As through the hedge-row shade the violet steals,
And the sweet air its modest leaf reveals;
Her softer charms, but by their influence known,
Surprise all hearts, and mould them to her own.
TO AN OLD OAK.
TRUNK of a giant now no more!
Once did thy limbs to heaven aspire;
Once, by a track untried before,
Strike as resolving to explore
Realms of infernal fire.20
Round thee, alas! no shadows move!
From thee no sacred murmurs breathe!
Yet within thee, thyself a grove,
Once did the eagle scream above,
And the wolf howl beneath.
There once the red-cross knight reclined,
His resting-place, a house of prayer;
And, when the death-bell smote the wind
From towers long fled by human kind,
He knelt and worshipped there!
Then Culture came, and days serene;
And village-sports, and garlands gay.
Full many a pathway crossed the green;
And maids and shepherd-youths were seen
To celebrate the May.
TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY **. 235
Father of many a forest deep,
Whence many a navy thunder-fraught!
Erst in thy acorn-cells asleep,
Soon destined o'er the world to sweep,
Opening new spheres of thought!
Wont in the night of woods to dwell,
The holy Druid saw thee rise;
And, planting there the guardian-spell,
Sung forth, the dreadful pomp to swell
Of human sacrifice!
Thy singed top and branches bare
Now straggle in the evening-sky;
And the wan moon wheels round to glare
On the long corse that shivers there
Of him who came to die!
TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY
AH! why with tell-tale tongue reveal 21
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!
WHEN by the greenwood side, at summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy-scenes, that Fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest minstrelsy;
"T is thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heaven away,
And all is solitude, and all is night!
-Ah! now thy barbéd 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 A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST.22
Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor?
Aeris et linguæ sum filia;
Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum. - AuSONIUS.
ONCE 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! 't was thine to soar,
Careering on the wingéd 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 a while to thee 't was given
Once more that voice beloved to join,
Which taught thee first a flight divine,
And nursed thy infant years with many a strain from Heaven!
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.
238 TO THE FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES.
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!
AN EPITAPH ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST.
TREAD lightly here, for here, 't is 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!
TO THE FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES.
COMMONLY CALLED THE TORSO.
AND 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?
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