No faint and hesitating trill, Nor doth the example fail to cheer Ye myrtle wreaths, your fragrance shed Yet will I temperately rejoice; Wide is the range, and free the choice Which, haply, kindred souls may prize And passion's feverish dreams. For deathless powers to verse belong, But some their function have disclaimed, Not such the initiatory strains In Britain's earliest dawn: Trembled the groves, the stars grew pale, While all too daringly the veil Of nature was withdrawn! Nor such the spirit-stirring note Woe! woe to Tyrants! from the lyre And not unhallowed was the page Love listening while the Lesbian Maid O ye, who patiently explore pure Simonides. That were, indeed, a genuine birth Of poesy; a bursting forth Of genius from the dust : What Horace gloried to behold, What Maro loved, shall we enfold? 1819. A PEN XXIX. MEMORY. to register; a key That winds through secret wards; Are well assigned to Memory By allegoric Bards. As aptly, also, might be given That, softening objects, sometimes even Outstrips the heart's demand; That smooths foregone distress, the lines Of lingering care subdues, Long-vanished happiness refines, And clothes in brighter hues; Yet, like a tool of Fancy, works Those Spectres to dilate That startle Conscience, as she lurks Within her lonely seat. O that our lives, which flee so fast, In purity were such, That not an image of the past Retirement then might hourly look Age steal to his allotted nook With heart as calm as lakes that sleep, In frosty moonlight glistening; Or mountain rivers, where they creep To their own far-off murmurs listening. XXX. THIS Lawn, a carpet all alive With shadows flung from leaves, to strive In dance, amid a press Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields Of Worldlings revelling in the fields Less quick the stir when tide and breeze Forbid a moment's rest; The medley less when Boreal Lights 1823. Yet, spite of all this eager strife, XXXI. 1829. HUMANITY. [The Rocking-stones, alluded to in the beginning of the following verses, are supposed to have been used, by our British ancestors, both for judicial and religious purposes. Such stones are not uncommonly found, at this day, both in Great Britain and in Ireland.] WHAT though the Accused, upon his own appeal And functions dwell in beast and bird that sway |