The pleasant day, upon a couch at ease. It was a poet's house who keeps the keys Of pleasure's temple-round about were hung The glorious features of the bards who sung In other ages-cold and sacred busts Smiled at each other. Happy he who trusts To clear Futurity his darling fame!
Then there were fauns and satyrs taking aim At swelling apples with a frisky leap And reaching fingers, 'mid a luscious heap Of vine-leaves. Then there rose to view a fane Of liney marble, and thereto a train
Of nymphs approaching fairly o'er the sward: One, loveliest, holding her white hand toward The dazzling sun-rise: two sisters sweet Bending their graceful figures till they meet Over the trippings of a little child: And some are hearing, eagerly, the wild Thrilling liquidity of dewy piping.
See, in another picture, nymphs are wiping Cherishingly Diana's timorous limbs;
A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims At the bath's edge, and keeps a gentle motion With the subsiding crystal: as when ocean Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothness o'er Its rocky marge, and balances once more The patient weeds; that now unshent by foam Feel all about their undulating home.
Sappho's meek head was there half smiling down At nothing; just as though the earnest frown Of over-thinking had that moment gone From off her brow, and left her all alone.
Great Alfred's too, with anxious, pitying eyes, As if he always listen'd to the sighs
Of the goaded world; and Kosciusko's, worn By horrid suffrance-mightily forlorn.
Petrarch, outstepping from the shady green, Starts at the sight of Laura; nor can wean His eyes from her sweet face. Most happy they! For over them was seen a free display
Of outspread wings, and from between them shone The face of Poesy: from off her throne She overlook'd things that I scarce could tell, The very sense of where I was might well Keep sleep aloof: but more than that there came Thought after thought to nourish up the flame Within my breast; so that the morning light Surprised me even from a sleepless night; And up I rose refresh'd, and glad, and gay, Resolving to begin that very day
These lines; and howsoever they be done, I leave them as a father does his son.
IN a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.
In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
Ah! would 'twere so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy? To know the change and feel it. When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steal it, Was never said in rhyme.
Among the rest a shepherd (though but young Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill His few yeeres could, began to fill his quill.
Britannia's Pastorals.-BROWNE.
TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW.
SWEET are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song; Nor can remembrance, Mathew! bring to view A fate more pleasing, a delight more true Than that in which the brother poets joy'd, Who, with combined powers, their wit employ'd To raise a trophy to the drama's muses. The thought of this great partnership diffuses Over the genius-loving heart, a feeling
Of all that's high, and great, and good, and healing
Too partial friend! fain would I follow thee
Past each horizon of fine poesy;
Fain would I echo back each pleasant note
As o'er Sicilian seas, clear anthems float
'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted,
Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted: But 'tis impossible; far different cares Beckon me sternly from soft "Lydian airs," And hold my faculties so long in thrall, That I am oft in doubt whether at all
I shall again see Phoebus in the morning
Or flush'd Aurora in the roseate dawning! Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream; Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam; Or again witness what with thee I've seen, The dew by fairy feet swept from the green, After a night of some quaint jubilee Which every elf and fay had come to see: When bright processions took their airy march Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch.
But might I now each passing moment give To the coy muse, with me she would not live In this dark city, nor would condescend 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, That often must have seen a poet frantic ; Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing, And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing; Where the dark-leaved laburnum's drooping clusters Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres, And intertwined the cassia's arms unite, With its own drooping buds, but very white. Where on one side are covert branches hung, 'Mong which the nightingales have always sung In leafy quiet; where to pry, aloof
Atween the pillars of the sylvan roof,
Would be to find where violet beds were nestling, And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling. There must be too a ruin dark and gloomy, To say "Joy not too much in all that's bloomy."
Yet this is vain-O Mathew! lend thy aid To find a place where I may greet the maid—
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