ON SEEING SOME SCHOOL-BOYS
IN THE GREEN COURT AT CANTERBURY,
Or warriors here a fancied train,
With drums and fifes advance,
While, like their streamers, light and vain,
Their youthful spirits dance!
Perhaps 'mid this fantastic band
Some future Wolfe may tread,
When Time has nerv'd the infant hand,
And Youth its roses shed.
Yon tiny elf, on stilts upborne,
A giant stalks the green,
While by those props that raise his form,
His childish folly's seen:
'Tis thus, when rais'd by wealth or birth,
To fill a lofty sphere,
The idle coxcomb's want of worth,
More plainly must appear!
WRITTEN ON THE SEA-SHORE.
I LOVE to linger near the leafless wood,
Where cold and shrill the blasts of Winter blow,
Drifting the branches o'er the roaring flood,
And heaving wild yon mountain's robe of snow.
From the drear scene recedes the evening star,
And hides her fair head in the concave high,
As if she fear'd, 'mid crashing Nature's war,
The threaten'd ruin of her shaking sky.
To yonder tower, that frowns upon the steep,
At fall of eve, as village legends tell,
Mysterious forms in shadowy terrors sweep,
To act the orgies of their native hell.
And oft the traveller views the charmed beam
Of livid fire, flash on the haggard crew,
While the lone owl awakes his saddening scream
From the dark foliage of the haunted yew.
On that lone spot, to Superstition dear,
Is seen the sod that wraps the slumberer's breast,
And poor Mortality will drop the tear
Where the lost Suicide found peace and rest.
Within the precincts of yon dreaded tomb
Cold lies the heart that true to feeling heav'd;
There Fate, remorseless, seal'd her martyr's doom,
And wreck'd the soul of every hope bereav'd.
Memory ne'er told him of a parent's care;
Misery, exulting on his cradle, smil'd;
She saw the woes that he was doom'd to bear,
And mark'd the blooming cherub for her child.
Thro' Grief's dark maze she led him to the goal,
Where Guilt awakes the dæmons of despair,
And op'd a passage for his labouring soul,
While Mercy fled the woes she could not share.
On the dark brow of yonder cliff sublime,
Worn by the footsteps of revolving years,
Whose summit seems the altar-stone of Time,
His throne the Genius of Destruction rears.
For oft, when darkness shrouds the light of Heaven,
And the pale moon slumbers on Midnight's breast,
On these wild rocks the tide-worn barks are driven,
And mangled forms sweep o'er the watery waste.
Angels of peace! at this tremendous hour,
When louder still the swelling waters rave,
From worlds more blest, one ray celestial pour,
To guide the sailor o'er the unfathom'd wave.
Disarm the pallid spectre train of death,
That rides the dark wings of the howling storm,
And bind the wild winds, whose blood-freezing breath
Blasts faded Nature's cold convulsing form.
The Poems, in this volume, and in the following volumes,
with the signature of Adeline, are by Miss Stewart.
AH! why, unfeeling Winter, why
Still flags thy torpid wing?
Fly, melancholy Season, fly-
And yield the year to Spring.
Spring, the young cherubim of love,
An exile in disgrace,-
Flits o'er the scene, like Noah's dove,
Nor finds a resting place.
When on the mountain's azure peak,
Alights her fairy form,
Cold blow the winds,-and dark and bleak,
Around her rolls the storm.
If to the valley she repair,
For shelter and defence,
Thy wrath pursues the mourner there,
And drives her, weeping, thence.
She seeks the brook-the faithless brook,
Of her unmindful grown,
Feels the chill magic of thy look,
And lingers into stone.
She woos her embryo-flowers, in vain,
To rear their infant heads;
-Deaf to her voice, her flowers remain
Enchanted in their beds.
In vain she bids the trees expand
Their green, luxuriant charms;
-Bare in the wilderness they stand,
And stretch their withering arms.
Her favourite birds, in feeble notes,
Lament thy long delay;
And strain their little stammering throats,
To charm thy rage away.
Ah! why, usurping Winter, why
Still flags thy frozen wing?
Fly, unrelenting tyrant, fly
And yield the year to Spring!
*The poems, with this signature, in the succeeding volumes,
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