Wherein the ocean's mighty harmonies Serenely murmur in a humming slumber. So childhood passes-but the whistling breeze Sinks sudden in the darkness of the waves; Where will he go? To lands of pearl and gold From point to point, along the low flat coast, With howling woods, or girt with burning sand? Of Love, where oft the languid air becalms But hold-no more.— Too long we dally with a quaint conceit, Thrice happy they, who rest, ere day declines, Which thou hast earn'd-may'st worthily rejoice, Placidly smiling in their calm old age, And blessing Heaven that they can bless the day TO A POSTHUMOUS INFANT. CHILD of woman, and of Heaven, Was drawn from atmosphere of death- Father's tear with baby smile, Never laugh on father's knee, May the spirit of the Blest Glide into the growing soul, To form, "to kindle, or controul?" May the sainted parent bless His own, the new-born fatherless? HOMER. FAR from all measured space, yet clear and plain a mighty orb of song " As sun at noon, 66 Illumes extremest Heaven. Beyond the throng One steadfast light gleams through the dark, and long, Of human truths, Great Poet of thy kind, Swell'd with the gladness of the battle's glee— When Priam wept, or shame-struck Helen pined. 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— VOL. I. L |