Rivals banished, bosoms plighted,
Still our days are disunited;
Now the lamp of hope is lighted,
Now half quenched appears,
Damped, and wavering, and benighted,
Midst my sighs and tears.
Charms you call your dearest blessing,
Lips that thrill at your caressing,
Eyes a mutual soul confessing,
Soon you'll make them grow
Dim, and worthless your possessing,
Not with age, but woe!
"Tis not the loss of love's assurance,
It is not doubting what thou art,
But 'tis the too, too long endurance
Of absence, that afflicts my heart.
The fondest thoughts two hearts can cherish,
When each is lonely doomed to weep,
Are fruits on desert isles that perish,
Or riches buried in the deep.
What though, untouched by jealous madness,
Our bosom's peace may fall to wreck;
Th' undoubting heart, that breaks with sadness,
Is but more slowly doomed to break.
Absence! is not the soul torn by it
From more than light, or life, or breath?
'Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet,-
The pain without the peace of death!
INSCRIBED ON THE MONUMENT LATELY FINISHED BY
Which has been erected by the Widow of Admiral Sir G. Campbell, K. C. B., to the memory of her Husband.
To him, whose loyal, brave, and gentle heart,
Fulfilled the hero's and the patriot's part,—
Whose charity, like that which Paul enjoined,
Was warm, beneficent, and unconfined,—
This stone is reared: to public duty true,
The seaman's friend, the father of his crew-
Mild in reproof, sagacious in command,
He spread fraternal zeal throughout his band,
And led each arm to act, each heart to feel,
What British valour owes to Britain's weal.
These were his public virtues :-but to trace
His private life's fair purity and grace,
To paint the traits that drew affection strong
From friends, an ample and an ardent throng,
And, more, to speak his memory's grateful claim
On her who mourns him most, and bears his name
O'ercomes the trembling hand of widowed grief,
O'ercomes the heart, unconscious of relief,
Save in religion's high and holy trust,
Whilst placing their memorial o'er his dust.
ON THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO.
HEARTS of oak that have bravely delivered the brave,
And uplifted old Greece from the brink of the grave,
"Twas the helpless to help, and the hopeless to save,
That your thunderbolts swept o'er the brine:
And as long as yon sun shall look down on the wave
The light of your glory shall shine.
For the guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil, Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil?
No! your lofty emprise was to fetter and foil
The uprooter of Greece's domain !
When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil,
Till her famished sank pale as the slain!
Yet, Navarin's heroes! does Christendom breed
The base hearts that will question the fame of your deed?
Are they men?-let ineffable scorn be their meed,
And oblivion shadow their graves!
Are they women?—to Turkish serails let them speed;
And be mothers of Mussulman slaves.
Abettors of massacre ! dare ye deplore
That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas's shore?
That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more
By the hand of Infanticide grasped?
And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore
Missolonghi's assassins have gasped?
Prouder scene never hallowed war's pomp to the mind, Than when Christendom's pennons wooed social the wind, And the flower of her brave for the combat combined,
Their watch-word, humanity's vow:
Not a sea-boy that fought in that cause, but mankind
Owes a garland to honour his brow!
Nor grudge, by our side, that to conquer or fall,
Came the hardy rude Russ, and the high-mettled Gaul:
For whose was the genius, that planned at its call,
Where the whirlwind of battle should roll?
All were brave! but the star of success over all
Was the light of our Codrington's soul.
That star of thy day-spring, regenerate Greek !
Dimmed the Saracen's moon, and struck pallid his cheek :
In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak
When their lore and their lutes they reclaim:
And the first of their songs from Parnassus's peak
Shall be "Glory to Codrington's name.
ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER.
AND call they this Improvement?—to have changed,
My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore,
Where Nature's face is banished and estranged,
And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more;
Whose banks, that sweetened May-day's breath before,
Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam,
With sooty exhalations covered o'er;
And for the daisied green sward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam.
Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains ;
One heart free tasting Nature's breath and bloom
Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon's gains.
But whither goes that wealth, and gladdening whom?
See, left but life enough and breathing-room
The hunger and the hope of life to feel,
Yon pale Mechanic bending o'er his loom,
And Childhood's self as at Ixion's wheel,
From morn till midnight tasked to earn its little meal.
Is this Improvement?—where the human breed
Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,
Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed,
And man competes with man, like foe with foe,
Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public woe?
Improvement!-smiles it in the poor man's eyes,
Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour ?—No—
To gorge a few with Trade's precarious prize,
We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies.
Nor call that evil slight; God has not given
This passion to the heart of man in vain,
For Earth's green face, th' untainted air of Heaven,
And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign.
For not alone our frame imbibes a stain
From foetid skies; the spirit's healthy pride
Fades in their gloom-And therefore I complain,
That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst glide,
My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde !
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