Want, gaunt and grim,
And misery my lot?
Great God! who could have thought,
A few short years ago,
That to the brim
With these my cup of sorrow would be fill'd?
But since thou hast in thy pure wisdom will'd
It to be so,
No anodyne, save what thou wilt, I crave;
And should it be the quiet of the grave,
Receive, receive, O God! the spirit erst thou gave.
Life, what art thou,
That I should cling to thee,
With that tenacity
Which many fondly do?
My burning brow,
My aching head and wildly beating heart,
Would rather woo,
With unsubdued desire, the welcome dart
And chilling damps of death, than linger here,
Without a friend my lonesomeness to cheer,
Or mingle in my own the sympathetic tear,
Whene'er I cast
E'en but a moment's glance
O'er memory's wide expanse,
How painful in the extreme
To feel the joyous past
Spring up in contrast to the present woes,
That wing the dark and melancholy close
Of my young spirit's dream.
Away! away! ye fitful glimmerings
Of sunny hours and early cherish'd things,
For ye but prompt my heart to sinful murmurings
I'm not afraid,
Tho' laid in weakness low,
To meet my final foe
In his most ghastly form
E'en though array'd
In hell's most hideous panoply of war,
And wheel'd by lightnings in its sulphrous car-
Rearing his bony arm,
With fleshless palm in grasp of arrowry,
A thousand shafts to hurl at once on me;
For who would hate the hand that strikes their fetters free?
Life's hazy midnight feel
Athwart my vision steal,
With dull enfever'd heat;
My lips are parch'd and dry;
My leathern tongue scarce serves me to express
The medley of my cares and happiness ;
My pulses beat
With langour now; again they furious fly,
By fits and starts, like streamers of the sky;
Before my eyes, o'erglazed in burning brine,
Strange visions flit no mortal may define;
Sharp pains shoot through each weak and rigid limb→→
My reason reels-my brain begins to swim ;
Contracting tremors shrivel up my frame,
Which death will rob of e'en its human name.
I feel thee, death-oh! haste and let me quaff
Thy Lethean draught; and thou, my epitaph,
Oblivion write upon the mystic leaf,
Where none may trace thy viewless hieroglyph ;
Farewell, farewell, ungrateful world farewell!
How sweet the music of thy breaking spell!
But, oh how grating had I sat me down
A soulless fatalist beneath the frown
Of madcap fortune; nay, my broken heart
Disdain'd to compromise at folly's mart
With guilty pleasure-thus it chose "the better part.”
TO A LADY NEGLECTING HER LYRE.
Oh, lady! o'er thy tuneful lyre
Again thy fingers fling,
And woo the Muse's heavenly fire
From each neglected string:
Inspired with sweet Cecilian flame,
Haste haste and sweep the sacred frame;
And fire the germs of song that rest
Within thy bosom unexpress't.
Say not that now the "fickle jade"
Bestows no smiles on thee,
And wilfully withholds the aid
She proffer'd full and free;
For still, from 'mid Parnassian bowers,
She culls for fav'rites fav'rite flowers,
And waves them in the bays of fame,
To deck their time-enhistoried name.
Awake, awake the slumb'ring chords-
Outpour thy soul in song-
And blend the music-wedded words
On swelling echo's tongue;
Strike loud and deep, or quick or slow,
Or softly sweet, or mildly low;
Strike as thou wilt, regale our ear
With sounds that saints may pause to hear.
Uprouse thee, then, desponding one,
Distrustful all the while
Of her who hides behind a frown
A sympathetic smile;
On, on! she calls thee to the height,
Nor check thy spirit's soaring flight;
Sure thou wilt find the "fickle jade"
A patron spirit,-"Go-a-head."
'Tis a sweet nook of solitude and shade
Beside the churchyard stile, where the old elm
Uprears its head above the neighbouring trees ;
And, through a line of long-remember'd years,
Hath stood the same proud "monarch of the wood,"
Unharm'd by winter's fiercest blasts, unscath'd By meteor ball, or blasting thunderbolt.
One summer eve, beneath its spreading boughs
We stretch'd us down, and for our pillow took
A stubborn root obtruding from the soil;
And there we lay-half listless, half intent-
With wavering purpose, whether to indulge
In slothful ease, asleep upon the sward,
Or o'er a book to while the passing hours,
Or, with a careful thrift of fleeting Time,
To nerve us up to active industry,
And give full rein to meditative thought.
While thus our mind in undecision sway'd,
A fitful zephyr stirr'd the slumb'ring leaves-
As a pure vestal stirs her holy lips
In hymns of praise at day's delightful close-
And as their whispers died into the calm,
We from our pleasing reverie awoke,
And, on the spur, selected for our theme
The ancient Elm, with memories ever green.
Now, to our sentient eye it calleth up
The joyous past with all its bright'ning scenes,
Our early years with all their rapt delights,
We've left behind with measure of regret :
Here at its foot we play'd our simple games,
A frequent truant from the village school-
Proof 'gainst persuasion, threat, or punishment,
To mend our faults and be a better boy-
Not from mere waywardness, but that our tasks
Were far less tempting than our idle sport.
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