AH! cease thy tears and sobs, my little Life!
I did but snatch away the unclasped knife :
Some safer toy will soon arrest thine eye,
And to quick laughter change this peevish cry! .
Poor stumbler on the rocky coast of woe,
Tutored by pain each source of pain to know!
Alike the foodful fruit and scorching fire
Awake thy eager grasp and young desire;
Alike the Good, the Ill offend thy sight,
And rouse the stormy sense of shrill affright!
Untaught, yet wise! mid all thy brief alarms
Thou closely clingest to thy mother's arms,
Nestling thy little face in that fond breast
Whose anxious heavings lull thee to thy rest!
Man's breathing Miniature! thou mak'st me sigh
A Babe art thou-and such a Thing am I!
To anger rapid and as soon appeased,
For trifles mourning and by trifles pleased;
Break Friendship's mirror with a tetchy blow,
Yet snatch what coals of fire on Pleasure's altar glow!
O thou that rearest with celestial aim
The future Seraph in my mortal frame,
Thrice holy Faith! whatever thorns I meet
As on I totter with unpractised feet,
Still let me stretch my arms and cling to thee,
Meek nurse of souls through their long infancy!
WRITTEN AT SHURTON BARS, NEAR BRIDGEWATER, SEPTEMBER, 1795, IN ANSWER TO A LETTER FROM BRISTOL.
Good verse most good, and bad verse then seems better
Received from absent friend by way of Letter.
For what so sweet can labored lays impart
As one rude rhyme warm from a friendly heart 1—ANON.
NOR travels my meandering eye
The starry wilderness on high;
Nor now with curious sight
I mark the glow-worm, as I pass,
Move with "green radiance" through the grass,
An emerald of light.
O ever present to my view!
My wafted spirit is with you,
And soothes your boding fears:
I see you all oppressed with gloom
Sit lonely in that cheerless room—
Ah me! You are in tears!
Beloved Woman! did you fly
Chilled Friendship's dark disliking eye,
Or Mirth's untimely din?
With cruel weight these trifles press
A temper sore with tenderness,
When aches the Void within.
But why with sable wand unblest
Should Fancy rouse within my breast
Dim-visaged shapes of Dread?
Untenanting its beauteous clay
My Sara's soul has winged its way,
And hovers round my head!
I felt it prompt the tender dream,
When slowly sank the day's last gleam;
You roused each gentler sense,
As sighing o'er the blossom's bloom
Meek Evening wakes its soft perfume
With viewless influence.
And hark, my Love! The sea-breeze moans
Through yon reft house! O'er rolling stones
In bold ambitious sweep,
The onward-surging tides supply
The silence of the cloudless sky
With mimic thunders deep.
Dark reddening from the channelled Isle
(Where stands one solitary pile
The Holmes, in the Bristol Channel
Unslated by the blast)
The watchfire, like a sullen star,
Twinkles to many a dozing tar
'Rude cradled on the mast.
Even there-beneath that light-house tower-
In the tumultuous evil hour
Ere Peace with Sara came,
Time was, I should have thought it sweet
To count the echoings of my feet,
And watch the storm-vexed flame.
And there in black soul-jaundiced fit
A sad gloom-pampered Man to sit,
And listen to the roar:
When mountain surges bellowing deep -
With an uncouth monster leap
Plunged foaming on the shore.
Then by the lightning's blaze to mark
Sonie toiling tempest-shattered bark ;
Her vain distress-guns hear;
And when a second sheet of light
Flashed o'er the blackness of the night-
To see no vessel there!
But Fancy now more gaily sings;
Or if awhile she droop her wings,
As sky-larks 'mid the corn,
On summer fields she grounds her breast:
The oblivious poppy o'er her nest
Nods, till returning morn.
O mark those smiling tears, that swell
The opened rose! From heaven they fell,
And with the sun-beam blend.
Blest visitations from above,
Such are the tender woes of Love
Fostering the heart they bend!
When stormy Midnight howling round
Beats on our roof with clattering sound,
To me your arms you'll stretch:
Great God! you'll say-To us so kind,
O shelter from this loud bleak wind
The houseless, friendless wretch!
The tears that tremble down your cheek,
Shall bathe my kisses chaste and meek
In Pity's dew divine;
And from your heart the sighs that steal
Shall make your rising bosom feel
The answering swell of mine!
How oft, my Love! with shapings sweet
I paint the moment we shall meet !
With eager speed I dart-
I seize you in the vacant air,
And fancy, with a husband's care
'Tis said, in Summer's evening hour
Flashes the golden-colored flower
A fair electric flame:
And so shall flash my love-charged eye
When all the heart's big ecstasy
Shoots rapid through the frame!
TO A FRIEND IN ANSWER TO A MELANCHOLY LETTER.
AWAY, those cloudy looks, that laboring sigh,
The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!
Nor meanly thus complain of Fortune's power,
When the blind gamester throws a luckless die.
Yon setting sun flashes a mournful gleam
Behind those broken clouds, his stormy train:
To-inorrow shall the many-colored main
In brightness roll beneath his orient beam!
Wild, as the autumnal gust, the hand of Time
Flies o'er his mystic lyre in shadowy dance
The alternate groups of Joy and Grief advance r
Responsive to his varying strains sublime!
Bears on its wing each hour a load of Fate;
The swain, who, lulled by Seine's mild murmurs, led
His weary oxen to their nightly shed,
To-day may rule a tempest-troubled State.
Nor shall not Fortune with a vengeful smile
Survey the sanguinary despot's might,
And haply hurl the pageant from his height
Unwept to wander in some savage isle.
There shiv'ring sad beneath the tempest's frown
Round his tired limbs to wrap the purple vest;
And mixed with nails and beads, an equal jest!
Barter for food the jewels of his crown.
A DESULTORY POEM, WRITTEN ON THE CHRISTMAS EVE OF 1794.
THIS is the time, when most divine to hear,
The voice of adoration rouses me,
As with a Cherub's trump and high upborne,
Yea, mingling with the choir, I seem to view
The vision of the heavenly multitude,
Who hymned the song of peace o'er Bethlehem's fields!
Yet thou more bright than all the angel blaze,
That harbingered thy birth, Thou, Man of Woes!
Despised Galilean! For the great
Invisible (by symbols only seen)
With a peculiar and surpassing light
Shines from the visage of the oppressed good man,
When heedless of himself the scourged Saint
Mourns for the oppressor. Fair the vernal mead,
Fair the high grove, the sea, the sun, the stars;
True impress each of their creating Sire!
Yet nor high grove, nor many-colored mead,
Nor the green Ocean with his thousand isles,
Nor the starred azure, nor the sovran sun,
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