SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY THE UNHAPPY POET DERMODY IN A STORM,
WHILE ON BOARD A SHIP IN HIS MAJESTY'S SERVICE.
Lo! o'er the welkin the tempestuous clouds
Successive fly, and the loud piping wind
Rocks the poor sea-boy on the dripping shrouds,
While the pale pilot, o'er the helm reclined,
Lists to the changeful storm and as he plies
His wakeful task, he oft bethinks him, sad,
Of wife, and little home, and chubby lad,
And the half-strangled tear bedews his eyes;
I, on the deck, musing on themes forlorn,
View the drear tempest, and the yawning deep,
Nought dreading in the green sea's caves to sleep,
For not for me shall wife or children mourn,
And the wild winds will ring my funeral knell,
Sweetly as solemn peal of pious passing-bell.
GOD help thee, Traveller, on thy journey far;
The wind is bitter keen,-the snow o'erlays
The hidden pits, and dangerous hollow ways,
And darkness will involve thee. No kind star
To-night will guide thee, Traveller, and the war
Of winds and elements on thy head will break,
And in thy agonising ear the shriek
Of spirits howling on their stormy car
Will often ring appalling; I portend
A dismal night, and on my wakeful bed
Thoughts, Traveller, of thee will fill my head,
And him who rides where wind and waves contend,
And strives, rude cradled on the seas, to guide
His lonely bark through the tempestuous tide.
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 muchrespected 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 disown'd? 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 distinguish'd import, lays, though sweet,
Yet not in magic texture taught to meet
Of that so varied and peculiar frame.
O think! to vindicate its genuine praise
Those it beseems, whose lyre a favouring impulse sways.
RECANTATORY IN REPLY TO THE FOREGOING ELEGANT ADMONITION.
LET the sublimer Muse, who, wrapp'd 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 the aid
Of mingled melody, to grace my strain,
And give it power to please, as soft it flows
Through the smooth murmurs of the frequent close.
SONNET 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
Pour'd 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?
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 guid'st 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.
LOFFT, unto thee one tributary song
The simple Muse, admiring, fain would bring; She longs to lisp thee to the listening throng, And with thy name to bid the woodlands ring.
Fain would she blazon all thy virtues forth,
Thy warm philanthropy, thy justice mild;
Would say how thou didst foster kindred worth,
And to thy bosom snatch'd Misfortune's child;
Firm she would paint thee, with becoming zeal,
Upright, and learned, as the Pylian sire;
Would say how sweetly thou couldst sweep
And show thy labours for the public weal,
Ten thousand virtues tell with joys supreme-
But ah! she shrinks abash'd before the arduous theme.
SUBLIME, emerging from the misty verge
Of the horizon dim, thee, Moon, I hail,
As, sweeping o'er the leafless grove, the gale
Seems to repeat the year's funereal dirge.
Now Autumn sickens on the languid sight,
And leaves bestrew the wanderer's lonely way,
Now unto thee, pale arbitress of night,
With double joy my homage do I pay.
When clouds disguise the glories of the day,
And stern November sheds her boisterous blight,
How doubly sweet to mark the moony ray
Shoot through the mist from the ethereal height,
And, still unchanged, back to the memory bring
The smiles Favonian of life's earliest spring.
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