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A BROTHER'S LOVE TO HIS SISTER.

FULL ill, I ween, can measured speech reveal,
Or thought embody, what true bosoms feel;
For hollow falsehood long has set her sign
On each soft phrase that speaks a love like mine :
The choicest terms are now enfeoff'd to folly,
To vain delight, or wilful melancholy.

Oh! for a virgin speech, a strain untainted
By worldly use, with holy meaning sainted,
Thoughts to conceive, and words devote to tell
The strength divine of love, its secret spell,
Of brother's love, that is within the heart
A spiritual essence, and exists apart
From passion, vain opinion, hopes and fears,
And every pregnant cause of smiles and tears.
A life that owes no fealty to the will,
Nor takes infection of connatural ill;
That feels no hunger and admits no doubt,
Nor asks for succour of the world without,

But is, itself, its own perfected end,

The one sole point to which its workings tend.

A love like this so pure of earthly leaven,
That hath no likeness in the earth or heaven,
No correspondent in the world of sight,
No symbol in the total Infinite,

Was ne'er engender'd in the soul or eye
From aught conceived of form or quality,
He loves not right that asks, or answers why.
It is not born of weakness, common needs,
Or gainful traffic in convenient deeds:
The joy, the good, that name and being owe
To sin and pain, it can and will forego;

For moral good is but the thrall of time,
That marks the bourne of virtue, and of crime.
A joy it hath that, underived of pain,
Its proper nature shall for aye retain :

A good it is that cannot cease or change
With man's desire, or wild opinion's range :
A law it is, above all human state,

A perfect freedom, and an absolute fate.

"OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD."

IN stature perfect and with every gift

Which God would on his favourite work bestow,

Did our great Parent his pure form uplift,
And sprang from earth, the Lord of all below.

But Adam fell before a child was born,
And want and weakness with his fall began;
So his first offspring was a thing forlorn,
In human shape, without the strength of man:

So, Heaven has doom'd that all of Adam's race, Naked and helpless, shall their course begin, E'en at their birth confess their need of grace, And weeping, wail the penalty of sin.

Yet sure the babe is in the cradle blest,
Since God himself a baby deign'd to be,
And slept upon a mortal mother's breast,
And steep'd in baby tears-his Deity.

O sleep, sweet infant, for we all must sleep,
And wake like babes, that we may wake with Him,
Who watches still his own from harm to keep,

And o'er them spreads the wings of cherubim.

WRITTEN ON THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER,

1820.

HAIL, dark November! spurious progeny
Of Phoebus and old Night,—thou sable mourner,
That lead'st the funeral pageant of the year,-
Thou Winter's herald, sent before thy lord
To bid the earth prepare for his dread presence,-
I gladly wish thee welcome, for thou wear'st
No flaunting smile to mock pale Melancholy,
Which ever loves its likeness, and derives
From most discomfort, truest consolation.

The world is heartsick, and o'erwearied Nature
Bears, in her lost abandonment, the mark
Of ills expected, and of pleasures past,

And, like a late-repenting prodigal,

Deals out with thrift enforc'd the scant remains

Of lavish'd wealth, sighing to think upon

The riotous days, that left no joy unrifled,
No store reserv'd, to comfort poor

old age:

The tip-toe levity of Spring, flower-deck'd,

VOL, I.

E

And Summer's pride, and Autumn's hospitality

Have eat up all.

And now her festal robes

Are worn to rags,-poor rents of tatter'd state,
Telling a tale of mad, luxurious waste,
Yet not enough to cover nakedness,-
A garb of many hues, and wretched all.
There is a desperate patience in her look,
And straggling smiles, or rather ghosts of smiles,
Display the sadness of her wrinkled visage.
Anon, with gusty rage, she casts away

Her motley weeds, and tears her thin grey locks,
And treads her squalid splendour in the mire;
Then weeps amain to think what she has done,
Doom'd to cold penance in a sheet of snow.

EPIGRAM.

THEY say Despair has power to kill

With her bleak frown; but I say No:

If life did hang upon her will,

Then Hope had perish'd long ago:

Yet still the twain keep up their "barful strife,"
For Hope Love's leman is, Despair his wife.

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