sort of camp they had left behind them: all we found, were a few pikes without heads, a parcel of empty bottles full of water, and a bundle of blank French commissions, filled up with Irishmen's names. I have only leisure to add, that I am in great haste.
P.S.-If you do not receive this in course, it must have miscarried, therefore, I beg you will immediately write to let me know; but to prevent you doing this, I am advised to send a duplicate. I therefore inclose one in this, and refer you to that for farther intelligence.
ON BIGNOR PARK IN SUSSEX.
By hills encircled, in a lofty grove,
Bignor, fond seat of many a parent's love:
From thy wild glens my earliest breath I drew,
And memory still-to every prospect true-
Can trace each shrub, the lawn, the daisied green,
For 'tis with eyes of infancy you're seen;
When the young bud of life was in its glow,
And youth in embryo scarce began to blow.
Oft in wild vision's fancied joy I'm led
Through scenes, still conscious of the bliss that's fled; Where fond affection's sad prophetic tear,
Maternal love, and agonizing fear,
Conscious of ills that human life await,
Hung weeping o'er her children's infant state.
Why still should I those long-lost days deplore,
Which, if possess'd again, could charm no more:
For many a year its lingering course has made—
Since I was torn from thy paternal shade:
Life's vernal days of transient bliss are o'er,
And hope's gay wings are closed to rise no more.
Thy mountains, Bignor, fringed with beechen shades,
Thy verdant meadows-thy empurpled glades,
Brown hamlets shelter'd by the pendant wood,
And antique oaks that crown the wat'ry flood ;-
Scenes which my mother's artless strains inspired,
And the ill-fated muse of Otway* fired.
* A native of Sussex, said to have been starved to death.
Nor sacred less is Herting's* cottaged vale,
Where Collins breath'd his ever-pensive tale;
Rous'd Echo from her sylvan bed of sleep,
And bade your groves and mountain shepherds weep.
Oft has my sainted mother wept and sigh'd
On the wild banks of Arun's+ restless tide;
Whose silver stream still saddening, loves to tell
The vocal numbers which she sang so well
Bears her sad history into distant deeps,
And with her willowed banks responsive weeps.
No more your sacred haunts, in Spring's attire,
Shall sounds of sweetest harmony inspire.
Or the chaste empress of the starry night,
The muse's meditating steps invite
To the wild pathless copse, or flow'ry dell,
Or where the sheep-fold's melancholy bell
Awakes the solemn silent ear of night,
Or shepherd's boy from vernal dreams' delight.
What time the hoary owl incessant wheels,
Winnowing, with labouring wings, the misty fields,
And clamorous rooks in black battalions meet,
Slow wearing homeward to their dark retreat,
Oft have I paused upon thy utmost brow,
When evening beams enrich'd the vale below,
And summer suns declining, sank away
In short-lived splendour with the parting day.
Tinkling adown thy turf-clad steeps were led
The folds, reluctant, to their nightly shed:
While jocund labour whistling lagg'd behind,
And village murmurs swell'd the whispering wind.
* An obscure village in Sussex, where Collins, who was also a native of this county, wrote his beautiful elegy on the death of Colonel Ross..
A river in Sussex, which gives its name to Arundel.
Slow flew the swallow o'er the glassy lake,
And dulcet warblings fill'd the distant brake;
The nut-fenced hedge, where woodbine flaunts among,
Rang with the blackbird's full impassion'd song:
The skylark, wearied with aerial flight,
Sank tremulous on her verdant bed of night,
Resign'd the music of the live-long day,
To Philomela's soft, but sorrowing lay.
High rose the moon, the traveller's gay resource,
And ranges peerless up her starry course;
Her blossom'd heaths, dark pines and tinted wheat,
In one wide prospect elegantly meet;
There Neptune's wide blue restless waters rise,
And distant ships seem blended with the skies:
High stately groves embrace the flow'ry fields,
And to the sea a woodland contrast yields.
Where Beechy's* wild immeasurable steep
With pallid horror frowns above the deep,
Oft from the giddy height the shepherd sees
The shapeless vessel in the distant seas-
Struggling with adverse winds to gain the coast,
High in the waste of ruthless billows tost.
Far sounds the tide with never-ceasing roar,
And whitening surges mark the distant shore:
That shore, where Cæsar's bloody eagle stood,
Hovering in doubtful battle o'er the flood:
That flood which ran in streams so pure before,
Which British valour stained with Roman gore:
Beechy-head. This spot is now classic ground, for it has been consecrated in the verse of the most elegant of the modern muses, a muse, whom, though "melancholy marked her for her own," yet Venus “quintâ parte sui nectaris imbuit,"--but to what reader is this eulogy necessary:—
"Tu quo litoribus nostris,
Eternum scribens famam, Caroletta, dedisti."
+ Cæsar, in his second expedition, landed on this coast.
And nobly backward to be Roman slaves,
Turn'd her green azure* into purple waves :
Drawn from thy woods by promis'd scenes of wealth, I've lost my friends, my happiness, my health;Youth's wearied out in unavailing toil,
Since pride rejects that wealth obtain❜d by spoil:
Virtue unfriended meets with foul disgrace,
And rank corruption revels in her place:-
How far more bless'd, beneath thy mountain's side,
Where Flora triumphs in her vernal pride,
Does many a rustic independent live,
Too proud to ask-too honest to deceive,-
Too low for envy-for a bribe too free,
And crown'd with bliss by fate denied to me.
TRANSLATION OF A SANSCRIT COUPLET.
মাসুজন দর্শন° মেমদি দর্শন মস্তু মাপুন বেহঃ। স্নেহো যদি মাবিব হো যদি রিব হো মাস্তুজীব ভা বোমঃ ৷৷
MAY I ne'er know a man of virtuous heart,
Or knowing such, his friendship ne'er obtain,
But if my friend-O! may we never part,
Or parted, quickly close a life of pain.
*The most bloody battles ever fought in England, were those of Hastings, and those on Cæsar's landing in Sussex and Kent. There still prevails, among the lower class, a superstitious belief, that the sea changed colour.
|