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Lately our poets loitered in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballad of the plains;
I fancied I had strength enough to climb
A loftier station at no distant time,
And might securely from intrusion doze

Upon the flowers thro' which Ilissus flows.
In those pale olive grounds all voices cease,
And from afar dust fills the paths of Greece.
My slumber broken and my doublet torn,

I find the laurel also bears a thorn.

When Helen first saw wrinkles in her face
('Twas when some fifty long had settled there
And intermarried and brancht off awide),
She threw herself upon her couch, and wept ;
On this side hung her head, and over that
Listlessly she let fall the faithless brass

That made the men as faithless.

But when you

Found them, or fancied them, and would not hear
That they were only vestiges of smiles,

Or the impression of some amorous hair
Astray from cloistered curls and roseat band,
Which had been lying there all night perhaps
Upon a skin so soft.... No, no, you said,
Sure, they are coming, yes, are come, are here...
Well, and what matters it... while you are too!

Say ye, that years roll on and ne'er return ?
Say ye, the Sun who leaves them all behind,
Their great creator, cannot bring one back
With all his force, tho' he draw worlds around?..,
Witness me, little streams! that meet before
My happy dwelling; witness, Africo

And Mensola ! that ye have seen at once
Twenty roll back, twenty as swift and bright
As are your swiftest and your brightest wavès,
When the tall cypress o'er the Doccia
Hurls from his inmost boughs the latent snow.
Go, and go happy, pride of my past days
And solace of my present, thou whom Fate
Alone hath severed from me! One step higher
Must yet be mounted, high as was the last ;
Friendship, with faltering accent, says Depart!
And take the highest seat below the crowned.

FRIENDS.

How often, when life's summer day
Is waning, and its sun descends,
Wisdom drives laughing wit away,
And lovers shrivel into friends!

You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more—
Nor hope I what. I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain,
Deceive - deceive me once again!

There are who say we are but dust,
We may be soon, but are not yet,
Nor should be while in Love we trust
And never what he taught forget.

Why, why repine, my pensive friend,
At pleasures slipt away?

Some the stern Fates will never lend,
And all refuse to stay.

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Children, keep up that harmless play,
Your kindred angels plainly say
By God's authority ye may.

Be prompt his Holy word to hear,
It teaches you to banish fear;
The lesson lies on all sides near.

Ten summers hence the sprightliest lad
In Nature's face will look more sad,
And ask where are those smiles she had?

Ere many days the last will close.
Play on, play on, for then (who knows?)
Ye who play here may here repose.

Ah! what avails the sceptered race!
Ah! what the form divine!

What every virtue, every grace!

Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and sighs

I consecrate to thee.

ON SOUTHEY'S DEATH.

Friends, hear the words my wandering thoughts would say And cast them into shape some other day;

Southey, my friend of forty years, is gone,

And, shattered by the fall, I stand alone.

An aged man who loved to doze away
An hour by daylight, for his eyes were dim,
And he had seen too many suns go down
And rise again, dreamt that he saw two forms
Of radiant beauty; he would clasp them both,
But both flew stealthily away. He cried

In his wild dream,

'I never thought, O youth, That thou, altho' so cherisht, would'st return,

But I did think that he who came with thee,

Love, who could swear more sweetly than birds sing, Would never leave me comfortless and lone.'

A sigh broke through his slumber, not the last.

FOR AN EPITAPH AT FIESOLE.

Lo! where the four mimosas blend their shade,
In calm repose at last is Landor laid;
For ere he slept he saw them planted here
By her his soul had ever held most dear,

And he had lived enough when he had dried her tear

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER.

[BRYAN WALLER PROCTER was born in London Nov. 21, 1787. He was educated, with Byron, at Harrow; studied as a solicitor in the country; returned to London to live in 1807. His period of literary activity extended from 1815 to 1823. In 1832 he was made Metropolitan Commissioner of Lunacy, a post which he resigned in 1851. He died Oct 4, 1874. His principal works, all published under the pseudonym of Barry Cornwall, are Dramatic Scenes, 1819; Marcian Colonna, 1820; A Sicilian Story, 1821; Mirandola, 1821; The Flood of Thessaly, 1823; English Songs, 1832.]

Barry Cornwall was a very fluent and accomplished artist in verse rather than what we usually understand by a poet. He had nothing bardic or prophetic in his nature, he was burdened with no special message to mankind, and he gave no sign of ever feeling very strongly on any particular point or occasion. The critic is curiously baffled in seeking for a poetical or personal individuality in his verse, for he never seems to be expressing anything in his own person. This negative quality forms the chief characteristic of his best work, his English Songs. All other known lyrists have either recorded in their songs their personal experiences in emotion, or they have so framed their verses as to seem to do so; Barry Cornwall alone has contrived to write songs of a purely and obviously impersonal and artificial kind, dealing dramatically with feelings which the poet does not himself pretend to experience. His fragments of drama are lyrical, his lyrics dramatic, and each class suffers somewhat from this intrusion into the domain of the other. We hardly do justice to the merit of verse which is so impartial as to become almost uninteresting, and Procter has suffered from his retiring modesty no less than other poets from their arrogance. His lyrics do not possess passion or real pathos or any very deep magic of melody, but he has written more songs

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