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T

NFELT, unheard, unseen,

I've left my little queen,

Her languid arms in silver slumber lying:

Ah! through their nestling touch,

Who

who could tell how much

There is for madness-cruel, or complying?

Those faery lids how sleek!

Those lips how moist!- they speak, In ripest quiet, shadows of sweet sounds: Into my fancy's ear

Melting a burden dear,

How "Love doth know no fullness, nor no bounds."

True! - tender monitors!

I bend unto your laws:

This sweetest day for dalliance was born!
So, without more ado,

I'll feel my heaven anew,

For all the blushing of the hasty morn.

1817.

EPISTLE TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW.

S

Among the rest a shepherd (though but young

Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill
His few yeeres could, began to fill his quill.

Britannia's Pastorals.- BROWNE.

WEET are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song;
Nor can remembrance, Mathew! bring to view
A fate more pleasing, a delight more true
Than that in which the brother poets joy'd,
Who, with combined powers, their wit employ'd
To raise a trophy to the drama's muses.
The thought of this great partnership diffuses
Over the genius-loving heart, a feeling

Of all that's high, and great, and good, and healing.
Too partial friend! fain would I follow thee
Past each horizon of fine poesy;

Fain would I echo back each pleasant note,
As o'er Sicilian seas clear anthems float
'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted,
Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted:
But 'tis impossible; far different cares
Beckon me sternly from soft "Lydian airs,"
And hold my faculties so long in thrall,

That I am oft in doubt whether at all

I shall again see Phoebus in the morning:
Or flush'd Aurora in the roseate dawning!
Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream;
Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam;
Or again witness what with thee I've seen,
The dew by fairy feet swept from the green,
After a night of some quaint jubilee

Which every elf and fay had come to see:
When bright processions took their airy march
Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch.

But might I now each passing moment give To the coy muse, with me she would not live In this dark city, nor would condescend 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, That often must have seen a poet frantic; Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing, And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing; Where the dark-leaved laburnum's drooping clusters Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres, And intertwined the cassia's arms unite, With its own drooping buds, but very white. Where on one side are covert branches hung, 'Mong which the nightingales have always sung In leafy quiet; where to pry, aloof Atween the pillars of the sylvan roof,

Would be to find where violet beds were nestling, And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling. There must be too a ruin dark and gloomy,

To say, "Joy not too much in all that's bloomy."

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Yet that is vain-O Mathew! lend thy aid To find a place where I may greet the maidWhere we may soft humanity put on,

And sit, and rhyme, and think on Chatterton; And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him Four laurell'd spirits, heavenward to entreat him. With reverence would we speak of all the sages Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages: And thou shouldst moralize on Milton's blindness, And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness To those who strove with the bright golden wing Of genius, to flap away each sting

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Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell
Of those who in the cause of freedom fell;
Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell;
Of him whose name to every heart's a solace,
High-minded and unbending William Wallace.
While to the rugged north our musing turns,
We well might drop a tear for him and Burns.
Felton! without incitements such as these,
How vain for me the niggard muse to tease!
For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace,
And make "a sunshine in a shady place:
For thou wast once a flow'ret blooming wild,
Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefiled,
Whence gush the streams of song: in happy hour
Came chaste Diana from her shady bower,
Just as the sun was from the east uprising;
And, as for him some gift she was devising,
Beheld thee, pluck'd thee, cast thee in the stream
To meet her glorious brother's greeting beam.
I marvel much that thou hast never told
How, from a flower, into a fish of gold
VOL. II.

7

Apollo changed thee: how thou next didst seem
A black-eyed swan upon the widening stream;
And when thou first didst in that mirror trace
The placid features of a human face;
That thou hast never told thy travels strange,
And all the wonders of the mazy range
O'er pebbly crystal, and o'er golden sands;
Kissing thy daily food from Naiads' pearly hands.
November, 1815.

EPISTLE TO MY BROTHER GEORGE.

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ULL many a dreary hour have I past,

My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No sphery strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely :
That I should never hear Apollo's song,
Though feathery clouds were floating all along
The purple west, and, two bright streaks between,
The golden lyre itself were dimly seen:
That the still murmur of the honey-bee
Would never teach a rural song to me:

That the bright glance from beauty's eyelids slanting
Would never make a lay of mine enchanting,
Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold
Some tale of love and arms in time of old.

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