Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest,
To rob the raven's ancient nest.

Their humble porch with honied flowers The curling woodbine's shade embowers: From the small garden's thymy mound Their bees in busy swarms resound: Nor fell Disease, before his time, Hastes to consume life's golden prime: But when their temples long have wore The silver crown of tresses hoar; As studious still calm peace to keep, Beneath a flowery turf they sleep.

THE SUICIDE.

[IBID.]

BENEATH the beech, whose branches bare,

Smit with the lightning's livid glare,

O'erhang the craggy road,

And whistle hollow as they wave;

Within a solitary grave,

A Slayer of himself holds his accurs'd abode.

Lour'd the grim morn, in murky dyes
Damp mists involv'd the scowling skies,
And dim'd the struggling day;

As by the brook, that lingering laves
Yon rush-grown moor with sable waves,
Full of the dark resolve he took his sullen way.

I mark'd his desultory pace,

His gestures strange, and varying face,
With many a mutter'd sound;

And ah! too late aghast I view'd

The reeking blade, the hand embrued;

He fell, and groaning grasp'd in agony the ground.

Full many a melancholy night

He watch'd the slow return of light;
And sought the powers of sleep,

To spread a momentary calm

O'er his sad couch, and in the balm

Of bland oblivion's dews his burning eyes to steep.

Full oft, unknowing and unknown,

He wore his endless noons alone,

Amid th' autumnal wood:

Oft was he wont, in hasty fit,

Abrupt the social board to quit,

And gaze with eager glance upon the tumbling flood,

Beckoning the wretch to torments new,
Despair, for ever in his view,

A spectre pale, appear'd;

While, as the shades of eve arose,

And brought the day's unwelcome close,

More horrible and huge her giant shape she rear'd.

'Is this,' mistaken Scorn will cry,

Is this the youth whose genius high
Could build the genuine rhyme?
Whose bosom mild the favouring Muse
Had stor❜d with all her ample views,
Parent of fairest deeds, and purposes sublime.'

Ah! from the Muse that bosom mild
By treacherous magic was beguil❜d,
To strike the deathful blow:
She fill'd his soft ingenuous mind
With many a feeling too refin'd,

And rous'd to livelier pangs his wakeful sense of wo.

Though doom'd hard penury to prove,
And the sharp stings of hopeless love:
To griefs congenial prone,

More wounds than nature gave he knew,
While misery's form his fancy drew

In dark ideal hues, and horrors not its own.

Then wish not o'er his earthy tomb
The baleful nightshade's lurid bloom
To drop its deadly dew:

Nor oh! forbid the twisted thorn,

That rudely binds his turf forlorn,

With Spring's green-swelling buds to vegetate anew.

What though no marble-piled bust
Adorn his desolated dust,

With speaking sculpture wrought?
Pity shall woo the weeping Nine,
To build a visionary shrine,

Hung with unfading flowers, from fairy regions brought.

What though refus'd each chaunted rite?
Here viewless mourners shall delight
To touch the shadowy shell;

And Petrarch's harp, that wept the doom

Of Laura, lost in early bloom,

In many a pensive pause shall seem to ring his knell.

To sooth a lone, unhallow'd shade,
This votive dirge sad duty paid,

Within an ivied nook :

Sudden the half-sunk orb of day

More radiant shot its parting ray,

And thus a cherub-voice my charm'd attention took:

Forbear, fond bard, thy partial praise;

Nor thus for guilt in specious lays

The wreath of glory twine:
In vain with hues of gorgeous glow

Gay Fancy gives her vest to flow,

Unless Truth's matron-hand the floating folds confine.

'Just Heaven, man's fortitude to prove, Permits through life at large to rove

The tribes of hell-born Wo:

Yet the same power that wisely sends
Life's fiercest ills, indulgent lends

Religion's golden shield to break th' embattled foe.

'Her aid divine had lull'd to rest
Yon foul self-murd'rer's throbbing breast,

And stay'd the rising storm:

Had bade the sun of hope appear

To gild his darken'd hemisphere,

And give the wonted bloom to nature's blasted form.

Vain man! 'tis Heaven's prerogative To take, what first it deign'd to give, Thy tributary breath:

In awful expectation plac'd,

Await thy doom, nor impious haste

To pluck from God's right hand his instruments of death.'