TO THOMAS MOORE. WRITTEN THE EVENING BEFORE HIS VISIT TO MR. LEIGH HUNT Oн you, who in all names can tickle the town, But now to my letter-to yours 'tis an answer— May not get us lodgings within the same palace! I suppose that to-night you're engaged with some codgers, [First published in 1830.] IMPROMPTU, IN REPLY TO A FRIEND. WHEN, from the heart where Sorrow sits, And o'er the changing aspect flits, And clouds the brow, or fills the eye; And droop within their silent cell.56 September, 1813. SONNET, TO GENEVRA. THINE eyes blue tenderness, thy long fair hair, And the wan lustre of thy features-caught From contemplation--where serenely wrought, Seems Sorrow's softness charm'd from its despairHave thrown such speaking sadness in thine air, That-but I know thy blessed bosom fraught With mines of unalloy'd and stainless thoughtI should have deem'd thee doom'd to earthly care. With such an aspect, by his colours blent, When from his beauty-breathing pencil born, (Except that thou hast nothing to repent) The Magdalen of Guido saw the morn Such seem'st thou-but how much more excellent! With nought Remorse can claim-nor Virtue scorn. December 17, 1813.57 SONNET, TO THE SAME. THY cheek is pale with thought, but not from woe, Gleams like a seraph from the sky descending, December 17, 1813. FROM THE PORTUGUESE "TU MI CHAMAS." IN moments to delight devoted, "My life!" with tenderest tone, you cry; Dear words! on which my heart had doted, If youth could neither fade nor die. To death even hours like these must roll, ANOTHER VERSION. You call me still your life.-Oh! change the word- THE DEVIL'S DRIVE; AN UNFINISHED RHAPSODY.58 THE Devil return'd to hell by two, When he dined on some homicides done in ragoût, "And what shall I ride in?" quoth Lucifer then"If I follow'd my taste, indeed, I should mount in a wagon of wounded men, But these will be furnish'd again and again, And watch that no souls shall be poach'd away. "I have a state-coach at Carlton House, A chariot in Seymour Place; But they're lent to two friends, who make me amends, By driving my favourite pace : And they handle their reins with such a grace, I have something for both at the end of their race. "So now for the earth to take my chance:" And making a jump from Moscow to France, And rested his hoof on a turnpike road, No very great way from a bishop's abode. But first as he flew, I forgot to say, And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare, And he gazed with delight from its growing height, Nor his work done half as well: For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead, Then loudly, and wildly, and long laugh'd he: But the softest note that soothed his ear And she look'd to heaven with that frenzied air, And, stretch'd by the wall of a ruin'd hut, And the carnage begun, when resistance is done, But the Devil has reach'd our cliffs so white, If his eyes were good, he but saw by night But he made a tour, and kept a journal Of all the wondrous sights nocturnal, And he sold it in shares to the Men of the Row, Who bid pretty well-but they cheated him, though! The Devil first saw, as he thought, the Mail, So instead of a pistol he cock'd his tail, So he sat him on his box again, And bade him have no fear, But be true to his club, and stanch to his rein, His brothel, and his beer; "Next to seeing a lord at the council board, I would rather see him here." 勞 * The Devil gat next to Westminster, * And he turn'd to "the room" of the Commons; But he heard, as he purposed to enter in there, That "the Lords" had received a summons; And he thought, as a "quondam aristocrat," He might peep at the peers, though to hear them were flat; He saw the Lord Liverpool seemingly wise, The Lord Westmoreland certainly silly, |