Why should I lay up earthly joys, Where rust corrupts, and moth destroys, And cares and sorrows eat? Why fly from ill With anxious skill, When soon this hand will freeze, this throbbing heart be still. Come, Disappointment, come! Thou art not stern to me; A votary sad in early day, I bend my knee to thee. My race will run, I only bow, and say, My God, thy will be done! On another paper are a few lines, written probably in the freshness of his disappointment. I dream no more - the vision flies away, And Disappointment There fell my hopes - I lost my all in this, Now hope farewell, farewell all joys below; ON THE DEATH OF DERMODY, THE POET. CHILD of Misfortune! Offspring of the Muse! Mark like the meteor's gleam his mad career; With hollow cheeks and haggard eye, Behold he shrieking passes by: That hollow scream, that deepening groan; It rings upon mine ear. Oh come, ye thoughtless, ye deluded youth, Who clasp the siren pleasure to your breast, And drop, oh drop the silent tear For Dermody at rest: His fate is yours, then from your loins Tear quick the silken vest. Saw'st thou his dying bed! Saw'st thou his eye, Oh God! I hear it still: It sounds upon my fainting sense, It strikes with deathly chill. Say, didst thou mark the brilliant poet's death; Oh none of these no friend o'er him Now come around, ye flippant sons of wealth, Now come around who pant for fame, And when ambition prompts to rise, For me, poor moralizer, I will run, It is the seal of fate: In some lone spot my bones may lie, Yet ere I go I'll drop one silent tear, No friend a tear shall shed: Yet may the lily and the rose SONNETS. SONNET TO THE RIVER TRENT. WRITTEN ON RECOVERY FROM SICKNESS. ONCE more, O Trent! along thy pebbly marge Which fills with joy the throstle's little throat! And all the sounds which on the fresh breeze sail, How wildly novel on his senses float! It was on this that many a sleepless night, As lone he watched the taper's sickly gleam, On this he thought, this, this, his sole desire, SONNET. GIVE me a cottage on some Cambrian wild, And, by the beauties of the scene beguiled, List to the mountain-torrent's distant noise, Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note, I shall not want the world's delusive joys; Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more; SONNET.* SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN ADDRESSED BY A FEMALE LADY, thou weepest for the Maniac's woe, And thou art fair, and thou, like me, art young; Oh! may thy bosom never, never know The pangs with which my wretched heart is wrung. I had a mother once- a brother too – (Beneath yon yew my father rests his head :) I had a lover once, and kind and true, But mother, brother, lover, all are fled! The green sod soon upon my breast will lie, Go thou, and pluck the roses while they bloom- *This Quatorzain had its rise from an elegant Sonnet, occasioned by seeing a young female Lunatic," written by Mrs. Lofft. and published in the Monthly Mirror. |