Who has not heard of death-lights on a grave? And these are death-lights, gay, and bright, and brave! But who may count, with microscopic eye, The multitudes of lives that gleam and flash Behind the rousing keel, and multiply In myriad millions, when the white oars dash Through waves electric, or at stillest night Spread round the bark becalm'd their milky white? Oh, had the bards that did so sweetly sing In times of old, when poesy was young, Known but the half, in their quick blooming spring, And many a living thing of instinct wise, TO GOODY TWOSHOES. AH, little Goody! I have known thee long, As when thou hadst thy two shoes on the stones? Sole sound of comfort that could reach thy heart, When thy companion child must needs depart. Thy lamb, thy raven, and thy box of letters, To fortune's waifs by compensating Heaven ; All these, to curious childhood dear, as new, And press full oft before the inward view Of souls long strangers to the brief square page, The tinselled covers, and the strange old pictures That served our ancestors instead of lectures. I've trembled with thee in the church so cold, And fearful in its soundless solitude. What place so weary as deserted fold, Where few hours past the shepherd wise and good Had spoke the words that take the sting from death, And change our human tears to wells of faith? But more of fear and more of pain was thine, Of darkness, parted thee from evil men, With horrid whisper plotting crime and plunder, A neighbourhood unmeet for one like thee; Draw blessings for themselves; celestial light Such wert thou, Goody, in thy childish days, And though, no doubt, thou didst grow old in time, And wert a spinster much deserving praise, That praise I will not speak in prose or rhyme; For rather I'd believe thee tripping still With Ralph the Raven, and with Baa-Lamb Bill. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, NEITHER THE ESQUIRE, THE LAUREATE, THE LL.D., BUT THE GOOD MAN, THE MERRY MAN, THE POET, AND THE DOCTOR, HE was not born beneath the Cambrian hills; Great Bristol was his nest and natal town, Or look'd on Avon from St. Vincent's rock, 'Tis hard to say what might have been his lot, If born with Nature from the first to dwell; |