No more your sky-larks, melting from the sight, Shall thrill th' attuned heart-string with delight: No more shall deck your pensive pleasures sweet With wreaths of sober hue my evening seat. Yet sweet to fancy's ear the warbled song, That soars on morning's wing your vales among. Scenes of my hope! the aching eye ye leave Like yon bright hues, that paint the clouds of eve! Tearful and sad'ning with the sadden'd blazę, Mine eye the gleam pursues with wistful gaze; Sees shades on shades with deeper tint impend, "Till, chill and damp, the moonless night descend. TO A YOUNG LADY, WITH A POEM ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. MUCH on my early youth I love to dwell, Aye as the star of evening flung its beam Where'er I wander'd, Pity still was near, tear: *Lee Boo, the son of Abba Thule, Prince of the Pellew Islands, came over to England with Captain Wilson, died of the small-pox, and is buried in Greenwich church-yard. No knell that toll'd, but fill'd my anxious eye, And suffering Nature wept that one should die * ! Thus to sad sympathies I sooth'd my breast, With giant fury burst her triple chain! She came, Fall'n is th' oppressor, friendless, ghastly, low, And my heart aches, though Mercy struck the blow. With wearied thought once more I seek the shade, If these demand th' impassion'd poet's care * Southey's Retrospect. If Mirth, and soften'd Sense, and Wit refin'd, No purple bloom the child of nature brings SONNET. TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON. MILD splendour of the various-vested night! Thy placid lightning o'er th' awaken'd sky. IMITATED FROM OSSIAN. THE stream with languid murmur creeps, "Cease, restless gale," it seems to say, On rapid wing are flying. *The flower hangs its head, waving at times to the gale. Why dost thou awake me, O gale! it seems to say, I am covered with the drops of heaven. The time of my fading is near, the blast that shall scatter my leaves. To-morrow shall the traveller come, he that saw me in my beauty shall come. His eyes will search the field, they will not find me. So shall they search in vain for the voice of Cona, after it has failed in the field.BERKATHON, see Ossian's Poems, vol. ii. |