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 Can fix those evanescent tints, Fainter by far than lovers' hints, And bring the scenes we love to mind, Thou seest an image in thy glass But which Dan Cupid has been able 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, THE FORSAKEN TO THE FAITHLESS. I Do not write to bid thee come unto me- Blown up by Vanity's unthinking breath, A thing which few, with all their toil and trouble, That still is Folly's mouth-piece, Custom's slave. A dearer jewel-even my precious soul. may roll Nor thou, nor all the world, can give again TO THE MEMORY OF CANNING. EARLY, but not untimely, Heaven recall'd Since thou art gone; and this fair island, wall'd Mourns with a widow's grief for loss of thee,- In Heaven too soon? Nay, I will shed no tear. And cast away the bondage and the fear Of rotten custom; so the hope, which Fate LIBERTY. SAY, What is Freedom? What the right of souls 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. |