Yet within thee, thyself a grove, There once the steel-clad knight reclined, Then Culture came, and days serene; Father of many a forest deep, Wont in the night of woods to dwell, Thy singed top and branches bare And the wan moon wheels round to glare Of him who came to die! TO TWO SISTERS.* WELL may you sit within, and, fond of grief, Changed is that lovely countenance, which shed Those lips so pure, that moved but to persuade, Yet has she fled the life of bliss below, And now in joy she dwells, in glory moves! * On the death of a younger sister. ON A TEAR. OH! that the Chemist's magic art The little brilliant, ere it fell, Sweet drop of pure and pearly light! Benign restorer of the soul! The sage's and the poet's theme, That very law* which moulds a tear, *The law of gravitation. ΤΟ A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST. Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor? 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! 'twas thine to soar, Careering on the winged wind. Thy triumphs who shall dare explore? And there awhile to thee 'twas given And nursed thy infant years with many a strain THE BOY OF EGREMOND. 1812. "SAY what remains when Hope is fled?" At Embsay rung the matin-bell, The stag was roused on Barden-fell; In tartan clad and forest-green, With hound in leash and hawk in hood, * Mrs. Sheridan's. 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 Egremond, dying before him in the manner here related; when a Priory was removed from Embsay to Bolton, that it might be as near as possible to the place where the accident happened. That place is still known by the name of the Strid; and the mother's answer, as given in the first stanza, is to this day often repeated in Wharfedale.— See WHITAKER'S Hist. of Craven. |