The best of prophets of the future is the past.

Letter, Jan. 28, 1821.

What say you to such a supper with such a woman?

1

Note to a Letter on Bowles's Strictures.

WILLIAM KNOX. 1789-1825.

Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.2

ALFRED BUNN. 1790-1860.

Mortality.8

I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,
With vassals and serfs at my side.

Song.

The light of other days is faded,

4

And all their glories past.

Song.

The heart bowed down by weight of woe
To weakest hope will cling.

Song.

Strike for the green graves of your sires!

God, and your native land!

1 See Lady Montagu, page 350.

2 Abraham Lincoln was very fond of repeating these lines.

3 From Knox's "Songs of Israel," 1824.

4 See Moore, page 523.

Marco Bozzaris.

Come to the bridal chamber, Death!

Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath!
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke!
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm!
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine!
And thou art terrible! the tear,

The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know or dream or fear

Of agony are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword

Has won the battle for the free,

Marco Bozzaris.

Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.

One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.

Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined,
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.

Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!

None knew thee but to love thee,1
Nor named thee but to praise.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Burns.

On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake.

There is an evening twilight of the heart,
When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest.

1 See Rogers, page 455.

Twilight.

They love their land because it is their own,
And scorn to give aught other reason why;
Would shake hands with a king upon his throne,
And think it kindness to his Majesty.
This bank-note world.

Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings.

Connecticut.

Alnwick Castle.

Ibid.

CHARLES WOLFE. 1791-1823.

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried.

The Burial of Sir John Moore.

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,

With his martial cloak around him.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

If I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee;

But I forgot, when by thy side,

That thou couldst mortal be.

Yet there was round thee such a dawn

Of light, ne'er seen before,

As fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore.

Go, forget me! why should sorrow
O'er that brow a shadow fling?

Go, forget me, and to-morrow

Brightly smile and sweetly sing!
Smile, though I shall not be near thee;
though I shall never hear thee!

Sing,

Ibid.

Ibid.

To Mary.

Ibid.

Go, forget me!

HENRY HART MILMAN. 1791-1868.

And the cold marble leapt to life a god.

The Belvedere Apollo.

Too fair to worship, too divine to love.

Ibid.

CHARLES SPRAGUE. 1791-1875.

Lo where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.

Curiosity.

Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends,
An incarnation of fat dividends.

Ibid.

Behold! in Liberty's unclouded blaze
We lift our heads, a race of other days.

Centennial Ode. Stanza 22.

Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctors' spite;

Thy clouds all other clouds dispel,
And lap me in delight.

To my Cigar.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 1792-1822.

Then black despair,

The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone.

The Revolt of Islam. Dedication, Stanza 6.

With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats, tho' unseen, amongst us.

Canto v. Stanza 23.

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow.

A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.

O thou,

Adonais. xxx.

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth.

xxxii.

liii.

Ode to the West Wind.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams
Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon.

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Ibid.

The Cloud. iv.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

To a Skylark. Line 86.

Kings are like stars, they rise and set, they have

The worship of the world, but no repose.1

Hellas. Line 195.

1 See Bacon, page 166.