IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S

IN Christian world MARY the garland wears!
REBECCA Sweetens on a Hebrew's ear;
Quakers for pure PRISCILLA are more clear;
And the light Gaul by amorous NINON swears.
Among the lesser lights how Lucy shines!
What air of fragrance ROSAMUND throws round!
How like a hymn doth sweet CECILIA Sound!
Of MARTHAS, and of ABIGAILS, few lines
Have bragg'd in verse. Of coarsest household stuff
Should homely JOAN be fashion'd. But can
You BARBARA resist, or MARIAN?
And is not CLARE for love excuse enough?
Yet, by my faith in numbers, I profess,
These all, than Saxon EDITH, please me less.

IN THE ALBUM OF ROTHA Q

A PASSING glance was all I caught of thee,
In my own Enfield haunts at random roving.
Old friends of ours were with thee, faces loving;
Time short and salutations cursory,
Though deep, and hearty. The familiar Name
Of you, yet unfamiliar, raised in me

Thoughts-what the daughter of that Man should be, Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts did frame

A growing Maiden, who, from day to day
Advancing still in stature, and in grace,
Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface,
And his paternal cares with usury pay
I still retain the phantom, as I can;
And call the gentle image-Quillinan.

IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON.

LITTLE Book, surnamed of white,
Clean as yet, and fair to sight,
Keep thy attribution right.
Never disproportion'd scrawl;
Ugly blot, that's worse than all;
On thy maiden clearness fall!

In each letter, here design'd,
Let the reader emblem'd find
Neatness of the owner's mind.

Gilded margins count a sin,
Let thy leaves attraction win
By the golden rules within;
Sayings fetch'd from sages old;
Laws which Holy Writ unfold,
Worthy to be graved in gold:

Lighter fancies not excluding:
Blameless wit, with nothing rude in,
Sometimes mildly interluding

Amid strains of graver measure :
Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure
In sweet Muses' groves of leisure.
Riddles dark, perplexing sense;
Darker meanings of offence;

What but shades- be banish'd hence.

Whitest thoughts in whitest dress,
Candid meanings, best express
Mind of quiet Quakeress

IN THE ALBUM OF MRS. JANE TOWERS.
LADY UNKNOWN, who crav'st from me Unknown
The trifle of a verse these leaves to grace,
How shall I find fit matter? with what face
Address a face that ne'er to me was shown?
Thy looks, tones, gesture, manners, and what not
Conjecturing, I wander in the dark.

I know thee only Sister to Charles Clarke !
But at that name my cold muse waxes hot,
And swears that thou art such a one as he,
Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness,
Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness
From frank heart without guile. And, if thou be
The pure reverse of this, and I mistake
Demure one, I will like thee for his sake.

IN THE ALBUM OF MISS

1.

-

SUCH goodness in your face doth shine,
With modest look, without design,
That I despair, poor pen of mine
Can e'er express it.

ANGEL HELP.*

THIS rare tablet doth include Poverty with Sanctitude.

Past midnight this poor maid hath spun,
And yet the work is not half done,
Which must supply from earnings scant
A feeble bed-rid parent's want.
Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask,
And Holy hands take up the task;
Unseen the rock and spindle ply,
And do her earthly drudgery.
Sleep, saintly poor one! sleep, sleep on ;
And, waking, find thy labours done.
Perchance she knows it by her dreams;
Her eye hath caught the golden gleams,
Angelic presence testifying,
That round her everywhere are flying;
Ostents from which she may presume,
That much of heaven is in the room.
Skirting her own bright hair they run,
And to the sunny add more sun :

Suggested by a drawing in the possession of Charles Aders, Esq., in which is represented the legend of a poor female Saint; who, having spun past midnight, to maintain a bed-rid mother, has fallen asleep from fatigue, and Angels are finishing her work. In another part of the chamber, an angel is tending a lily, the emblem of purity.

Now on that aged face they fix,
Streaming from the Crucifix;
The flesh-clogg'd spirit disabusing,
Death-disarming sleeps infusing,
Prelibations, foretastes high,
And equal thoughts to live or die.
Gardener bright from Eden's bower,
Tend with care that lily flower;
To its leaves and root infuse
Heaven's sunshine, Heaven's dews.
'Tis a type, and 'tis a pledge,
Of a crowning privilege.
Careful as that lily flower,

This Maid must keep her precious dower;
Live a sainted Maid, or die
Martyr to virginity.

ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN.

I SAW where in the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature's work.
A flow'ret crushed in the bud,
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in her cradle-coffin lying;
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying:
So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb
For darker closets of the tomb!

She did but ope an eye, and put

A clear beam forth, then straight up shut
For the long dark: ne'er more to see
Through glasses of mortality.
Riddle of destiny, who can show
What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?
Shall we say, that Nature blind

Check'd her hand, and changed her mind,
Jnst when she had exactly wrought
A finish'd pattern without fault?
Could she flag, or could she tire,
Or lack'd she the Promethean fire

(With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd)
That should thy little limbs have quicken'd?
Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure
Life of health and days mature:
Woman's self in miniature!
Limbs so fair, they might supply
(Themselves now but cold imagery)
The sculptor to make Beauty by.
Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry,
That babe, or mother, one must die;
So in mercy left the stock,

And cut the branch; to save the shock
Of young years widow'd; and the pain,
When Single State comes back again
To the lone man who, 'reft of wife,
Thenceforward drags a maimed life?
The economy of Heaven is dark;

And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark,
Why Human Buds, like this, should fall,
More brief than fly ephemeral,
That has his day; while shrivell'd crones
Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;
And crabbed use the conscience sears
In sinners of an hundred years.
Mother's prattle, mother's kiss,
Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss.
Rites, which custom does impose,
Silver bells and baby clothes;
Coral redder than those lips,
Which pale death did late eclipse;
Music framed for infants' glee,

Whistle never turn for thee;

Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them,

Loving hearts were they which gave them.
Let not one be missing; nurse,

See them laid upon the hearse
Of infant slain by doom perverse.
Why should kings and nobles have
Pictured trophies to their grave;
And we, churls, to thee deny
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie,
A more harmless vanity?

THE CHRISTENING. ARRAY'D -a half-angelic sightIn vests of pure Baptismal white,

The Mother to the Font doth bring
The little helpless nameless thing,
With hushes soft and mild caressing,
At once to get-
-a name and blessing.
Close by the babe the Priest doth stand,
The Cleansing Water at his hand,
Which must assoil the soul within
From every stain of Adam's sin.
The infant eyes the mystic scenes,
Nor knows what all this wonder means
And now he smiles, as if to say
"I am a Christian made this day;"
Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold,
Shrinking from the water cold,
Whose virtues, rightly understood,
Are, as Bethesda's waters, good.
Strange words-The World, The Flesh, The
Devil

While each blind sense, intelligential grown
Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight;
Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might,
All motionless and silent seem to moan
The unseemly negligence of nature's hand,
That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine,
O mistress of the passions! artist fine!
Who dost our souls against our sense command,
Plocking the horror from a sightless face,
Lending to blank deformity a grace.

WORK.

Wno first invented work, and bound the free
And holyday rejoicing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity

Of business in the green fields, and the town
To plough, loom, anvil, spade-and oh! most sad
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel —
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-
In that red realm from which are no returnings:
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye,
He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day.

LEISURE.

THEY talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,
That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press,
Which only works and business can redress:
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.
But might I, fed with silent meditation,
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation -
Improbus Labor, which my spirits hath broke -
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit:
Fling in more days than went to make the gem
That crown'd the white top of Methusalem:
Yea, on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,

Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity.

DEUS NOBIS HÆC OTIA FECIT.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.

ROGERS, of all the men that I have known
But slightly, who have died, your Brother's loss
Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across
My mind an image of the cordial tone
Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest

I more than once have sat; and grieve to think,
That of that threefold cord one precious link
By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest.
Of our old gentry he appear'd a stem-
A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer
He kept in terror, could respect the Poor,
And not for every trifle harass them,
As some, divine and laic, too oft do.
This man's a private loss, and public too.

THE GIPSY'S MALISON.

"SUCK, baby, suck! mother's love grows by giving; Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.

Kiss, baby, kiss! mother's lips shine by kisses; Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings;

Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings.

Hang, baby, hang! mother's love loves such forces, Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging."

So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical,
And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical.

TO J. S. KNOWLES, ESQ.,

ON HIS TRAGEDY OF VIRGINIUS.

Esteem'd you a perfect specimen

Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends, To teach us colder English how a friend's

But nothing further had the gift to espy. Sudden you re-appeared. With wonder I Hear

my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a scene