POEMS OF

66

SONNET VI.

BY CAPEL LOFFT, ESQ.

[This Sonnet was addressed to the author of this volume, and was occasioned by several little quatorzains, misnomered sonnets, which he published in the Monthly Mirror." He begs leave to return his thanks to the much respected writer for the permission so politely granted to insert it here, and for the good opinion he has been pleased to express of his productions.]

YE, whose aspirings court the muse of lays,
"Severest of those orders which belong,
Distinct and separate, to Delphic song,"
Why shun the Sonnet's undulating maze?
And why its name, boast of Petrarchian days,
Assume, its rules disowned? whom from the throng
The Muse selects, their ear the charm obeys
Of its full harmony:-they fear to wrong
The Sonnet, by adorning with a name

Of that distinguished import, lays, though sweet,
Yet not in magic texture taught to meet

Of that so varied and peculiar frame.

Oh think! to vindicate its genuine praise

Those it beseems, whose Lyre a favoring impulse sways.

SONNET VII.

RECANTATORY, IN REPLY TO THE FOREGOING ELEGANT ADMONITION.

LET the sublimer Muse, who, wrapt in night,
Rides on the raven pennons of the storm,
Or o'er the field, with purple havoc warm,
Lashes her steeds, and sings along the fight;
Let her, whom more ferocious strains delight,
Disdain the plaintive Sonnet's little form,
And scorn to its wild cadence to conform,

The impetuous tenor of her hardy flight.
But me, far lowest of the sylvan train,

Who wake the wood-nymphs from the forest shade
With wildest song;-Me, much behoves thy aid
Of mingled melody, to grace my strain,

And give it power to please, as soft it flows
Through the smooth murmurs of thy frequent close.

SONNET VIII.

ON HEARING THE SOUNDS OF AN EOLIAN HARP.

So ravishingly soft upon the tide

Of the infuriate gust, it did career,

It might have soothed its rugged charioteer,
And sunk him to a zephyr;-then it died,
Melting in melody:-and I descried

Borne to some wizard stream, the form appear
Of Druid sage, who on the far-off ear

Poured his lone song, to which the surge replied:
Or thought I heard the hapless pilgrim's knell,
Lost in some wild enchanted forest's bounds,
By unseen beings sung; or are these sounds,
Such as, 'tis said, at night are known to swell
By startled shepherd on the lonely heath,
Keeping his night-watch sad, portending death?

SONNET IX.

WHAT art thou, MIGHTY ONE! and where thy seat? Thou broodest on the calm that cheers the lands. And thou dost bear within thine awful hands, The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet.

Stern on thy dark-wrought car of cloud, and wind, Thou guidest the northern storm at night's dead

noon,

Or on the red wing of the fierce Monsoon,
Disturb'st the sleeping giant of the Ind.
In the drear silence of the polar span

Dost thou repose? or in the solitude
Of sultry tracts, where the lone caravan

Hears nightly howl the tiger's hungry brood? Vain thought! the confines of his throne to trace, Who glows through all the fields of boundless space.

A BALLAD.

BE hushed, be hushed, ye bitter winds,
Ye pelting rains, a little rest:

Lie still, lie still, ye busy thoughts,

That wring with grief my aching breast.

Oh, cruel was my faithless love,
To triumph o'er an artless maid:
Oh, cruel was my faithless love,

To leave the breast by him betrayed.

When exiled from my native home,
He should have wiped the bitter tear:
Nor left me faint and lone to roam,
A heart-sick weary wanderer here.

My child moans sadly in my arms,

The winds they will not let it sleep;

Ah, little knows the hapless babe,

What makes its wretched mother weep!

Now lie thee still, my infant dear,
I cannot bear thy sobs to see,
Harsh is thy father, little one,

And never will he shelter thee.

Oh, that I were but in my grave,
And winds were piping o'er me loud,
And thou, my poor, my orphan babe,
Wert nestling in thy mother's shroud.

THE LULLABY

OF A FEMALE CONVICT TO HER CHILD, THE NIGHT PREVIOUS
TO EXECUTION.

SLEEP,* baby mine, enkerchieft on my bosom,
Thy cries they pierce again my bleeding breast;
Sleep, baby mine, not long thou'lt have a mother,
To lull thee fondly in her arms to rest.

Baby, why dost thou keep this sad complaining,
Long from mine eyes have kindly slumbers fled;
Hush, hush, my babe, the night is quickly waning,
And I would fain compose my aching head.

Poor wayward wretch! and who will heed thy weeping,
When soon an outcast on the world thou'lt be:
Who then will soothe thee, when thy mother's sleeping,
In her low grave of shame and infamy!

Sleep, baby mine.-To-morrow I must leave thee,
And I would snatch an interval of rest;
Sleep these last moments, ere the laws bereave thee,
For never more thou'lt press a mother's breast.

* Sir Philip Sidney has a poem beginning, "Sleep, baby mine."

POEMS,

WRITTEN DURING, OR SHORTLY AFTER, THE PUBLICATION OF CLIFTON GROVE.

ODE,

ADDRESSED TO H. FUSELI, ESQ., R.A., ON SEEING ENGRAVINGS FROM HIS DESIGNS.

MIGHTY Magician! who on Torneo's brow,
When sullen tempests wrap the throne of night,
Art wont to sit and catch the gleam of light
That shoots athwart the gloom opaque below;
And listen to the distant death-shriek long

From lonely mariner foundering in the deep,
Which rises slowly up the rocky steep,
While the weird sisters weave the horrid song:
Or when along the liquid sky

Serenely chant the orbs on high,
Dost love to sit in musing trance

And mark the northern meteor's dance,
(While far below the fitful oar

Flings its faint pauses on the steepy shore,)
And list the music of the breeze,

That sweeps by fits the bending seas;
And often bears with sudden swell
The shipwrecked sailor's funeral knell,
By the spirits sung who keep

Their night watch on the treacherous deep,