-then would my spirit fear To quit the things I have so loved, when seen— The air, the pleasant sun, the summer green,Knowing how few would shed one kindly tear, Or keep in mind that I had ever been! LINES ON THE STATE OF GREECE, OCCASIONED BY BEING PRESSED TO MAKE IT A SUBJECT OF POETRY, 1827. IN Greece's cause the Muse, you deem, That wakens thought too deep for song? The Christian world has seen you, Greeks, The world has heard your widows' shrieks, The ruffian's sabre drinks your veins, The bitter choice of death or chains. Insult your pale and prostrate land. To see her unavenging ships Ride fast by Greece's funeral pile, "Tis worth a curse from Sibyl lips! "Tis matter for a demon's smile! LINES ON JAMES IV. OF SCOTLAND, WHO FELL AT THE "Twas he that ruled his country's heart But Scotland saw her James depart,' She heard his fate-she wept her grief- But this she learnt, that, ere he fell, His fellow-soldiers round his fall TO JEMIMA, ROSE, AND ELEANORE, THREE CELEBRATED SCOTTISH BEAUTIES. ADIEU, romance's heroines! Give me the nymphs, who this good hour In whose benignant eyes are beaming Such as we fancy woman's seeming, Had I been Lawrence, kings had wanted The Catholic bids fair saints befriend him; Unseal'd by you, these lips have spoken, Ye've tuned a harp whose strings were broken, So, when my fancy next refuses To twine for you a garland more, SONG. "Tis now the hour-'t is now the hour ON THE BIRTH OF HIS CHILD. My heart is with you, Bulwer! and portrays Joy be to thee, and her whose lot with thine SONG. WHEN Love came first to Earth, the Spring But Spring, departing, saw his faith Pledged to the next new-comer- Then sportive Autumn claim'd by rights For this time were his reasons— DIRGE OF WALLACE. THEY lighted a taper at the dead of night, But her brow and her bosom were damp with affright, When a death-watch beat in her lonely room, Now sing you the death-song, and loudly pray For the soul of my knight so dear; And call me a widow this wretched day, Since the warning of God is here! For night-mare rides on my strangled sleep:The lord of my bosom is doom'd to die : His valorous heart they have wounded deep; And the blood-red tears shall his country weep, For Wallace of Elderslie!" Yet knew not his country that ominous hour, Oh, it was not thus when his oaken spear And the hosts of a thousand were scatter'd like deer, When he strode on the wreck of each well-fought field With the yellow-hair'd chiefs of his native land; For his lance was not shiver'd on helmet or shieldAnd the sword that seem'd fit for Archangel to wield, Was light in his terrible hand! Yet bleeding and bound, though her Wallace wight The bugle ne'er sung to a braver knight But the day of his glory shall never depart, His head unentomb'd shall with glory be balm'd, From its blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start: Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart, A nobler was never embalm'd! SONG. My mind is my kingdom, but if thou wilt deign To sway there a queen without measure, Then come, o'er its wishes and homage to reign, And make it an empire of pleasure. Then of thoughts and emotions each mutinous crowd SONG. O CHERUB Content! at thy moss-cover'd shrine, But thy presence appears from my wishes to fly, In the pulse of my heart I have nourish'd a care O cherub Content! at thy moss-cover'd shrine, THE FRIARS OF DIJON. A TALE. WHEN honest men confess'd their sins, And paid the church genteelly, In Burgundy two capuchins Lived jovially and freely. They march'd about from place to place, And mended broken consciences, One friar was Father Boniface, And he ne'er knew disquiet, The other was lean Dominick, Whose slender form, and sallow, Would scarce have made a candlewick For Boniface's tallow. Albeit, he tippled like a fish, Though not the same potation; And mortal man ne'er clear'd a dish With nimbler mastication. Those saints without the shirts arrived, Whose supper-pot was set to boil To Jacquez and to Jacqueline. They bow'd and bless'd the dame, and then For water and a crust they crave, Quoth Jacquez, "That were sorry cheer So forth he brought a flask of rich Wine fit to feast Silenus, Alternately, the host and spouse Regaled each pardon-gauger, Who told them tales right marvellous, 'Bout churches like balloons convey'd And wells made warm, where holy maid And if their hearers gaped, I guess, Then striking up duets, the frères From these to glees and catches. At last they would have danced outright, If Jacquez had not drunk Good Night, The room was high, the host's was nigh: That monks would make a raree-show Or that two confessors would come, Shame on you, friars of orders grey, That peeping knelt, and wriggling, And when ye should have gone to pray, Betook yourselves to giggling! But every deed will have its meed: The farmer on a hone prepares His knife, a long and keen one; And talks of killing both the frères, The fat one and the lean one. To-morrow by the break of day," He orders, too, saltpetre And pickling tubs-But, reader, stay, Our host was no man-eater. The priests knew not that country-folks Meanwhile, as they perspired with dread, Had stood erect upon his head, But that their heads were shaven. "What! pickle and smoke us limb by limb? God curse him and his larders! St. Peter will bedevil him If he saltpetre friars. "Yet, Dominick, to die!--the bare Yes, Boniface, 'tis time we were "Would that, for absolution's sake, A last kind mutual flogging. "O Dominick! thy nether end Should bleed for expiation, And thou shouldst have, my dear fat friend, A glorious flagellation." But having ne'er a switch, poor souls! They bow'd like weeping willows, And told the Saints long rigmaroles Of all their peccadilloes. Yet, 'midst this penitential plight, And so they girt themselves to leap, Their host and hostess snoring. Then scamper'd off like Jehu, Fell heavy on his parts behind, That broaden'd with the plumping. There long beneath the window's sconce Upon a Chinese drawing. At length he waddled to a sty; The pigs, you'd thought for game-sake, Came round and nosed him lovingly, As if they'd known their namesake. Meanwhile the other flew to town, And with short respiration Bray'd like a donkey up and down, "Ass-ass-ass-assination!" |