Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel,
He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel;
While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.

SONNET ON HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

BY CAPEL LOFFT.

MASTER SO early of the various lyre

Energic, pure, sublime!—Thus art thou gone? In its bright dawn of fame that spirit flown, Which breathed such sweetness, tenderness, and fire!

Wert thou but shown to win us to admire,

And veil in death thy splendour?-But unknown Their destination who least time have shone, And brightest beam'd.-When these the Eternal Sire,

-Righteous and wise, and good are all his ways-
Eclipses as their sun begins to rise,
Can mortal judge, for their diminish'd days,
What blest equivalent in changeless skies,
What sacred glory waits them?-His the praise;
Gracious, whate'er he gives, whate'er denies.

24th Oct. 1806.

SONNET OCCASIONED BY THE SECOND OF

HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

BY CAPEL LOFFT.

YES, fled already is thy vital fire,

And the fair promise of thy early bloom

Lost, in youth's morn extinct; sunk in the tomb; Mute in the grave sleeps thy enchanted lyre! And is it vainly that our souls aspire?

Falsely does the presaging heart presume That we shall live beyond life's cares and gloom; Grasps it eternity with high desire,

2

But to imagine bliss, feel woe, and die ;

Leaving survivors to worse pangs than death? Not such the sanction of the Eternal Mind. The harmonious order of the starry sky, And awful revelation's angel breath,

Assure these hopes their full effect shall find.

25th Dec. 1806.

WRITTEN IN THE HOMER OF MR. H. K. WHITE,

PRESENTED TO ME BY HIS BROTHER, J. NEVILLE WHITE.

BY CAPEL LOFFT.

BARD of brief days, but ah, of deathless fame!
While on these awful leaves my fond eyes rest,
On which thine late have dwelt, thy hand late
press'd,

I pause; and gaze regretful on thy name.
By neither chance nor envy, time nor flame,
Be it from this its mansion dispossess'd!
But thee, Eternity, clasps to her breast,
And in celestial splendour thrones thy claim.

No more with mortal pencil shalt thou trace
An imitative radiance:* thy pure lyre
Springs from our changeful atmosphere's embrace,
And beams and breathes in empyreal fire:
The Homeric and Miltonian sacred tone
Responsive hail that lyre congenial to their own.
Bury, 11th Jan. 1807.

* Alluding to his pencilled sketch of a head surrounded with a glory.

TO THE MEMORY OF H. K. WHITE.

BY THE REV. W. B. COLLYER, A. M.

O, LOST too soon! accept the tear
A stranger to thy memory pays!
Dear to the muse, to science dear,
In the young morning of thy days!

All the wild notes that pity loved
Awoke, responsive still to thee,
While o'er the lyre thy fingers roved
In softest, sweetest harmony.

The chords that in the human heart
Compassion touches as her own,

Bore in thy symphonies a part-
With them in perfect unison.

Amidst accumulated woes

That premature afflictions bring,

Submission's sacred hymn arose,

Warbled from every mournful string.

When o'er thy dawn the darkness spread, And deeper every moment grew; When rudely round thy youthful head

The chilling blasts of sickness blew ;

Religion heard no 'plainings loud,
The sigh in secret stole from thee;
And pity, from the "dropping cloud,"
Shed tears of holy sympathy.

Cold is that heart in which were met
More virtues than could ever die;
The morning star of hope is set-
The sun adorns another sky.

O partial grief! to mourn the day
So suddenly o'erclouded here,
To rise with unextinguish'd ray—
To shine in a superior sphere!

Oft genius early quits this sod,
Impatient of a robe of clay,

Spreads the light pinion, spurns the clod,
And smiles, and soars, and steals away!

But more than genius urged thy flight,
And mark'd the way, dear youth! for thee:
Henry sprang up to worlds of light

On wings of immortality!