A REVERIE AT MATLOCK, IN DERBYSHIRE. BY JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ. WERE I a trembling leaf On yonder stately tree, I should be loth to fall Beside the common way, Weltering in mire, and spurned by all, I would not choose to die All on a bed of grass, Where thousands of my kindred lie, And idly rot in mass. Nor would I like to spread In hortus siccus, pale and dead, No, on the wings of air I know not, and I heed not where, A waif of earth and sky! Or, cast upon the stream, As through the changes of a dream, Who, that hath ever been, Could bear to be no more? Yet who would tread again the scene On, with intense desire, Man's spirit will move on; It seems to die, yet like heaven's fire London Magazine. SONG. BY JOSIAH CONDER, ESQ. "Twas not when early flowers were springing, When skies were sheen, And wheat was green, And birds of love were singing, That first I loved thee, or that thou Didst first the tender claim allow. For when the silent woods had faded When fields were fallow, And the changed skies o'ershaded,— My love might then have shared decay, Or passed with summer songs away. 'Twas winter,-cares and clouds were 'round me, Instead of flowers And sunny hours, When Love unguarded found me: 'Mid wintry scenes my passion grew, And wintry cares have proved it true, Dear are the hours of summer weather, And hearts are light, And Love and Nature joy together;— But stars from night their lustre borrow,— And hearts are closer twined by sorrow. London Magazine. TO LADY HOLLAND, ON THE SNUFF-BOX BEQUEATHED TO HER BY BUONAPARTE. BY THE EARL OF CARLISLE. LADY, reject the gift! 'tis tinged with gore! It has been grasped by an infernal Power; And by that hand which sealed young Enghien's fate. Lady, reject the gift; beneath its lid Discord, and Slaughter, and relentless War, With every plague to wretched man lie hid— Let not these loose to range the world afar. Say, what congenial to his heart of stone, In thy soft bosom could the Tyrant trace? When does the dove the eagle's friendship own, Or the wolf hold the lamb in pure embrace? Think of that pile,* to Addison so dear, Where Sully feasted, and where Rogers' song Still adds sweet music to the perfumed air, And gently leads each Grace and Muse along. Pollute not, then, these scenes the gift destroy : "Twill scare the Dryads from that lovely shade; With them will fly all rural peace and joy, And screaming fiends their verdant haunts invade. That mystic Box hath magic power to raise They'll vex thy slumbers, cloud thy sunny days, *Holland House. And ye who, bound in Verdun's treacherous chains, The warning Muse no idle trifler deem: Plunge the cursed mischief in wide Ocean's flood; SONNET, ON THE DEATH OF THE POET KEATS. AND art thou dead? Thou very sweetest bird Shall thy rich notes no more, no more be heard? With blushing flowers, long wedded to thy verse! Those flowers, those sunbeams, but adorn thy hearse; And the warm gales, that faintly rise and fall, In music's clime-themselves so musical, Shall chaunt the minstrel's dirge far from his father's hall. A FAREWELL. O, FARE thee well! the bitter hour is past, Yet wilt thou sigh for days for ever gone, When hope was young, and mutual faith secure; And thy pale cheek that inward smart shall own, Which thy false bosom must, perforce, endure. The frown of friends estranged,-Hate's pointed sneer,Untempted Virtue's pharisaic scorn, All that an erring heart could feel or fear, Hath mine almost without a murmur borne. For thou wert all my lonely hope and pride,- I nestled safe from storms that raged around. The lonely shepherd, by his native stream, Sees a young wave along its surface gliding,— Now sparkling in the summer's genial beam, And now amid the shady willows hiding ; Till sudden down the cataract's headlong steep, I am that wave, and thus it fares with me! Its warmest prayer, in one wild word,-FAREWELL ! |