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The Wants of

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Man wants but little have below:
"For wants that little, Long

Has not with me exactly so:
But the so, in the song.

My

wants are man

many, and if tokl

Would muster many a score:
And ware each wish a mint of gold
I still should long for more

Washington 21. August 1841

John Quincy Adams.

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To make grief bliss, Anne hath a way.

Talk not of gems, the orient list,
The diamond, topaz, amethyst,
The emerald mild, the ruby gay;
Talk of my gem, Anne Hathaway!
She hath a way, with her bright eye,
Their various lustres to defy,
The jewels she, and the foil they,
So sweet to look Anne hath a way;
She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway;

To shame bright gems, Anne hath a way.

But were it to my fancy given

To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;
For though a mortal made of clay,
Angels must love Anne Hathaway;
She hath a way so to control,
To rapture, the imprisoned soul,

And sweetest heaven on earth display,
That to be heaven Anne hath a way;
She hath a way,
Anne Hathaway;

To be heaven's self, Anne hath a way.

Attributed to SHAKESPEare.

UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF JOHN MILTON,

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PREFIXED TO "PARADISE Lost.' THREE Poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third, she joined the former two.

JOHN DRYDEN.

TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON. THE Muse's fairest light in no dark time, The wonder of a learnéd age; the line Which none can pass; the most proportioned wit,

To nature, the best judge of what was fit;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen;
The voice most echoed by consenting men ;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome,
Returning all her music with his own ;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art :
Here lies Ben Jonson! every age will look
With sorrow here, with wonder on his book.
JOHN CLEVELAND.

TO MACAULAY.

THE dreamy rhymer's measured snore Falls heavy on our cars no more;

And by long strides are left behind
The dear delights of womankind,
Who wage their battles like their loves,
In satin waistcoats and kid gloves,
And have achieved the crowning work
When they have trussed and skewered a Turk.
Another comes with stouter tread,
And stalks among the statelier dead.
He rushes on, and hails by turns
High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns;
And shows the British youth, who ne'er
Will lag behind, what Romans were
When all the Tuscans and their Lars
Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

TO H. W. L.,

ON HIS BIRTнday, 27th FEBRUARY, 1867.

I NEED not praise the sweetness of his song,

Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he

wrong

The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along,
Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name
Is blown about the world, but to his friends
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame,
And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim
To murmur a God bless you! and there ends.

As I muse backward up the checkered years

Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears, But hush! this is not for profaner ears;

Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the

cost.

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core,

As naught but nightshade grew upon earth's ground;

Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door, Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound.

Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with

sun,

So through his trial faith translucent rayed
Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed
A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun.

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay
And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss,
If our poor life be lengthened by a lay,
He shall not go, although his presence may,

And the next age in praise shall double this.

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[The immolation of this republican judge was celebrated in the following lines by the youthful Southey during his short experience as a democratic regenerator. In their original publication they were called: "Inscription for the Apartment in Cheapstone Castle where Henry Marten the Regicide was imprisoned thirty Years." After Southey became Poet Laureate he endeavored to suppress the poem, but unsuccessfully.]

FOR thirty years secluded from mankind,
Here Marten lingered. Often have these walls
Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison: not to him

Did nature's fair varieties exist:
He never saw the sun's delightful beams,
Save when through yon high bars it poured a sad
And broken splendor. Dost thou ask his crime?
He had rebelled against the king, and sat
In judgment on him; for his ardent mind
Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,
And peace and liberty. Wild dreams, but such
As Plato loved; such as, with holy zeal,
Our Milton worshipped. Blessed hopes ! awhile
From man withheld, even to the latter days,
When Christ shall come and all things be fulfilled.

ROBERT SOUTHEY,

INSCRIPTION FOR BROWNRIGG'S CELL.

A PARODY.

[Canning, who was retained by the other side, parodied Southey's honest lines in the "Anti-Jacobin," November 20, 1797, by the fol. lowing verses, entitled: "Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg the 'Prentice-cide was confined previous to her Execution."]

FOR one long term, or ere her trial came,

Here Brownrigg lingered. Often have these cells
Echoed her blasphemies, as with shrill voice
She screamed for fresh geneva. Not to her
Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,
St. Giles, its fair varieties expand;

Till at the last in slow-drawn cart she went
To execution. Dost thou ask her crime?
She whipped two female 'prentices to death,
And hid them in the coal-hole. For her mind
Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage
schemes!

Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine
Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog
The little Spartans; such as erst chastised
Our Milton, when at college. For this act
Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! but time
shall come

When France shall reign, and laws be all repealed.

SMOLLETT.

GEORGE CANNING.

WHENCE could arise the mighty critic spleen,
The muse a trifler, and her theme so mean?
What had I done that angry heaven should send
The bitterest foe where most I wished a friend?
Oft hath my tongue been wanton at this name,
And hailed the honors of thy matchless fame.
For me let hoary Fielding bite the ground,
So nobler Pickle stands superbly bound;
From Livy's temples tear the historic crown,
Which with more justice blooms upon thy own.
Compared with thee, be all life-writers dumb,
But he who wrote the life of Tommy Thumb.
Who ever read the Regicide but sware
The author wrote as man ne'er wrote before?
Others for plots and underplots may call,
Here's the right method, have no plot at all!

JOHN CHURCHILL.

TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS HOOD.

TAKE back into thy bosom, earth, This joyous, May-eyed morrow, The gentlest child that ever mirth Gave to be reared by sorrow! "T is hard - while half rays half gold, green, Through vernal bowers are burning,

And streams their diamond mirrors hold
To summer's face returning,

To say we 're thankful that his sleep
Shall nevermore be lighter,

In whose sweet-tongued companionship
Stream, bower, and beam grew brighter!

But all the more intensely true

His soul gave out each feature Of elemental love, each hue And grace of golden nature, The deeper still beneath it all

Lurked the keen jags of anguish ; The more the laurels clasped his brow Their poison made it languish. Seemed it that, like the nightingale Of his own mournful singing, The tenderer would his song prevail While most the thorn was stinging. So never to the desert-worn

Did fount bring freshness deeper Than that his placid rest this morn

Has brought the shrouded sleeper. That rest may lap his weary head

Where charnels choke the city, Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed The wren shall wake its ditty; But near or far, while evening's star Is dear to hearts regretting, Around that spot admiring thought Shall hover, unforgetting.

BARTHOLOMEW SIMMONS

BURNS.

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM.

No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,

They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant !
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!

The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,

And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning.

The dews that washed the dust and soil

From off the wings of pleasure,

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.

I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.

I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;

And, like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.

How oft that day, with fond delay,

I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow !

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
I heard the squirrels leaping;
The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.

I watched him while in sportive mood
I read "The Twa Dogs' " story,
And half believed he understood
The poet's allegory.

Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours
Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.

New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.

I woke to find the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better

Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor :

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart

In every tongue rehearsing.

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already?

I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;

The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.

I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.

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