Hastier passion draws
Our tears on credit: and we find the cause
Some two hours after, spelling o'er again
Those strange few words at ease, that wrought the pain.
Proceed, old friend; and, as the year returns,
Still snatch some new old story from the urns
Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before
Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you more.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERY-DAY BOOK."
I LIKE you and your book, ingenuous Hone!
In whose capacious, all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of tradition's shown;
And all that history-much that fiction-weaves.
By every sort of taste your work is graced.
Vast stores of modern anecdote we find,
With good old story quaintly interlaced-
The theme as various as the reader's mind.
Rome's lie-fraught legends you so truly paint-
Yet kindly that the half-turn'd Catholic
Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint,
And cannot curse the candid heretic.
Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page;
Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased behold,
And, proudly conscious of a purer age,
Forgive some fopperies in the times of old.
Verse-honouring Phoebus, father of bright days,
Must needs bestow on you both good and many,
Who, building trophies of his children's praise,
Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any.
Dan Phœbus loves your book-trust me, friend Hone-
The title only errs, he bids me say:
For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown,
He swears 'tis not a work of every day.
ON HIS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POEMS OF MR. ROGERS.
CONSUMMATE artist, whose undying name
With classic Rogers' shall go down to fame,
Be this thy crowning work! In my young days
How often have I, with a child's fond gaze,
Pored on the pictured wonders* thou hadst done:
Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison!
All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view,
I saw, and I believed the phantoms true.
But, above all, that most romantic talef
Did o'er my rude credulity prevail,
Where glums and gawries wear mysterious things,
That serve at once for jackets and for wings.
Age, that enfeebles other men's designs,
But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines.
In several ways distinct you make us feel
Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel.
Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise,
And warmly wish you Titian's length of days.
TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE.
WHAT makes a happy wedlock? What has fate
Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate?
Good sense-good-humour; these are trivial things,
Dear M- -
that each trite encomiast sings.
But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt
From every low-bred passion, where contempt,
Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found
A harbour yet; an understanding sound;
Just views of right and wrong; perception full
Of the deform'd, and of the beautiful,
In life and manners; wit above her sex,
Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks;
* Illustrations of the British Novelists. † Peter Wilkins.
Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth,
To gladden woodland walk or winter hearth;
A noble nature, conqueror in the strife
Of conflict with a hard discouraging life,
Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power
Of those whose days have been one silken hour,
Spoil'd fortune's pamper'd offspring; a keen sense
Alike of benefit and of offence,
With reconcilement quick, that instant springs
From the charged heart with nimble angel wings;
While grateful feelings, like a signet sign'd
By a strong hand, seem burnt into her mind.
If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer
Richer than land, thou hast them all in her;
And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon,
Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown.
I HAD a sense in dreams of a beauty rare,
Whom fate had spell-bound, and rooted there,
Stooping, like some enchanted theme,
Over the marge of that crystal stream,
Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind,
With self-love fond, had to waters pined.
Ages had waked, and ages slept,
And that bending posture still she kept:
For her eyes she may not turn away,
Till a fairer object shall pass that way-
Till an image more beauteous this world can show,
Than her own which she sees in the mirror below
Pore on, fair creature! for ever pore,
Nor dream to be disenchanted more;
For vain is expectance, and wish is vain,
Till a new Narcissus can come again.
OH LIFT WITH REVERENT HAND.
TO LOUISA M, WHOM I USED TO CALL
“MONKEY."
LOUISA, serious grown and mild,
I knew you once a romping child,
Obstreperous much, and very wild.
Then you would clamber up my knees,
And strive with every art to tease,
When every art of yours could please.
Those things would scarce be proper now.
But they are gone, I know not how,
And woman's written on your brow.
Time draws his tinger o'er the scene;
But I cannot forget between
The thing to me you once have been;
Each sportive sally, wild escape,
The scoff, the banter, and the jape,
And antics of my gamesome ape.
[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the "Lives of the Saints, written in Spanish by the learned and reverend father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of the Order of St. Dominic, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno 1630," bought at a Catholic bookshop in Duke-street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted flower, seemingly coeval with the book itself; and did not, for some time, discover that it opened in the middle, and was the cover to a very humble draught of a St. Anne, with the Virgin and Child; doubtless the performance of some poor but pious Catholic, whose medita tions it assisted.]
OH lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower,
That 'shrines beneath her modest canopy
Memorials dear to Romish piety;
Dim specks, rude shapes, of saints! in fervent hour
The work, perchance, of some meek devotee,
Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth
The sanctities she worshipp'd to their worth,
In this imperfect tracery might see
Hints, that all heaven did to her sense reveal.
Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told
Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold,
That in their way approved the offerer's zeal.
True love shows costliest where the means are scant;
And, in her reckoning, they abound who want.
FROM THE LATIN OF VINCENT BOURNE.
ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN INFANT SLEEPING.
BEAUTIFUL infant, who dost keep
Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep,
May the repose unbroken be,
Which the fine artist's hand hath lent to thee,
While thou enjoy'st, along with it,
That which no art or craft could ever hit,
Or counterfeit to mortal sense,
The heaven-infused sleep of innocence!
A TUNEFUL challenge rings from either side
Of Thames' fair banks. Thy twice six bells, Saint
Peal swift and shrill; to which more slow reply
The deep-toned eight of Mary Overy.
Such harmony from the contention flows,
That the divided ear no preference knows;
Between them both disparting music's state,
While one exceeds in number, one in weight.
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