Secure foundations. As the year runs round,
Apart she toils within the chosen ring;
While the stars shine, or while day's purple eye
Is gently closing with the flowers of Spring;
Where even the motion of an Angel's wing
Would interrupt the intense tranquillity
Of silent hills, and more than sielnt sky.
"WEAK is the will of Man, his judgment blind;
Remembrance persecutes, and Hope betrays;
Heavy is woe; - and joy, for human-kind,
A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!"
Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days
Who wants the glorious faculty assigned
To elevate the more-than-reasoning Mind,
And color life's dark cloud with orient rays.
Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined:
'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.
TO THE MEMORY OF RAISLEY CALVERT.
CALVERT! it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.
This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem,
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where'er I liked; and finally array
My temples with the Muse's diadem.
Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth;
If there be aught of pure, or good, or great,
In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays
Of higher mood, which now I meditate;
It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived Youth!
To think how much of this will be thy praise.
SCORN not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glowworm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains, alas! too few.
How sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks
The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood!
An old place, full of many a lovely brood,
Tall trees, green arbors, and ground-flowers in
And wild-rose tiptoe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like a bold Girl, who plays her agile pranks
At Wakes and Fairs with wandering Mountebanks,
When she stands cresting the Clown's head, and
The crowd beneath her. Verily I think
Such place to me is sometimes like a dream
Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam
Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,
And leap at once from the delicious stream.
HIGH is our calling, Friend! Creative Art,
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Heroically fashioned
Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness, ·
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!
FROM the dark chambers of dejection freed,
Spurning the unprofitable yoke of care,
Rise, GILLIES, rise: the gales of youth shall bear
Thy genius forward like a wingèd steed.
Though bold Bellerophon (so Jove decreed
In wrath) fell headlong from the fields of air,
Yet a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,
If aught be in them of immortal seed,
And reason govern that audacious flight
Which heavenward they direct. Then droop
Erroneously renewing a sad vow
In the low dell 'mid Roslin's faded grove:
A cheerful life is what the Muses love,
A soaring spirit is their prime delight.
FAIR Prime of life! were it enough to gild With ready sunbeams every straggling shower; And, if an unexpected cloud should lower, Swiftly thereon a rainbow arch to build
- then, from fields half-tilled Gathering green weeds to mix with poppy-flower, Thee might thy Minions crown, and chant thy
Unpitied by the wise, all censure stilled.
Ah! show that worthier honors are thy due;
Fair Prime of Life! arouse the deeper heart;
Confirm the Spirit glorying to pursue
Some path of steep ascent and lofty aim;
And, if there be a joy that slights the claim
Of grateful memory, bid that joy depart.
I WATCH, and long have watched, with calm
Yon slowly sinking star,—immortal Sire
(So might he seem) of all the glittering choir! Blue ether still surrounds him-yet- and yet; But now the horizon's rocky parapet
Is reached, where, forfeiting his bright attire, transmuted to a dusty fire, ·
Then pays submissively the appointed debt
To the flying moments, and is seen no more.
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