LINES WRITTEN AT SHURTON BARS, NEAR TO A LETTER FROM BRISTOL. "Good verse most good, and bad verse then seems better Received from absent friend by way of Letter. For what so sweet can laboured lays impart As one rude rhyme warm from a friendly heart?"-ANON. JOR travels my meandering eye I mark the glow-worm, as I pass, Move with "green radiance" through the grass, An emerald of light. O ever present to my view! My wafted spirit is with you, Beloved Woman! did you fly But why with sable wand unblest I felt it prompt the tender dream, And hark, my Love! The sea-breeze moans The onward-surging tides supply The silence of the cloudless sky Dark reddening from the channelled Isle* Unslated by the blast) The watchfire, like a sullen star, Even there beneath that light-house tower— In the tumultuous evil hour Ere peace with Sara came, Time was, I should have thought it sweet The Holmes, in the Bristol Channel. And there in black soul-jaundiced fit When mountain surges bellowing deep Then by the lightning's blaze to mark But fancy now more gaily sings; On summer fields she grounds her breast O mark those smiling tears, that swell Blest visitations from above, When stormy midnight howling round The tears that tremble down your cheek And from your heart the sighs that steal How oft, my Love! with shapings sweet 'Tis said, in summer's evening hour And so shall flash my love-charged eye LINES TO A FRIEND, IN ANSWER TO A MELANCHOLY LETTER. WAY, those cloudy looks, that labouring sigh, The peevish offspring of a sickly hour! power, When the blind gamester throws a luckless die. Yon setting sun flashes a mournful gleam Wild, as the autumnal gust, the hand of Time Bears on its wing each hour a load of fate; Nor shall not fortune with a vengeful smile There shiv'ring sad beneath the tempest's frown |