Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

ODE TO MELANCHOLY.

Let clay wear smiles, and green grass wave;
Mirth shall not win us back again,
Whilst man is made of his own grave,
And fairest clouds but gilded rain!

I saw my mother in her shroud;
Her cheek was cold and very pale;
And ever since I've looked on all
As creatures doomed to fail!
Why do buds ope, except to die?
Aye, let us watch the roses wither,
And think of our loves' cheeks;
And O, how quickly time doth fly
To bring death's winter hither!
Minutes, hours, days, and weeks,
Months, years, and ages, shrink to nought-
An age past is but a thought!

Aye, let us think of him a while
That, with a coffin for a boat,
Rows daily o'er the Stygian moat;
And for our table choose a tomb.
There's dark enough in any skull
To charge with black a raven plume;
And for the saddest funeral thoughts
A winding-sheet hath ample room,
Where Death, with his keen-pointed style,
Hath writ the common doom.

How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom,
And o'er the dead lets fall its dew,
As if in tears it wept for them,
The many human families

That sleep around its stem!

How cold the dead have made these stones,

With natural drops kept ever wet!
Lo! here the best, the worst, the world
Doth now remember or forget
Are in one common ruin hurled;
And love and hate are calmly met-
The loveliest eyes that ever shone,
The fairest hands, and locks of jet.
Is 't not enough to vex our souls
And fill our eyes, that we have set
Our love upon a rose's leaf,
Our hearts upon a violet?
Blue eyes, red cheeks, are frailer yet;
And, sometimes, at their swift decay
Beforehand we must fret.
The roses bud and bloom again;

But love may haunt the grave of love, And watch the mould in vain.

663

O clasp me, sweet, whilst thou art mine,
And do not take my tears amiss;
For tears must flow to wash away
A thought that shows so stern as this.
Forgive, if somewhile I forget,
In woe to come, the present bliss.
As frighted Proserpine let fall
Her flowers at the sight of Dis,
Ev'n so the dark and bright will kiss.
The sunniest things throw sternest shade;
And there is even a happiness
That makes the heart afraid.
Now let us with a spell invoke
The full-orbed moon to grieve our eyes;
Not bright, not bright-but, with a cloud
Lapped all about her, let her rise
All pale and dim, as if from rest
The ghost of the late buried sun
Had crept into the skies.

The moon! she is the source of sighs,
The very face to make us sad,
If but to think in other times
The same calm, quiet look she had,
As if the world held nothing base,
Of vile and mean, of fierce and bad-
The same fair light that shone in streams,
The fairy lamp that charmed the lad;
For so it is, with spent delights

She taunts men's brain's, and makes them mad.

All things are touched with melancholy,
Born of the secret soul's mistrust
To feel her fair ethereal wings
Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.
Even the bright extremes of joy
Bring on conclusions of disgust-
Like the sweet blossoms of the May,
Whose fragrance ends in must.
O give her, then, her tribute just,
Her sighs and tears, and musings holy!
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy.

THOMAS HOOD.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

O lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live;
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her
shroud!

And would we aught behold of higher worth

Than that inanimate cold world allowed

Those sounds, which oft have raised me whilst To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd—

they awed,

And sent my soul abroad,

Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give

Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live.

II.

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear―
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear-

O lady in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green;
And still I gaze-and with how blank an eye!

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

DEJECTION-AN ODE.

Joy, lady, is the spirit and the power
Which, wedding nature to us, gives in dower
A new earth and new heaven,

Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud

We in ourselves rejoice!

And thence flows all that charms our ear or sight

All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colors a suffusion from that light.

VI.

There was a time when, though my path was rough,

This joy within me dallied with distress; And all misfortunes were but as the stuff Whence fancy made me dreams of happi

ness.

For hope grew round me like the twining vine;

And fruits and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth,
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But O! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural manThis was my sole resource, my only plan: Till that which suits a part infects the whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

VII.

665

Or lonely house, long held the witches' home,

Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, Mad lutanist! who, in this month of showers, Of dark brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,

Mak'st devils' yule, with worse than wintry song,

The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among!

Thou actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! Thou mighty poet, e'en to frenzy bold! What tell'st thou now about?

'Tis of the rushing of a host in rout, With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds

At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold.

But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence! And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd, With groans, and tremulous shudderings—all is over

It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!

A tale of less affright,

And tempered with delight,

As Otway's self had framed the tender lay: 'Tis of a little child

Upon a lonesome wild

Not far from home, but she hath lost her

way;

And now moans low in bitter grief and fear

And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear.

VIII.

'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep;

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my Full seldom may my friend such vigils

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

He never turned the poor from the gate- Sighing, and singing of midnight strains,

Good man! old man!

But was always ready to break the pate

Of his country's enemy.

What knight could do a better thing
Than serve the poor, and fight for his king?
And so may every head
Of an ancient family.

GEORGE COLMAN, "the younger."

I AM A FRIAR OF ORDERS GRAY.

I AM a friar of orders gray,
And down in the valleys I take my way;
I pull not blackberry, haw, or hip-
Good store of venison fills my scrip;
My long bead-roll I merrily chant;
Where'er I walk no money I want;

Under Bonnybell's window panes― Wait till you come to forty year.

Forty times over let Michaelmas pass;
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear;
Then know a boy is an ass,
you
Then you know the worth of a lass-
Once you have come to forty year.

Pledge me round; I bid ye declare,

All good fellows whose beards are grayDid not the fairest of the fair Common grow and wearisome ere

Ever a month was past away?

The reddest lips that ever have kissed,
The brightest eyes that ever have shone,
May pray and whisper and we not list,
Or look away and never be missed-
Ere yet ever a month is gone.

[blocks in formation]

And haste away to mine eternal home;

'T will not be long, Perilla, after this

That I must give thee the supremest kiss.

But pretty lies loved I

As much as any king

When youth was on the wing,

And (must it then be told?) when youth had quite gone by.

Alas! and I have not
The pleasant hour forgot,

When one pert lady said—
"O, Landor! I am quite
Bewildered with affright;

I see (sit quiet now!) a white hair on your head!"

Another, more benign,

Drew out that hair of mine,

And in her own dark hair Pretended she had found

That one, and twirled it round.—

Dead when I am, first cast in salt, and bring Fair as she was, she never was so fair.

Part of the cream from that religious spring,

With which, Perilla, wash my hands and

feet;

That done, then wind me in that very sheet Which wrapt thy smooth limbs when thou

didst implore

The gods' protection, but the night before; Follow me weeping to my turf, and there Let fall a primrose, and with it a tear. Then lastly, let some weekly strewings be Devoted to the memory of me;

Then shall my ghost not walk about, but keep

Still in the cool and silent shades of sleep.

ROBERT HERRICK.

THE ONE GRAY HAIR.

THE wisest of the wise

Listen to pretty lies,

And love to hear them told;

Doubt not that Solomon

Listened to many a one

Some in his youth, and more when he grew old.

I never sat among

The choir of Wisdom's song,

WALTER SAVAGE LANdor.

OLD.

By the wayside, on a mossy stone,

Sat a hoary pilgrim sadly musing; Oft I marked him sitting there alone, All the landscape like a page perusing; Poor, unknown

By the wayside, on a mossy stone.

Buckled knee and shoe, and broad-rimmed hat;

Coat as ancient as the form 't was folding; Silver buttons, queue, and crimpt cravat; Oaken staff, his feeble hand upholding— There he sat!

Buckled knee and shoe, and broad-rimmed hat.

Seemed it pitiful he should sit there,

No one sympathizing, no one heedingNone to love him for his thin gray hair,

And the furrows all so mutely pleading Age and careSeemed it pitiful he should sit there.

« НазадПродовжити »