Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

-Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air!
No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,

Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear.

Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings, Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore. Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful larum flings! -I wake in horror, and dare sleep no more!

TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF

LADY

1798.

1

H! why with tell-tale tongue reveal 2
What most her blushes would conceal?
Why lift that modest veil to trace
The seraph-sweetness of her face?

Some fairer, better sport prefer;
And feel for us, if not for her.

For this presumption, soon or late,
Know thine shall be a kindred fate.
Another shall in vengeance rise-
Sing Harriet's cheeks, and Harriet's eyes;
And, echoing back her wood-notes wild,
-Trace all the mother in the child!

[To Lady Harriet Villiers, daughter of Lady Jersey, and afterwards wife of Dr. Bagot, Bishop of Bath and Wells.--ED.]

Alluding to some verses which she had written on an elder

sister.

TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST!!

Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor?
Aeris et linguæ sum filia;

Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum.-AUSONIUS.

NCE more, Enchantress of the soul,
Once more we hail thy soft control.
-Yet whither, whither didst thou
fly?

To what bright region of the sky?
Say, in what distant star to dwell?
(Of other worlds thou seem'st to tell)
Or, trembling, fluttering here below,
Resolved and unresolved to go,
In secret didst thou still impart
Thy raptures to the pure in heart?
Perhaps to many a desert shore,
Thee, in his rage, the Tempest bore;
Thy broken murmurs swept along,
Mid Echoes yet untuned by song;
Arrested in the realms of Frost,
Or in the wilds of Ether lost.

Far happier thou! 'twas thine to soar,
Careering on the winged wind.
Thy triumphs who shall dare explore?
Suns and their systems left behind.
No tract of space, no distant star,
No shock of elements at war,
Did thee detain. Thy wing of fire
Bore thee amid the Cherub-choir;
And there awhile to thee 'twas given
Once more that Voice 2 beloved to join,
Which taught thee first a flight divine,
And nursed thy infant years with many a strain
from Heaven!

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

TO THE BUTTERFLY.

1806.

CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,

Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields
of light;

And, where the flowers of Paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening-sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!

-Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man; soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day!

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

H! little thought she, when, with wild delight,

By many a torrent's shining track she

flew,

When mountain-glens and caverns full of night, O'er her young mind divine enchantment threw, That in her veins a secret horror slept,

That her light footsteps should be heard no more,
That she should die-nor watched, alas, nor wept
By thee, unconscious of the pangs she bore.

Yet round her couch indulgent Fancy drew
The kindred forms her closing eye required.
There didst thou stand-there, with the smile she
knew ;

She moved her lips to bless thee, and expired.

1 On the death of her sister in 1805.

And now to thee she comes; still, still the same As in the hours gone unregarded by!

To thee, how changed, comes as she ever came;
Health on her cheek, and pleasure in her eye!

Nor less, less oft, as on that day, appears,
When lingering, as prophetic of the truth,
By the way-side she shed her parting tears-
For ever lovely in the light of Youth!

TO THE

FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES, COMMONLY CALLED THE TORSO.1

1806.

ND dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone,

(Thy giant limbs to night and chaos
hurled)

Still sit as on the fragment of a world;
Surviving all, majestic and alone?

What tho' the Spirits of the North, that swept
Rome from the earth when in her pomp she slept,
Smote thee with fury, and thy headless trunk
Deep in the dust mid tower and temple sunk;
Soon to subdue mankind 'twas thine to rise,
Still, still unquelled thy glorious energies!
Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught
Bright revelations of the Good they sought;
By thee that long-lost spell in secret given,
To draw down Gods, and lift the soul to Heaven!3

2

[These lines were written in 1802, when Rogers visited Paris for the second time.]

2 In the gardens of the Vatican, where it was placed by Julius II., it was long the favourite study of those great men to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Caracci 3 Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an ancient epigram on the Gnidian Venus.-Analecta Vet. Poetarum, III. 200

AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST.1

1806.

READ lightly here, for here, 'tis said,
When piping winds are hushed around,
A small note wakes from underground,
Where now his tiny bones are laid.
No more in lone and leafless groves,
With ruffled wing and faded breast,
His friendless, homeless spirit roves;
-Gone to the world where birds are blest!
Where never cat glides o'er the green,
Or school-boy's giant form is seen;
But Love, and Joy, and smiling Spring
Inspire their little souls to sing!

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.

1819.

AY, what remains when Hope is fled ? "
She answered, "Endless weeping!'
For in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.
At Embsay rung the matin-bell,
The stag was roused on Barden-fell;
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying,
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying;
When near the cabin in the wood,

In tartan clad and forest-green,
With hound in leash and hawk in hood,
The Boy of Egremond was seen.2

Inscribed on an urn in the flower-garden at Hafod.

In the twelfth century William Fitz-Duncan laid waste the valleys of Craven with fire and sword; and was afterwards established there by his uncle, David King of Scotland.

He was the last of the race; his son, commonly called the Boy of

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »