ADDRESSED TO W. R. TURNER, ESQ., R. A., ON HIS Puss eagerly hath watched him from the floor,
And in her grasp he flutters, pants, and dies
Lucy's own Puss, and Lucy's own dear Bird, Her foster'd favorites both for many a day, That which the tender-hearted girl preferr'd, She in her fondness knew not, sooth to say.
For if the sky-lark's pipe were shrill and strong,
And its rich tones the thrilling ear might please,
Yet Pussybel could breathe a fire-side song
As winning, when she lay on Lucy's knees.
Both knew ner voice, and each alike would seek Her eye, her smile, her fondling touch to gain: How faintly, then, may words her sorrow speak, When by the one she sees the other slain.
The flowers fall scatter'd from her lifted hand;
A cry of grief she utters in affright;
And self-condemn'd for negligence she stands
Aghast and helpless at the cruel sight.
Come, Lucy, let me dry those tearful eyes; Take thou, dear child, a lesson not unholy, From one whom nature taught to moralize, Both in his mirth and in his melancholy.
I will not warn thee not to set thy heart
Too fondly upon perishable things;
In vain the earnest preacher spends his art
Upon that theme; in vain the poet sings.
It is our nature's strong necessity,
And this the soul's unerring instincts tell: Therefore I say, let us love worthily,
Dear child, and then we cannot love too well.
And with true comfort thou wilt find it fraught, If grief should reach thee in thy heart of hearts. Buckland, 1828.
My days among the Dead are past; Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day.
With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedew'd
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.
My thoughts are with the Dead; with them
I live in long-past years;
Their virtues love, their faults condemn,
Partake their hopes and fears,
And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with an humble mind.
My hopes are with the Dead; anon
My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on
Through all Futurity:
Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.
Keswick, 1818.
IMITATED FROM THE PERSIAN.
LORD! who art merciful as well as just,
Incline thine ear to me, a child of dust!
Not what I would, O Lord! I offer thee,
Alas! but what I can.
Father Almighty, who hast made me man,
And bade me look to Heaven, for Thou art there,
Accept my sacrifice and humble prayer.
Four things which are not in thy treasury,
I lay before thee, Lord, with this petition :-
My nothingness, my wants,
My sins, and my contrition.
Corston is a small village about three miles from Bath, a little to the left of the Bristol road. The manor was parted with by the monks of Bath, about the reign of Henry I., to Sir Roger de St. Lo, in exchange. It continued in his family till the reign of Edward II., when it passed to the family of Inge, who are said to have been domestics to the St. Los for several generations. In process of time, it came to the Harringtons, and was by them sold to Joseph Langton, whose daughter and heiress brought it in marriage to William Gore Langton, Esq.
The church, which, in 1292, was valued at 7 marks, 9s. 4d., was appropriated to the prior and convent of Bath; and a vicarage ordained here by Bishop John de Drokensford, Nov. 1, 1321, decreeing that the vicar and his successors in
Yet still will Memory's busy eye retrace
Each little vestige of the well-known place;
Each wonted haunt and scene of youthful joy,
Where merriment has cheer'd the careless boy;
Well-pleased will fancy still the spot survey
Where once he triumph'd in the boyish play,
Without one care where every morn he rose,
Where every evening sunk to calm repose.
Large was the house, though fallen in course,
of fate,
From its old grandeur and manorial state.
Lord of the manor, here the jovial Squire
Once call'd his tenants round the crackling fire;
Here while the glow of joy suffused his face,
He told his ancient exploits in the chase,
And, proud his rival sportsmen to surpass,
perpetuum should have a hall, with chambers, kitchen, and He lit again the pipe, and fill'd again the glass.
bakehouse, with a third part of the garden and curtilage, and a pigeon-house, formerly belonging to the parsonage; that he should have one acre of arable land, consisting of three parcels, late part of the demesne of the said parsonage, together with common pasturage for his swine in such places as the rector of the said church used that privilege; that he should receive from the prior and convent of Bath one quarter of bread-corn yearly, and have all the altarage, and all small tithes of beans and other blade growing in the cottage enclosures and cultivated curtilages throughout the parish; that the religious aforesaid and their successors, as rectors of the said church, should have all the arable land, with a park belonging to the land, (the acre above mentioned only excepted,) and receive all great tithes, as well of corn as of hay; the said religious to sustain all burdens, ordinary and extraordinary, incumbent on the church as rectors thereof. The prior of Bath had a yearly pension out of the vicarage of 4s.- Collinson's Hist. of Somersetshire, vol. iii. pp. 341-347.
ON as 1 journey through the vale of years,
By hopes enliven'd, or depress'd by fears,
Allow me, Memory, in thy treasured store,
To view the days that will return no more.
And yes! before thine intellectual ray
The clouds of mental darkness melt away!
As when, at earliest day's awakening dawn,
The hovering mists obscure the dewy lawn,
O'er all the landscape spread their influence chill,
Hang o'er the vale and wood, and hide the hill;
Anon, slow-rising, comes the orb of day;
Slow fade the shadowy mists and roll away;
The prospect opens on the traveller's sight,
And hills and vales and woods reflect the living
light.
O thou, the mistress of my future days,
Accept thy minstrel's retrospective lays;
To whom the minstrel and the lyre belong,
Accept, my EDITH, Memory's pensive song.
Of long-past days I sing, ere yet I knew
Or thought and grief, or happiness and you;
Ere yet my infant heart had learnt to prove
The cares of life, the hopes and fears of love.
Corston, twelve years in various fortunes fled
Have past with restless progress o'er my head,
Since in thy vale, beneath the master's rule,
I dwelt an inmate of the village school.
But now no more was heard at early morn
The echoing clangor of the huntsman's horn;
No more the eager hounds with deepening cry
Leap'd round him as they knew their pastime
nigh;
The Squire no more obey'd the morning call,
Nor favorite spaniels fill'd the sportsman's hall;
For he, the last descendant of his race,
Slept with his fathers, and forgot the chase.
There now in petty empire o'er the school
The mighty Master held despotic rule;
Trembling in silence all his deeds we saw,
His look a mandate, and his word a law;
Severe his voice, severe and stern his mien,
And wondrous strict he was, and wondrous wise
I ween.
Even now through many a long, long year I trace
The hour when first with awe I view'd his face;
Even now recall my entrance at the dome,-
'Twas the first day I ever left my home!
Years intervening have not worn away
The deep remembrance of that wretched day,
Nor taught me to forget my earliest fears,
A mother's fondness, and a mother's tears;
When close she press'd me to her sorrowing
As loath as even I myself to part;
And I, as 1 beheld her sorrows flow,
With painful effort hid my inward woe.
But time to youthful troubles brings relief,
And each new object weans the child from grief.
Like April showers the tears of youth descend;
Sudden they fall, and suddenly they end,
And fresher pleasure cheers the following hour,
As brighter shines the sun after the April shower.
Methinks even now the interview I see,
The Mistress's glad smile, the Master's glee;
Much of my future happiness they said,
Much of the easy life the scholars led,
Of spacious play-ground and of wholesome air,
The best instruction and the tenderest care;
And when I followed to the garden-door
My father, till through tears I saw no more,
How civilly they soothed my parting pain!
And never did they speak so civilly again.
Why loves the soul on earlier years to dwell, When Memory spreads around her saddening spell,
When discontent, with sullen gloom o'ercast,
Turns from the present, and prefers the past?
Why calls reflection to my pensive view
Each trifling act of infancy anew,
Each trifling act with pleasure pondering o'er,
Even at the time when trifles please no more?
Yet is remembrance sweet, though well I know
The days of childhood are but days of woe;
Some rude restraint, some petty tyrant sours
What else should be our sweetest, blithest hours;
Yet is it sweet to call those hours to mind,-
Those easy hours forever left behind;
Ere care began the spirit to oppress,
When ignorance itself was happiness.
Such was my state in those remember'd years,
When two small acres bounded all my fears;
And therefore still with pleasure, I recall [hall,
The tapestried school, the bright, brown-boarded
The murmuring brook, that every morning saw
The due observance of the cleanly law;
The walnuts, where, when favor would allow,
Full oft I wont to search each well-stripp'd bough;
The crab-tree, which supplied a secret hoard
With roasted crabs to deck the wintry board;
These trifling objects then my heart possess'd,
These trifling objects still remain impress'd;
So when with unskill'd hand some idle hind
Carves his rude name within a sapling's rind,
In after years the peasant lives to see
The expanding letters grow as grows the tree;
Though every winter's desolating sway
Shake the hoarse grove and sweep the leaves
That rude inscription uneffaced will last, Unalter'd by the storm or wintry blast.
Oh, while well pleased the letter'd traveller roams
Among old temples, palaces, and domes,
Strays with the Arab o'er the wreck of time
Where erst Palmyra's towers arose sublime,
Or marks the lazy Turk's lethargic pride,
And Grecian slavery on Ilyssus' side,
Oh, be it mine, aloof from public strife,
To mark the changes of domestic life,
The alter'd scenes where once I bore a part,
Where every change of fortune strikes the heart.
As when the merry bells with echoing sound
Proclaim the news of victory around,
Rejoicing patriots run the news to spread
Of glorious conquest and of thousands dead,
All join the loud huzza with eager breath,
And triumph in the tale of blood and death;
But if extended on the battle-plain,
Where I had loiter'd out so many an hour,
Chased the gay butterfly, and cull'd the flower,
Sought the swift arrow's erring course to trace,
Or with mine equals vied amid the chase.
I saw the church where I had slept away
The tedious service of the summer day;
Or, hearing sadly all the preacher told,
In winter waked and shiver'd with the cold.
Oft have my footsteps roam'd the sacred ground
Where heroes, kings, and poets sleep around;
Oft traced the mouldering castle's ivied wall,
Or aged convent tottering to its fall;
Yet never had my bosom felt such pain,
As, Corston, when I saw thy scenes again;
For many a long-lost pleasure came to view,
For many a long-past sorrow rose anew;
Where whilom all were friends I stood alone,
Unknowing all I saw, of all I saw unknown.
There, where my little hands were wont to rear
With pride the earliest salad of the year;
Where never idle weed to spring was seen,
Rank thorns and nettles rear'd their heads ob-
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Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty
nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.
The words of AGUR.
ΟΙΚΟΙ βέλτερον είναι, επει βλαβερον το θύρηφι.
YET One Song more! one high and solemn strain
Ere, Phœbus! on thy temple's ruin'd wall
I hang the silent harp: there may its strings,
When the rude tempest shakes the aged pile,
Make melancholy music. One song more!
PENATES, hear me! for to you I hymn
The votive lay; whether, as sages deem,
Ye dwell in inmost* Heaven, the Counsellors t
Of Jove; or if, Supreme of Deities,
Cut off in conquest some dear friend be slain,
Affection then will fill the sorrowing eye,
And suffering Nature grieve that one should die. All things are yours, and in your holy train
Cold was the morn, and bleak the wintry blast Blew o'er the meadow, when I saw thee last. My bosom bounded as I wandered round, With silent step, the long-remember'd ground,
Jove proudly ranks, and Juno, white-arm'd Queen,
* Hence one explanation of the name Penates, because they were supposed to reign in the inmost heavens.
This was the belief of the ancient Hetrusci, who called them Concertes and Complices.
And wisest of Immortals, the dread Maid
Athenian Pallas. Venerable Powers,
Hearken your hymn of praise! Though from your
Estranged, and exiled from your altars long,
I have not ceased to love you, Household Gods!
In many a long and melancholy hour
Of solitude and sorrow, hath my heart
With earnest longings pray'd to rest at length
Beside your hallow'd hearth,- for Peace is there!
Yes, I have loved you long! I call on ye
Yourselves to witness with what holy joy,
Shunning the common herd of human-kind,
I have retired to watch your lonely fires,
And commune with myself:-delightful hours,
That gave mysterious pleasure, made me know
Mine inmost heart, its weakness and its strength,
Taught me to cherish with devoutest care
Its deep, unworldly feelings, taught me too
The best of lessons - — to respect myself.
Nor have I ever ceased to reverence you, Domestic Deities! from the first dawn Of reason, through the adventurous paths of youth, Even to this better day, when on mine ear The uproar of contending nations sounds But like the passing wind, and wakes no pulse To tumult. When a child, (for still I love To dwell with fondness on my childish years,) When first, a little one, I left my home, I can remember the first grief 1 felt, And the first painful smile that clothed my front With feelings not its own: sadly at night I sat me down beside a stranger's hearth; And when the lingering hour of rest was come, First wet with tears my pillow. As I grew In years and knowledge, and the course of time Developed the young feelings of my heart, When most I loved in solitude to rove Amid the woodland gloom; or where the rocks Darken'd old Avon's stream, in the ivied cave Recluse to sit and brood the future song,Yet not the less, PENATES, loved I then Your altars; not the less at evening hour Loved I beside the well-trimm'd fire to sit, Absorb'd in many a dear, deceitful dream Of visionary joys, - deceitful dreams, And yet not vain; for painting purest bliss, They form'd to Fancy's mould her votary's heart.
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By Cherwell's sedgy side, and in the meads
Where Isis in her calm, clear stream reflects
The willow's bending boughs, at early dawn,
In the noon-tide hour, and when the night-mist rose,
I have remember'd you; and when the noise
Of lewd Intemperance on my lonely ear
Burst with loud tumult, as recluse I sate,
Musing on days when man should be redeem'd
From servitude, and vice, and wretchedness.
I blest you, Household Gods! because I loved
Your peaceful altars and serener rites.
Nor did I cease to reverence you, when driven
Amid the jarring crowd, an unfit man
To mingle with the world; still, still my heart
Sigh'd for your sanctuary, and inly pined;
And loathing human converse, I have stray'd
Where o'er the sea-beach chilly howl'd the blast,
And gazed upon the world of waves, and wish'd
That I were far beyond the Atlantic deep,
In woodland haunts, a sojourner with Peace.
Not idly did the ancient poets dream, Who peopled earth with Deities. They trod The wood with reverence where the Dryads dwelt; | At day's dim dawn or evening's misty hour They saw the Oreads on their mountain haunts, And felt their holy influence; nor impure Of thought, nor ever with polluted hands,* Touch'd they without a prayer the Naiad's spring, Nor without reverence to the River God Cross'd in unhappy hour his limpid stream. Yet was this influence transient; such brief awe Inspiring as the thunder's long, loud peal Strikes to the feeble spirit. Household Gods, Not such your empire! in your votaries' breasts No momentary impulse ye awake; Nor fleeting, like their local energies, The deep devotion that your fanes impart. O ye whom Youth has wilder'd on your way, Or Pleasure with her siren song hath lured, Or Fame with spirit-stirring trump hath call'd To climb her summits, to your Household Gods Return; for not in Pleasure's gay abodes, Nor in the unquiet, unsafe halls of Fame Doth Happiness abide. O ye who grieve Much for the miseries of your fellow-kind, More for their vices; ye whose honest eyes Scowl on Oppression, - ye whose honest hearts Beat high when Freedom sounds her dread alarm; ye who quit the path of peaceful life Crusading for mankind. — a spaniel race
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That lick the hand that beats them, or tear all
Alike in frenzy; to your Household Gods
Return! for by their altars Virtue dwells,
And Happiness with her; for by their fires
Tranquillity, in no unsocial mood,
Sits silent, listening to the pattering shower;
For, so Suspicion sleep not at the gate
Of Wisdom, Falsehood shall not enter there.
As on the height of some huge eminence, Reach'd with long labor, the way-faring man Pauses awhile, and gazing o'er the plain With many a sore step travell'd, turns him then Serious to contemplate the onward road,
* Μηδε ποτ' αενάων ποταμων καλλίρροον ύδωρ
Ποσσι πέραν, πριν γ' ευξη ιδων ες καλα ρέεθρα,
Χείρας νιψάμενος πολυήρατῳ ὑδατι λευκώ,
Ος ποταμον διαβη, κακοτητι δε χειρας ανιπτος
Τωδε θεοι νεμεσωσι, και αλγεα δωκαν οπίσσω.
HESIOD.
Whene'er thy feet the river ford essay,
Whose flowing current winds its limpid way,
Thy hands amid the pleasant waters lave;
And lowly gazing on the beauteous wave,
Appease the River God: if thou perverse
Pass with unsprinkled hands, a heavy curse
Shall rest upon thee from the observant skies,
And after-woes retributive arise.
Oft though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps
At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity
Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems.
MILTON.
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