For you to try my dull, unlearned quill. Nor should I now, but that I've known you long; And float along like birds o'er summer seas, Up to its climax, and then dying proudly? Show'd me that epic was of all the king, Round, vast, and spanning all, like Saturn's ring? Bereft of all that now my life endears? And can I e'er these benefits forget? And can I e'er repay the friendly debt? No, doubly no;-yet should these rhymings pleasc, With hopes that you would one day think the reading Of my rough verses not an hour misspent; Should it e'er be so, what a rich content! Some weeks have pass'd since last I saw the spires In lucent Thames reflected:-warm desires To see the sun o'er-peep the eastern dimness, To mark the time as they grow broad and shorter ; Such an attempt required an inspiration Of a peculiar sort,—a consummation ;— Which, had I felt, these scribblings might have been By Arne delighted, or by Handel madden'd; And revell'd in a chat that ceased not, When, at night-fail, among your books we got: No, nor till cordially you shook my hand Mid-way between our homes:—your accents bland September, 1816. 66 STANZAS. IN a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them, Nor frozen thawings glue them In a drear-nighted December, Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would 'twere so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any |