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,
Which, on Cyrené's sandy plains,
When Pleasure, nymph with loosened zone,
Usurped the philosophic throne ;
Hear what the courtly sage's tongue1
To his surrounding pupils sung:
'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!
1 Aristippus of Cyrene. He flourished 400 years before Christ.
But thus it is, all sects, we see,
Have watchwords 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!
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!
HAVE not you seen the timid tear
Steal trembling from mine eye?
Have you not marked the flush of fear,
Or caught the murmured sigh?
And can you think my love is chill,
Nor fixed on you alone?
And can you rend, by doubting still,
A heart so much your own?
To you my soul's affections move
Devoutly, warmly true;
My life has been a task of love,
One long, long thought of you.
If all your tender faith is o'er,
If still my truth you'll try;
Alas! I know but one proof more,--
I'll bless your name, and die!
OH! did you not hear a voice of death?
And did you not mark the paly form
Which rode on the silver mist of the heath,
And sung a ghostly dirge in the storm?
Was it a wailing bird of the gloom,
Which shrieks on the house of woe all night? Or a shivering fiend that flew to a tomb,
To howl and to feed till the glance of light?
'Twas not the death-bird's cry from the wood,
Nor shivering fiend that hung in the blast;
"Twas the shade of Helderic-man of blood-
It screams for the guilt of days that are past!
See how the red, red lightning strays,
And scares the gliding ghosts of the heath! Now on the leafless yew it plays
Where hangs the shield of this son of death!
That shield is blushing with murderous stains;
Long has it hung from the cold yew's spray;
It is blown by storms and washed by rains,
But neither can take the blood away.
Oft by that yew, on the blasted field,
Demons dance to the red moon's light;
While the damp boughs creak, and the swinging shield Sings to the raving spirit of night!
ON beds of snow the moonbeam slept,
And chilly was the midnight gloom,
When by the damp grave Ellen went--
Sweet maid it was her Lindor's tomb !
A warm tear gushed, the wintry air
Congealed it as it flowed away;
All night it lay an ice-drop there,
At morn it glittered in the ray !
An angel, wandering from her sphere
Who saw this bright, this frozen gem,
To dew-eyed Pity brought the tear,
And hung it on her diadem!
I THOUGHT this heart consuming lay
On Cupid's burning shrine:
I thought he stole thy heart away,
And placed it near to mine.
I saw thy heart begin to melt,
Like ice before the sun;
Till both a glow congenial felt,
And mingled into one!
THY song has taught my heart to feel
Those soothing thoughts of heavenly love,
Which o'er the sainted spirits steal
When listening to the spheres above!
When, tired of life and misery,
I wish to sigh my latest breath,
Oh, Emma! I will fly to thee,
And thou shalt sing me into death!
And if along thy lip and cheek
That smile of heavenly softness play,
Which, ah! forgive a mind that's weak,--
So oft has stolen my mind away;
Thou'lt seem an angel of the sky,
That comes to charm me into bliss:
I'll gaze and die-who would not die,
If death were half so sweet as this?
WRITTEN IN A COMMON-PLACE BOOK, CALLED 'THE BOOK OF FOLLIES.'
In which every one that opened it should contribute something.
TO THE BOOK OF FOLLIES.
THIS tribute's from a wretched elf,
Who hails thee emblem of himself!
The book of life, which I have traced,
Has been, like thee, a motley waste
Of follies scribbled o'er and o'er,
One folly bringing hundreds more.
Some have indeed been writ so neat,
In characters so fair, so sweet,
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