MAID of my Love, sweet GENEVIEVE!
In Beauty's light you glide along :
Your eye is like the star of eve,
And sweet your Voice, as Seraph's song.
Yet not your heavenly Beauty gives
This heart with passion soft to glow:
Within your soul a VOICE there lives!
It bids you hear the tale of Woe.
When sinking low the Sufferer wan
Beholds no hand outstretcht to save,
Fair, as the bosom of the Swan
That rises graceful o'er the wave,
I've seen your breast with pity heave,
And therefore love I you, sweet GENEVIEVE!
MILD Splendour of the various-vested Night!
Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watery light
Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;
And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gathered blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o'er the awakened sky.
Ah such is HOPE! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-winged Despair:
But soon emerging in her radiant might
She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.
TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY.
On the wide level of a mountain's head,
(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!
This far outstript the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind :
For he, alas! is blind!
O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last.
MONODY ON THE DEATH OF
CHATTERTON.
WHEN faint and sad o'er Sorrow's desert wild
Slow journeys onward poor Misfortune's child;
When fades each lovely form by Fancy drest,
And inly pines the self-consuming breast;
No scourge of scorpions in thy right arm dread,
No helmed terrors nodding o'er thy head,
Assume, O DEATH! the cherub wings of PEACE,
And bid the heart-sick Wanderer's anguish cease!
Thee, CHATTERTON ! yon unblest stones protect
From Want, and the bleak Freezings of neglect!
Escap'd the sore wounds of Affliction's rod,
Meek at the Throne of Mercy, and of God,
Perchance, thou raisest high the enraptured hymn
Amid the blaze of Seraphim!
Yet oft ('tis Nature's bosom-startling call)
I weep, that heaven-born Genius so should fall;
And oft, in Fancy's saddest hour, my soul
Averted shudders at the poisoned bowl.
Now groans my sickening heart, as still I view
Thy corse of livid hue;
And now a flash of indignation high
Darts through the tear that glistens in mine eye!
Is this the land of song-ennobled line?
Is this the land, where Genius ne'er in vain
Poured forth his lofty strain?
Ah me! yet SPENSER, gentlest bard divine,
Beneath chill Disappointment's shade,
His weary limbs in lonely anguish lay'd
And o'er her darling dead
PITY hopeless hung her head,
While "mid the pelting of that merciless storm,"
Sunk to the cold earth OTWAY's famished form!
Sublime of thought, and confident of fame,
From vales where Avon winds the MINSTREL* came,
Light-hearted youth! aye, as he hastes along,
He meditates the future song,
* Avon, a river near Bristol; the birth-place of Chatterton.
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