TO A LADY WHO REQUESTED THE AUTHOR TO WRITE SOME DECLARATORY OF WHAT HE
VERSES IN HER ALBUM, DECLARATORY
LIKED AND WHAT HE DISLIKED.
You bid me mention what I like,
And, gaily smiling, little guess
How deeply may that question strike
The chords of solemn thankfulness.
I like my friends, my children, wife -
The home they make so blessed a spot;
I like my fortune-calling-life
In every thing I like my lot;
And feeling thus, my heart's imbued
With never-ceasing gratitude.
What I dislike, you next demand.
A puzzling query for in me
Nought that proceeds from Nature's hand
Awakens an antipathy.
But what I like the least are those
Who nourish an unthankful mind,
Quick to discern imagined woes,
To all their real blessings blind,
For that is double want of love,
To man below, and God above.
SHALL I rebuke thee, Ocean, my old love,
That once, in rage with the wild winds at strife
Thou darest menace my unit of a life,
Sending my clay below, my soul above,
Whilst roar'd thy waves, like lions when they rove
By night and bound upon their prey by stealth?
Yet didst thou ne'er restore my fainting health?—
Didst thou ne'er murmur gently like the dove?
Nay, didst thou not against my own dear shore
Full break, last link between my land and me?—
My absent friends talk in thy very roar,
In thy waves' beat their kindly pulse I see,
And, if I must not see my England more,
Next to her soil, my grave be found in thee!
A POOR old king, with sorrow for my crown,
Throned upon straw, and mantled with the wind-
For pity, my own tears have made me blind
That I might never see my children's frown;
And may be madness, like a friend, has thrown
A folded fillet over my dark mind,
So that unkindly speech may sound for kind,—
Albeit I know not.-I am childish grown—
And have not gold to purchase wit withal—
I that have once maintain'd most royal state-
A very bankrupt now that may not call
My child, my child-all-beggar'd save in tears,
Wherewith I daily weep an old man's fate,
Foolish and blind-and overcome with years!
RARE composition of a poet-knight,
Most chivalrous amongst chivalric men,
Distinguish'd for a polish'd lance and pen
In tuneful contest and in tourney-fight ;
Lustrous in scholarship, in honour bright,
Accomplish'd in all graces current then,
Humane as any in historic ken,
Brave, handsome, noble, affable, polite;
Most courteous to that race become of late
So fiercely scornful of all kind advance,
Rude, bitter, coarse, implacable in hate
To Albion, plotting ever her mischance,—
Alas, fair verse! how false and out of date
Thy phrase "sweet enemy" applied to France!
Look how the lark soars upward and is gone,
Turning a spirit as he nears the sky!
His voice is heard, but body there is none
To fix the vague excursions of the eye.
So, poets' songs are with us, tho' they die
Obscured, and hid by death's oblivious shroud,
And earth inherits the rich melody,
Like raining music from the morning cloud.
Yet, few there be who pipe so sweet and loud,
Their voices reach us through the lapse of space:
The noisy day is deafen'd by a crowd
Of undistinguish'd birds, a twittering race;
But only lark and nightingale forlorn
Fill up the silences of night and morn.
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