DEDICATION. DIM dream-like Forms! your shadowy train Around me gathers once again, The same as in life's morning hour, Before my troubled gaze you pass'd; From cloud and mist !-my heart you shake That, as by magic, wake beneath The atmosphere you bid me breathe. Forms known in happy days, you bring, Worn out with many a passing year, B Those dear ones' names I here repeated, As shades of sorrow round me rise, Whom Fortune of fair hours has cheated, All early vanish'd from mine eyes. They do not hear the following lay, Dispersed is all that friendly throng! I sicken at their praise-though loud; All whom my song once woke to mirth, Are dead, or scatter'd o'er the earth! And now, within my soul, once more Breathes the Æolian's waken'd sound. I tremble-and upon my cheek, Tear following fast on tear-drop, tells That the stern heart grows soft and meek, That it with gentler feeling swells; The present hour, each present thing, All that I now around me see, Into the distance seem to wing,— But all the past and vanish'd, spring Back into clear reality! PRELUDE IN THE THEATRE. MANAGER, THEATRE-POET, MERRYMAN. Fain to the public I would pleasure give, I know how they are gain'd, amused, True, to the best they are not used But they have read a frightful deal ! To get their tickets, in they pour, As in some famine's sharp distress The mob throngs round a baker's door! It is alone the poet's magic art That with such varied masses, finds the way To work this wonder,-oh! then, do your part, And work it for me here, my friend, to-day! Poet. Name not to me that motley crowd! Our spirit from before it flies ! The wavering Many from me shroud, Go! veil it from mine eyes! Against all efforts of our own It drags us, in its whirlpool, down. No! lead to some still, heavenly spot apart, Where only, for the poet, joy can live, Where love and friendship join'd can to us give, With godlike hand, the blessings of the heart! Ah! what hath there gush'd from us free, Pour'd, issuing from our inmost breast, What the lip utter'd, tremblingly, Timid, scarce to itself confest Now failing in its task—and then Successful when it tries again, All this will some wild moment's power, With sudden violence devour, Though oft it is the work of years Ere its perfected form appears. What shines and glitters-has its birth But for the present hour alone, The REAL the thing of truth and worth To all posterity goes down! Mer. Oh! would that I might hear no more, Suppose I always talk'd it o'er, Who'd make the fun for those we see? The better to move all around him. Be Sense, Thought, Passion, heard around, Their greatest joy, to use their eyes. If they can gape, with wonder dumb, Your fame spreads o'er a wider space, You have a favourite become ! The mass can only by the mass be stirr'd, Each will choose forth that by himself preferr'd; Let it in pieces be presented; Served up as easy as invented! |