Beloved Woman! did you fly Chilled Friendship's dark disliking eye, With cruel weight these trifles press breast But why with sable wand unblest I felt it prompt the tender dream, 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) Even there-beneath that light-house towerIn the tumultuous evil hour Ere Peace with Sara came, Time was, I should have thought it sweet And there in black soul-jaundiced fit When mountain surges bellowing deep Plunged foaming on the shore. Then by the lightning's blaze to mark But Fancy now more gaily sings; As sky-larks 'mid the corn, On summer fields she grounds her breast: Nods, till returning morn. O mark those smiling tears, that swell Blest visitations from above, Such are the tender woes of Love When stormy Midnight howling round The tears that tremble down your cheek, And from your heart the sighs that steal How oft, my Love! with shapings sweet I seize you in the vacant air, 'Tis said, in Summer's evening hour And so shall flash my love-charged eye Shoots rapid through the frame! LINES TO A FRIEND IN ANSWER TO A MELANCHOLY LETIER. AWAY, those cloudy looks, that labouring sigh, Nor meanly thus complain of Fortune's power, Yon setting sun flashes a mournful gleam Wild, as the autumnal gust, the hand of Time Bears on its wing each hour a load of Fate; To-day may rule a tempest-troubled State. Nor shall not Fortune with a vengeful smile There shiv'ring sad beneath the tempest's frown' RELIGIOUS MUSINGS; 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, Who hymned the song of peace o'er Bethlehem's fields! Invisible (by symbols only seen) With a peculiar and surpassing light Shines from the visage of the oppressed good man, Heaven's hymnings paused: and Hell her yawning mouth |