Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:- Do I wake or sleep? John Keats. THUS Hampton. HAMPTON. HUS with imagined wing our swift scene flies, Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning. William Shakespeare. Harrow-on-the-Hill. LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCHYARD OF HARROW. POT of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh, SPOT Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky; Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod; With those who, scattered far, perchance deplore, Like me, the happy scenes they knew before: O, as I trace again thy winding hill, Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still, Thou drooping elm! beneath whose boughs I lay, And frequent mused the twilight hours away; Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline, But ah! without the thoughts which then were mine: How do thy branches, moaning to the blast, Invite the bosom to recall the past, And seem to whisper, as they gently swell, "Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!" When fate shall chill, at length, this fevered breast, And calm its cares and passions into rest, Oft have I thought, 't would soothe my dying hour, If aught may soothe when life resigns her power, To know some humble grave, some narrow cell, Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell. With this fond dream, methinks, 't were sweet to die And here it lingered, here my heart might lie; Lord Byron. IF HARROW. some good fairy granted me to play A chosen portion of my life again, I would not ask an Oxford hour. The vain Attempt to ape the follies of the day, How soon it palls; while ever fresh and gay John Bruce Norton. Hom Hartland. THE CELL. OW wildly sweet, by Hartland Tower, A seraph, from his cloudy bower, For time and place and storied days Above, the ocean breezes sweep With footsteps firm and free; Around, the mountains guard the deep; Enter the arching roofs expand, Might tread their planks no more. But reared on high in that stern form, The men that braved the ancient storm The tracery of a quaint old time Still weaves the chancel screen; And tombs, with many a broken rhyme, Suit well this simple scene. A Saxon font, with baptism bright, An altar where, in angels' sight, Here glides the spirit of the psalm, And lives no legend on the wall? No theme of former men? A shape to rise at fancy's call, Yes! there, through yonder portal stone, How once the monk with name unknown He came with griefs that shunned the light, The prayer that rose and fell in tears, The sob, the bursting sigh: Till woke with agony of years The exceeding bitter cry. This lasted long, as life will wear, |