ページの画像
PDF
ePub

VALENTINE.

TO A FAIR ARTISTE.

Written in 1813.

These, if not the first verses that I ever wrote, are the first with which I succeeded in pleasing even myself:-in fact, the first in which I was able to express a preconceived thought in metre. I have selected them from a mass of juvenile, or more properly, puerile poetry, not as any better, or much worse, than the rest, but from the pleasant associations connected with them. It will do nobody any harm, and to some may be an agreeable remembrancer of old times. The young lady to whom it was addressed is the eldest daughter of the late William Green, an artist of great merit, who possessed a true sense of the beautiful in nature. The lady is now a wife and mother, and probably regards the pictorial skill of her youth, and the compliments it may have gained her, as things that have been.

O, MISTRESS of that lovely art
Which can to shadows form impart―

Can fix those evanescent tints,

Fainter by far than lovers' hints,

And bring the scenes we love to mind,
When we have left them far behind,-

Thou seest an image in thy glass
Which does e'en Raphael's art surpass,

But which Dan Cupid has been able

[blocks in formation]

How proud 'twould make a connoisseur

To have so beauteous a picture!

VOL. I.

L

For me, I own, it ill contents me;

To have a copy but torments me,
Unless I might possess, as well,
That copy's fair original.

THE FORSAKEN TO THE FAITHLESS.

I Do not write to bid thee come unto me-
I will not pray thee spare my virgin fame:
Since I am won, 'tis useless now to woo me-
Undone I am, thou canst not more undo me.
Boast thy poor triumph o'er an empty name,
When she that shamed it sleeps in silent death;
For what is reputation but a bubble,

Blown up by Vanity's unthinking breath,

A thing which few, with all their toil and trouble,
Can carry with them to their home, the grave.
Since men are fire, and we are as the stubble,
Men's faults are wink'd at—ours, alas! seen double.
No pardon of the partial world I crave,

That still is Folly's mouth-piece, Custom's slave.
Not for my name I mourn—but thou hast ta'en

A dearer jewel-even my precious soul.

may roll

Nor thou, nor all the world, can give again
What I have thrown away ! Tho' Time
His centuries on, when I shall be forgotten,
Thy falsehood mute, and cold thy fickle lust,—
When this polluted body shall be rotten,
And, undistinguish'd, sleep with virgin dust,—
Tho' all may cease, the stars give o'er to shine,
Nor more be witness to that sin of mine,—
Still should I feel my unredeemed loss,
And 'mongst the blessed be a thing unblest;
No power that is can make me what I was—
Oh, might I then not be! Oh, vain request!

TO THE MEMORY OF CANNING.

EARLY, but not untimely, Heaven recall'd
To perfect bliss, thy pure, enlighten'd mind;
And tho' the new-born freedom of mankind
Is sick of fear to be again enthrall'd,

Since thou art gone; and this fair island, wall'd
With the impregnable, unmaster'd sea,

Mourns with a widow's grief for loss of thee,-
Should we repine, as if thou wert install'd

In Heaven too soon? Nay, I will shed no tear.
Thy work is done. It was enough for thee
To own the glorious might of Liberty,

And cast away the bondage and the fear

Of rotten custom; so the hope, which Fate
Snatch'd from thy life, thy Fame shall consummate.

LIBERTY.

SAY, What is Freedom? What the right of souls
Which all who know are bound to keep, or die,
And who knows not, is dead? In vain ye pry
In musty archives, or retentive scrolls,
Charters and statutes, constitutions, rolls,

And remnants of the old world's history :

These show what has been, not what ought to be,

Or teach at best how wiser Time controuls

Man's futile purposes.

As vain the search

Of restless factions, who, in lawless will,

Fix the foundations of a creedless church—

A lawless rule-an anarchy of ill:

But what is Freedom? Rightly understood,

A universal license to be good.

« 前へ次へ »