Like lava roll'd thy stream of blood, One tint was of the sunbeam's dyes; Star of the brave! thy ray is pale, And Freedom hallows with her tread ABSENT or present, still to thee, My friend, what magic spells belong! As all can tell, who share, like me, In turn, thy converse and thy song. But when the dreaded hour shall come, By Friendship ever deem'd too nigh, And "MEMORY" o'er her Druid's tomb Shall weep that aught of thee can die, How fondly will She then repay Thy homage offer'd at her shrine, And blend, while Ages roll away, Her name immortally with thine! April 19, 1812. SONNET. I have warr'd with a world which van-ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and de my fame. quish'd me only too far; Stael When the meteor of Conquest allured me Leman! these names are worthy of thy I have coped with the nations which dread Thy shore of me thus lonely, The last single Captive to millions in war. Their memory shore, names like these; wert thou no more, thy remembrance would recal: Farewell to thee, France!-when thy dia-To them thy banks were lovely as to all; But they have made them lovelier, for the lore dem crown'd me I made thee the gem and the wonder of earth, --But thy weakness decrees I should leave as I found thee, Decay'd in thy glory and sunk in thy worth. Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core Of human hearts the ruin of a wall Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we ] In the desert a fountain is springing, feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real! STANZAS TO·· THOUGH the day of my destiny's over, And the star of my fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me, And the love which my spirit hath painted It never hath found but in thee. Then when nature around me is smiling The last smile which answers to mine, I do not believe it beguiling Because it reminds me of thine; And when winds are at war with the ocean, As the breasts I believed in with me, If their billows excite an emotion, It is that they bear me from thee. Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd, And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is deliver’d To pain-it shall not be its slave. There is many a pang to pursue me: They may crush, but they shall not contemn They may torture, but shall not subdue me'Tis of thee that I think-not of them. Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake, Though trusted thou didst not disclaim me, Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, 'Twas folly not sooner to shun : In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee. From the wreck of the past, which hath "Friends! ye have, alas! to know perish'd, Thus much I at least may recal, It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd Deserved to be dearest of all: Of a most disastrous blow, Woe is me, Alhama! What if thy deep and ample stream should be | "Tis vain to struggle-let me perish youngLive as I lived, and love as I have loved: To dust if I return, from dust I sprung, And then at least my heart can ne'er be moved. A mirror of my heart, where she may read The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee, Wild as thy wave,and headlong as thy speed? What do I say-a mirror of my heart? Are not thy waters sweeping, dark and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; And such as thou art, were my passions long. Time may have somewhat tamed them, not for ever: Thou overflowst thy banks, and not for aye; Thy bosom overboils, congenial river! Thy floods subside; and mine have sunk away But left long wrecks behind them, and again Borne on our old unchanged career, we move; Thou tendest wildly onward to the main, And I to loving one I should not love. DRINKING-SONG. Fill the goblet again, for I never before Felt the glow that now gladdens my heart to its core: Let us drink-who would not? since, thro' life's varied round, In the goblet alone no deception is found. I have tried in its turn all that life can supply; I have bask'd in the beams of a dark rolling eye; I have lov'd-who has not? but what tongue will declare That pleasure existed while passion was there? The current I behold will sweep beneath breathe The twilight-air, unharm'd by summer's heat. She will look on thee: I have look'd on thee, Full of that thought, and from that moment ne'er in its spring, And dreams that affection can never take wing, I had friends,-who has not? but what tongue will avow That friends, rosy wine, are so faithful as thou? Thy waters could I dream of, name or see, The breast of a mistress some boy may Without the inseparable sigh for her. Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream; estrange; Friendship shifts with the sun-beam,—thou never canst change. Yet if blest to the utmost that love can bestow, Should a rival bow down to our idol below, We are jealous-who's not? thou hast no such alloy, For the more that enjoy thee, the more they enjoy. When, the season of youth and its jollities past, For refuge we fly to the goblet at last, When the box of Pandora was opened on earth, And Memory's triumph commenced over Mirth, Long life to the grape! and when summer | Few and short were the prayers we said, is flown, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; The age of our nectar shall gladden my own. But we stedfastly gazed on the face of the We must die--who does not? may our sins dead, be forgiven! And Hebe shall never be idle in Heaven. ON SIR JOHN MOORE'S BURIAL. Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his corse to the ramparts we hurried; We buried him darkly at dead of night, No useless coffin confined his breast, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we heap'd his narrow bed, In the grave where a Briton has laid him. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory. |