Call for the robin-red breast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.
The White Devil, Act v. Sc. 2.
What bird so sings, yet so does wail? O, 't is the ravished nightingale – Jug, jug, jug, jug -tereu she cries, And still her woes at midnight rise. Brave prick-song! who is 't now we hear? None but the lark so shrill and clear, Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings, The morn not waking till she sings. Hark, hark but what a pretty note, Poor Robin-red breast tunes his throat; Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing "Cuckoo!" to welcome in the spring. Alexander and Campaspe, Act v. Sc. 1,
Bartlett says, "It was Cowper who gave this now common name to the Mignonette."
or kiss of woman?
Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! What cares he? he cannot know;
WAR FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE.
O FIRST of human blessings, and supreme! Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou! By whose wide tie the kindred sons of men Like brothers live, in amity combined And unsuspicious faith; while honest toil Gives every joy, and to those joys a right Which idle, barbarous rapine but usurps. Pure is thy reign.
What would not, Peace! the patriot bear for
What painful patience? What incessant care? What mixed anxiety? What sleepless toil? E'en from the rash protected, what reproach? For he thy value knows; thy friendship he To human nature: but the better thou, The richer of delight, sometimes the more Inevitable WAR, when ruffian force Awakes the fury of an injured state. E'en the good patient man whom reason rules, Roused by bold insult and injurious rage, With sharp and sudden check the astonished sons Of violence confounds; firm as his cause His bolder heart; in awful justice clad; His eyes effulging a peculiar fire : And, as he charges through the prostrate war, His keen arm teaches faithless men no more To dare the sacred vengeance of the just.
Then ardent rise! O, great in vengeance rise! O'erturn the proud, teach rapine to restore; And, as you ride sublimely round the world, Make every vessel stoop, make every state At once their welfare and their duty know.
AH! whence yon glare, That fires the arch of heaven?- that dark-red smoke
In darkness, and pure and spangling snow Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals
In countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pale midnight on her starry throne ! Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage; - loud, and more loud The discord grows; till pale death shuts the
And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts That beat with anxious life at sunset there, How few survive, how few are beating now! All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause; Save when the frantic wail of widowed love
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapt round its struggling powers.
The gray morn Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away, And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors; far behind, Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glen, Each tree which guards its darkness from the day
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
« AnteriorContinuar » |