Of battling chiefs, and armies laid in gore,
We rage, we sigh, we wonder and adore.
Thus Rome with Greece in rival splendour shone,
But claim'd immortal satire for her own:
While Horace pierced full oft the wanton breast
With sportive censure and resistless jest;
And that Etrurian, whose indignant lay
Thy kindred genius* can so well display,
With many a well-aimed thought and pointed line,
Drove the bold villain from his black design.
For as those mighty masters of the lyre,
With temper'd dignity or quenchless ire,
Through all the various paths of science trod,
Their school was Nature, and their teacher God.
Nor did the Muse decline, till o'er her head
The savage tempest of the North was spread;
Till arm'd with desolation's bolt it came,
And wrapp'd her temple in funereal flame.
But soon the Arts once more a dawn diffuse,
And Petrarch hail'd it with his morning muse;
Boccace and Dante join'd the choral lay,
And Arno glisten'd with returning day.
Thus Science rose; and, all her troubles pass'd,
She hoped a steady, tranquil reign at last;
But Faustus came: (indulge the painful thought),
Were not his countless volumes dearly bought;
For, while to every clime and class they flew,
Their worth diminish'd as their numbers grew.
Some pressman, rich in Homer's wealthy page,
Could give ten epics to one wondering age;
A single thought supplied the great design,
And clouds of Iliads spread from every line.
Nor Homer's glowing page, nor Virgil's fire,
Could one lone breast with equal flame inspire;
* These lines were addressed to the English satirist William Gifford.
But, lost in books, irregular and wild,
The poet wonder'd, and the critic smiled:
The friendly smile a bulkier work repays;
For fools will print, while greater fools will praise.
THEN spake the Sylph of Spring serene,
"Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween,
With sympathy shall move :
For I with living melody
Of birds in choral symphony,
First waked thy soul to poesy,
To piety and love.
When thou, at call of vernal breeze,
And beck'ning bough of budding trees,
Hast left thy sullen fire;
And stretch'd thee in some mossy dell,
And heard the browsing wether's bell,
Blythe echoes rousing from their cell
To swell the tinkling quire :
Or heard from branch of flow'ring thorn
The song of friendly cuckoo warn
The tardy-moving swain;
Hast bid the purple swallow hail;
And seen him now through ether sail,
Now sweeping downward o'er the vale,
And skimming now the plain;
Then, catching with a sudden glance
The bright and silver-clear expanse
Of some broad river's stream,
Beheld the boats adown it glide,
And motion wind again the tide,
Where, chain'd in ice by Winter's pride,
Late roll'd the heavy team:
Or, lured by some fresh-scented gale,
That woo'd the moored fishers' sail
To tempt the mighty main,
Hast watch'd the dim receding shore,
Now faintly seen the ocean o'er,
Like hanging cloud, and now no more
To bound the sapphire plain;
Then, wrapped in night, the scudding bark
(That seem'd, self-poised amid the dark,
Through upper air to leap),
Beheld, from thy most fearful height,
The rapid dolphin's azure light
Cleave, like a living meteor bright,
The darkness of the deep:
'Twas mine the warm, awakening hand
That made thy grateful heart expand,
And feel the high control
Of Him, the mighty Power, that moves
Amid the waters and the groves,
And through his vast creation proves
His omnipresent soul.
Or, brooding o'er some forest rill,
Fringed with the early daffodil,
And quiv'ring maiden-hair,
When thou hast mark'd the dusky bed,
With leaves and water-rust o'erspread,
That seem'd an amber light to shed
On all was shadow'd there;
And thence, as by its murmur call'd,
The current traced to where it brawl'd
Beneath the noontide ray;
And there beheld the checker'd shade
Of waves, in many a sinuous braid,
That o'er the sunny channel play'd,
With motion ever gay:
"Twas I to these the magic gave,
That made thy heart, a willing slave,
To gentle Nature bend;
And taught thee how with tree and flower,
And whispering gale, and dropping shower,
In converse sweet to pass the hour,
As with an early friend.
That mid the noontide sunny haze,
Did in thy languid bosom raise
The raptures of the boy;
When, waked as if to second birth,
Thy soul through every pore look'd forth,
And gazed upon the beauteous Earth
With myriad eyes of joy :
That made thy heart, like His above,
To flow with universal love
For every living thing.
And oh! if I, with ray divine,
Thus tempering, did thy soul refine,
Then let thy gentle heart be mine,
And bless the Sylph of Spring.
FAIR Ellen was long the delight of the young,
No damsel could with her compare;
Her charms were the theme of the heart and the
And bards without number in ecstasies sung,
The beauties of Ellen the fair.
Yet cold was the maid; and though legions advanced, All drill'd by Ovidean art,
And languish'd and ogled, protested and danced, Like shadows they came, and like shadows they glanced
From the hard-polish'd ice of her heart.
Yet still did the heart of fair Ellen implore
A something that could not be found;
Like a sailor she seem'd on a desolate shore,
With nor house, nor a tree, nor a sound but the roar
Of breakers high dashing around.
From object to object still, still would she veer,
Though nothing, alas! could she find;
Like the moon, without atmosphere, brilliant and clear,
Yet doom'd, like the moon, with no being to cheer
The bright barren waste of her mind.
But rather than sit like a statue so still
When the rain made her mansion a pound,
Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill,
And pat every stair, like a woodpecker's bill,
From the tiles of the roof to the ground.
One morn, as the maid from her casement inclined,
Pass'd a youth with a frame in his hand.
The casement she closed-not the eye of her mind; For, do all she could, no, she could not be blind; Still before her she saw the youth stand.
"Ah, what can he do," said the languishing maid, "Ah, what with that frame can he do?"
And she knelt to the goddess of Secrets and pray'd, When the youth pass'd again, and again he display'd The frame and a picture to view.
"Oh, beautiful picture!" the fair Ellen cried,
"I must see thee again or I die."
Then under her white chin her bonnet she tied,
And after the youth and the picture she hied,
When the youth, looking back, met her eye.
"Fair damsel," said he (and he chuckled the while), "This picture I see you admire :
Then take it, I pray you, perhaps 'twill beguile Some moments of sorrow (nay, pardon my smile); Or at least keep you home by the fire."
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