-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 * *.

1800.

AH! why with tell-tale tongue reveal*
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!

⚫ Alluding to some verses which she had written on an elder sister.

ΤΟ

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.

ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul,
Once more we hail thy soft controul.
-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;

In the winter of 1805.

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* beloved to join,
Which taught thee first a flight divine,

And nursed thy infant years with many a strain from

Heaven!

*Mrs. Sheridan's.

TO THE BUTTERFLY.

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!