TO MISS ISABELLA FENWICK.
FAIN Would I put my meanings in the tongue
Familiar, lady, to thy earliest years,
That gives the finest edge to social jeers ;
The language, which by merry bard was sung
In times of old, to ladies fair, among
The courts devoted to sublime amours
By gay trouveurs, and knightly troubadours,
Accents o'er which the Scottish Mary hung
Her beauteous head enamour'd. Yet I trust
Thou wilt not scorn the talk of this old isle,
The tongue which Milton raised to themes sublime,
On which keen Pope bestowed his poignance just,
Which Cowper graced with melancholy smile,
And Spenser hallowed with immortal rhyme.
WRITTEN IN A SEASON OF PUBLIC DISTURBANCE.
CALM is the sky: the trees are very calm.
The mountains seem as they would melt away,
So soft their outline mingles with the day.
Surely no sound less holy than a psalm
Should interrupt the stillness and the balm
Of such a morn, whose grave monastic grey
Clothes the meek east in garment meek to pray
With sweet humility, without a qualm.
And yet, even now, in this most blessed hour,
Who knows but that the murderous shot is sped
In the fell jar of poverty and power?
The man but now that lived, may now be dead. Has Nature of her human brood no care,
That on their bloody deeds she smiles so fair?
Now the old trees are striving to be young,
And the gay mosses of the Christmas days
To the fresh primrose must forego their praise:
Now every flower by vernal poets sung,
And every bird the [bursting] woods among,
And all the many-dappled banks and braes,
Recal remembrance of immortal lays,
But speak to me in a forgotten tongue.
Yea, dearest lady, they do speak to me
As to a banish'd man that hath forgot
Almost his mother's language, and cannot,
Without sore pain and stress of memory,
Reply to words that yet he hears with joy,
And by their strangeness make him half a boy.
SWEET lady, thou art come to us again:
The mountains still are in their ancient seats;
Still on the turfy mound the young lamb bleats,
Whose coat of March is washed with April rain.
But since no Philomel can here complain,
Let, lady, one poor bard lament to thee
The murderous death of many a noble tree,
That wont to shade thee in the grassy lane.
Would that religion of old time were ours,
(In that one article, not all the others,)
Which the first Romans held, who reared the towers,
Nigh the moist cradle of the Foundling Brothers,
The faith that did in awe and love instal,
For many an age the Fig-Tree Ruminal.*
* The Fig-Tree Ruminal,-Ficus ruminalis, beneath which Romulus and Remus, according to the tradition, were found by the shepherd Faustulus.
I WOULD not take my leave of thee, dear child,
With customary words of compliment :
Nor will I task my fancy to invent
A fond conceit, or sentence finely filed;
Nor shall my heart with passionate speech and wild,
Bewail thy parting in a drear lament.
Wit is not meet for one so innocent,
Nor passionate woe for one so gaily mild.
I will not bid thee think of me, nor yet
Would I in thy young memory perish quite.
I am a waning star, and nigh to set;
Thou art a morning beam of waxing light;
But sure the morning star can ne'er regret
That once 'twas grey-haired evening's favourite.
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