STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE FIRST OF JANUARY, 1794.
COME melancholy moralizer, come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
With me engarland now
The sepulchre of Time !
Come, moralizer, to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the departed days;
For well the funeral song
Befits this solemn hour.
But hark! even now the merry bells ring round With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
This consecrated day,
To mirth and indolence.
Mortal! whilst fortune with benignant hand
Fills to the brim thy cup of happiness,
Whilst her unclouded sun
Illumes thy summer day,
Canst thou rejoice, rejoice that time flies fast? That night shall shadow soon thy summer sun ? That swift the stream of years
If thou hast wealth to gratify each wish,
If power be thine, remember what thou art!
Remember thou art man,
And death thine heritage!
Hast thou known love! doth beauty's better sun Cheer thy fond heart with no capricious smile,
Her eye all eloquence,
All harmony her voice?
Oh state of happiness!-hark how the gale Moans deep and hollow o'er the leafless grove !
Winter is dark and cold;
Where now the charms of soring!
Sayest thou that fancy paints the future scene
In hues too sombrous? that the dark-stoled maid
With stern and frowning front
Appals the shuddering soul?
And wouldst thou bid me court her fairy form
When, as she sports her in some happier mood,
Her many-coloured robes
Dance varying to the sun?
Ah! vainly does the pilgrim, whose long road Leads o'er the barren mountain's storm-vext height,
With anxious gaze survey
The quiet vale, far off.
Oh there are those who love the pensive song,
To whom all sounds of mirth are dissonant!
They at this solemn hour
Will love to contemplate !
For hopeless sorrow hails the lapse of time,
Rejoicing when the fading orb of day
Is sunk again in night,
That one day more is gone.
And he who bears affliction's heavy load
With patient piety, well pleased he knows
The world a pilgrimage,
The grave the inn of rest
WRITTEN ON SUNDAY MORNING.
Go thou and seek the house of prayer!
I to the woodlands wend, and there
In lovely nature see the God of love.
The swelling organ's peal
Wakes not my soul to zeal,
Like the wild music of the wind-swept grove.
The gorgeous altar and the mystic vest
Rouse not such ardour in my breast,
As where the noon-tide beam
Flashed from the broken stream,
Quick vibrates on the dazzled sight;
Or where the cloud-suspended rain
Sweeps in shadows o'er the plain;
Or when reclining on the cliff's huge height
I mark the billows burst in silver light.
Go thou and seek the house of prayer!
I to the woodlands shall repair,
Feed with all nature's charms mine eyes,
And hear all nature's melodies.
The primrose bank shall there dispense
Faint fragrance to the awakened sense;
The morning beams that life and joy impart,
Shall with their influence warm my heart,
And the full tear that down my cheek will steal,
Shall speak the prayer of praise I feel!
Go thou and seek the house of prayer!
I to the woodlands bend my way,
And meet religion there.
She needs not haunt the high-arched dome to pray Where storied windows dim the doubtful day: With liberty she loves to rove,
Wide o'er the heathy hill or cowslipt dale; Or seek the shelter of the embowering grove,
Or with the streamlet wind along the vale. Sweet are these scenes to her; and when the night Pours in the north her silver streams of light, She woos reflection in the silent gloom, And ponders on the world to come.
ON MY OWN MINIATURE PICTURE,
TAKEN AT TWO YEARS OF AGE.
AND I was once like this! that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes; that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! Twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,
Beholding me, with quick-averted glance
Pass on the other side. But still these hues
Remain unaltered, and these features wear
The look of infancy and innocence.
I search myself in vain, and find no trace
Of what I was: those lightly-arching lines
Dark and o'erhanging now; and that sweet face
Settled in these strong lineaments! - There were
Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee,
Young Robert; for thine eye was quick to speak
Each opening feeling: should they not have known,
If the rich rainbow on the morning cloud
Reflects its radiant dyes, the husbandman
Beholds the ominous glory, and foresees
Impending storms. They augured happily,
That thou didst love each wild and wondrous tale
Of fairy fiction, and thine infant tongue
Lisped with delight the godlike deeds of Greece
And rising Rome; therefore they deemed, forsooth,
That thou should tread preferment's pleasant path.
Ill-judging ones! they let thy little feet
Stray in the pleasant paths of poesy,
And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd,
There didst thou love to linger out the day,
Loitering beneath the laurel's barren shade.
Spirit of Spenser! was the wanderer wrong?
WHAT! and not one to heave the pious sigh!
Not one whose sorrow-swoln and aching eye
For social scenes, for life's endearments fled,
Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead!
Poor wretched outcast! I will weep for thee,
And sorrow for forlorn humanity.
Yes, I will weep; but not that thou art come
To the stern sabbath of the silent tomb:
For squalid want, and the black scorpion care,
Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there.
I sorrow for the ills thy life has known,
As through the world's long pilgrimage, alone,
Haunted by poverty and woe-begone,
Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on:
Thy youth in ignorance and labour past,
And thine old age all barrenness and blast!
Hard was thy fate, which, while it doomed to woe,
Denied thee wisdom to support the blow;
And robbed of all its energy thy mind,
Ere yet it cast thee on thy fellow-kind,
Abject of thought, the victim of distress,
To wander in the world's wide wilderness.
Poor outcast, sleep in peace! the wintry storm
Blows bleak no more on thine unsheltered form;
Thy woes are past; thou restest in the tomb;-
I pause-and ponder on the days to come.
ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE
OLD SPANIEL.
ANI they have drowned thee then at last! poor Phillis!
The burthen of old age was heavy on thee,
And yet thou shouldst have lived! What though thine eye
Was dim, and watched no more with eager joy
The wonted call that on thy dull sense sunk
With fruitless repetition, the the warm sun
Might still have cheered thy slumber: thou didst love
To lick the hand that fed thee, and though past
Youth's active season, even life itself
Was comfort. Poor old friend! how earnestly
Would I have pleaded for thee! thou hadst been
Still the companion of my childish sports;
And as I roamed o'er Avon's woody cliffs,
From many a day-dream has thy short quick bark
Recalled my wandering soul. I have beguiled
Often the melancholy hours at school,
Soured by some little tyrant, with the thought
Of distant home, and I remembered then
Thy faithful fondness: for not mean the joy,
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