This day shall come with aspect kind,
Wherever fate may cast your rover;
He'll think of those he left behind,
And drink a health to bliss that's over!
Then oh! my friends, this hour improve,
Let's feel as if we ne'er could sever;
And may the birth of her we love
Be thus with joy remembered ever!
TO A BOY, WITH A WATCH.
WRITTEN FOR A FRIEND.
Is it not sweet, beloved youth,
To rove through Erudition's bowers,
And cull the golden fruits of truth,
And gather Fancy's brilliant flowers?
And is it not more sweet than this,
To feel thy parents' hearts approving,
And pay them back in sums of bliss
The dear, the endless debt of loving?
It must be so to thee, my youth;
With this idea toil is lighter;
This sweetens all the fruits of truth,
And makes the flowers of Fancy brighter!
The little gift we send thee, boy,
May sometimes teach thy soul to ponder,
If indolence or siren joy
Should ever tempt that soul to wander ;
"Twill tell thee that the winged day
Can ne'er be chained by man's endeavour;
That life and time shall fade away,
While heaven and virtue bloom for ever!
FRAGMENTS OF COLLEGE EXERCISES.
Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus.—Juv.
MARK those proud boasters of a splendid line,
Like gilded ruins, mouldering while they shine,
How heavy sits that weight of alien show,
Like martial helm upon an infant's brow;
Those borrowed splendours, whose contrasting light
Throws back the native shades in deeper night.
Ask the proud train who glory's shade pursue, Where are the arts by which that glory grew?
The genuine virtues that with eagle gaze
Sought young Renown in all her orient blaze!
Where is the heart by chymic truth refined,
The exploring soul, whose eye had read mankind?
Where are the links that twined, with heavenly art,
His country's interest round the patriot's heart?
Where is the tongue that scattered words of fire?
The spirit breathing through the poet's lyre?
Do these descend with all that tide of fame
Which vainly waters an unfruitful name?
Justum bellum quibus necessarium, et pia arma quibus nulla nisi in armis relinquitur spes.-Livy.
Is there no call, no consecrating cause,
Approved by Heaven, ordained by Nature's laws,
Where justice flies the herald of our way,
And truth's pure beams upon the banners play?
Yes, there's a call sweet as an angel's breath
To slumbering babes, or innocence in death;
urgent as the tongue of heaven within
When the mind's balance trembles upon sin.
Oh! 'tis our country's voice, whose claim should meet
An echo in the soul's most deep retreat;
Along the heart's responding string should run,
Nor let a tone there vibrate-but the one!
MARY, I believed thee true,
And I was blest in thus believing;
But now I mourn that e'er I knew
A girl so fair and so deceiving!
Few have ever loved like me,—
Oh! I have loved thee too sincerely!
And few have e'er deceived like thee,
Alas! deceived me too severely!
Fare thee well! yet think awhile
On one whose bosom bleeds to doubt thee;
Who now would rather trust that smile,
And die with thee than live without thee!
Fare thee well! I'll think of thee,
Thou leav'st me many a bitter token;
For see, distracting woman! see,
My peace is gone, my heart is broken!—
Fare thee well!
WHY does azure deck the sky?
'Tis to be like thy looks of blue;
Why is red the rose's dye?
Because it is thy blushes' hue.
All that's fair, by Love's decree,
Has been made resembling thee!
Why is falling snow so white,
But to be like thy bosom fair?
Why are solar beams so bright?
That they may seem thy golden hair!
All that's bright, by Love's decree,
Has been made resembling thee!
Why are Nature's beauties felt?
Oh! 'tis thine in her we see!
Why has music power to melt?
Oh! because it speaks like thee.
All that's sweet, by Love's decree,
Has been made resembling thee!
MORALITY, A FAMILIAR EPISTLE. ADDRESSED TO J. ATKINSON, ESQ., M.R.I.A.
THOUGH long at school and college dozing,
On books of rhyme and books of prosing.
And copying from their moral pages
Fine recipes for forming sages;
Though long with those divines at school
Who think to make us good by rule;
Who, in methodic forms advancing,
Teaching morality like dancing,
Tell us, for Heaven or money's sake,
What steps we are through life to take :
Though thus, my friend, so long employed,
And so much midnight oil destroyed,
I must confess, my searches past,
I only learned to doubt at last.
I find the doctors and the sages
Have differed in all climes and ages,
And two in fifty scarce agree
On what is pure morality!
'Tis like the rainbow's shifting zone,
And every vision makes its own.
The doctors of the Porch advise,
As modes of being great and wise,
That we should cease to own or know
The luxuries that from feeling flow.
"Reason alone must claim direction, And Apathy's the soul's perfection. Like a dull lake the heart must lie, Nor passion's gale nor pleasure's sigh,
Though heaven the breeze, the breath supplied, Must curl the wave or swell the tide !"
Such was the rigid Zeno's plan
To form his philosophic man;
Such were the modes he taught mankind
To weed the garden of the mind;
They tore away some weeds, 'tis true,
But all the flowers were ravished too!
Now listen to the wily strains
on Cyrene's sandy plains,
(When Pleasure, nymph with loosened zone,
Usurped the philosophic throne)-
Hear what the courtly sage's* tongue
To his surrounding pupils sung:
66 Pleasure's the only noble end
To which all human powers should tend,
And Virtue gives her heavenly lore
But to make Pleasure please us more!
Wisdom and she were both designed
To make the senses more refined,
That man might revel, free from cloying,
Then most a sage when most enjoying!"
Is this morality ?-Oh, no!
E'en I a wiser path could show.
The flower within this vase confined,
The pure, the unfading flower of mind,
Must not throw all its sweets away
Upon a mortal mould of clay;
No, no! its richest breath should rise
In virtue's incense to the skies!
But thus it is, all sects we see
Have watch-words of morality!
Some cry out Venus, others Jove;
Here 'tis religion, there 'tis love!
But while they thus so widely wander,
While mystics dream, and doctors ponder;
And some, in dialectics firm,
Seek virtue in a middle term;
While thus they strive, in Heaven's defiance,
To chain morality with science;
The plain good man, whose actions teach
More virtue than a sect can preach,
Pursues his course, unsagely blest,
His tutor whispering in his breast:
Nor could he act a purer part,
Though he had Tully all by heart;
And when he drops the tear on woe,
He little knows or cares to know
That Epictetus blamed that tear,
By Heaven approved, to virtue dear!
Oh! when I've seen the morning beam
Floating within the dimpled stream;
While Nature, wakening from the night.
Has just put on her robes of light,
Have I, with cold optician's gaze,
Explored the doctrine of those rays?
No, pedants, I have left to you
Nicely to separate hue from hue:
Go, give that moment up to art
When Heaven and Nature claim the heart;
And, dull to all their best attraction,
Go-measure angles of refraction!
While I, in feeling's sweet romance,
Look on each day-beam as a glance
From the great eye of Him above,
Wakening his world with looks of love!
THE NATAL GENIUS, A DREAM.
THE MORNING OF HER BIRTH-DAY.
IN witching slumbers of the night,
I dreamed I was the airy sprite
That on thy natal moment smiled;
And thought I wafted on my wing
Those flowers which in Elysium spring,
To crown my lovely mortal child.
With olive-branch I bound thy head,
Heart's-ease along thy path I shed,
Which was to bloom through all thy years; Nor yet did I forget to bind
Love's roses, with his myrtle twined,
And dewed by sympathetic tears.
Such was the wild but precious boon
Which Fancy, at her magic noon,
Bade me to Nona's image pay-
Oh! were I, love, thus doomed to be
Thy little guardian deity,
How blest around thy steps I'd play!
Thy life should softly steal along,
Calm as some lonely shepherd's song
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