DESPONDENCY. OPPRESS'D with grief, oppress'd with care, A burden more than I can bear, I set me down and sigh: To wretches such as I! What sorrows YET may pierce me through, Too justly I may fear! Still caring, despairing, Must be my bitter doom; My woes here shall close ne'er, Happy, ye sons of busy life, Who equal to the bustling strife, Even when the wished end's denied, Meet every sad returning night, I listless, yet restless, Find every prospect vain. How blest the Solitary's lot, Who, all-forgetting, all forgot, Within his humble cell, The cavern wild, with tangling roots, Or, haply, to his evening thought, The ways of men are distant brought, A faint collected dream: While praising and raising His thoughts to heaven on high, As wand'ring, meand'ring, He views the solemn sky. Than I, no lonely hermit plac'd, The lucky moment to improve, And JUST to stop, and JUST to move, But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys, Which I too keenly taste, The Solitary can despise, Can want and yet be blest! He needs not, he heeds not, Or human love or hate, Oh! enviable, early days, When dancing thoughtless pleasure's maze, How ill exchang'd for riper times, Of others or my own. Ye tiny elves, that guiltless sport That active man engage; Of dim-declining AGE. BURNS. ODE TO CONSUMPTION. OH! thou most fatal of Pandora's train, O'er life's soft springs thy venom dost diffuse; Oft I've beheld thee in the glow of youth, Hid 'neath the blushing roses which there bloom'd, And dropp'd a tear; for then thy cank'ring tooth I knew would never stay, till all consum'd But, oh! what sorrow did I feel, as swift, Through fair Lucina's breast of whitest snow, Though still intelligence beam'd in the glance, Yet soon did languid listlessness advance, And soon she calmly sunk in death's repugnant trance! Even when her end was swiftly drawing near, KIRKE WHITE. THE SPECTRE. WHEN night outspreads her sombre shade, There stalks from yonder hillock's height, It moves: and bats a refuge seek Beneath the grave's new risen mound, The raven opes her ebon beak To croak a hoarse and dismal sound! The screech-owl screams a shrill lament, And watch-dogs in their kennels cower, With thunder's roll the air is rent, In that confused and dreaded hour! ANON. WOMAN'S FIDELITY. GONE from her cheek is the summer bloom, And the spirit that sate on her soft blue eye And the smile that play'd on her lip hath fled, |