248 TO THE MUSE. WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF FOURTEEN. I. ILL-FATED maid, in whose unhappy train, Chill poverty and misery are seen, Anguish and discontent, the unhappy bane Of life, and blackener of each brighter scene; Why to thy votaries dost thou give to feel So keenly all the scorns-the jeers of life? Why not endow them to endure the strife With apathy's invulnerable steel, Or self-content and ease, each torturing wound to heal. II. Ah! who would taste your self-deluding joys, That bid fair views and flattering hopes arise, In which innumerous before have gone, III. Yet can I ask what charms in thee are found: I, who have drank from thine ethereal rill, And tasted all the pleasures that abound Upon Parnassus, loved Aonian hill? I, through whose soul the Muses' strains aye thrill! Oh! I do feel the spell with which I'm tied; And though our annals fearful stories tell, How Savage languished, and how Otway died, Yet must I persevere, let whate'er will betide. SONG. WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF FOURTEEN. I. SOFTLY, softly, blow, ye breezes, He lies by the deep, All along where the salt waves sigh. II. I have covered him with rushes, My love is asleep, He lies by the deep, All along where the salt waves sigh. III. Still he sleeps; he will not waken, Paler is his cheek, and chiller Than the icy moon on high. Alas! he is dead, He has chose his deathbed IV. Is it, is it so, my Edwy? Will thy slumbers never fly? Couldst thou think I would survive thee? No, my love, thou bidst me die. Thou bidst me seek Thy deathbed bleak All along where the salt waves sigh. V. I will gently kiss thy cold lips, And the winds shall sing our death-dirge, And the wild wave will beat, Oh! so softly o'er our lonely bed. THE WANDERING BOY. A SONG. I. WHEN the winter wind whistles along the wild moor, And the cottager shuts on the beggar his door; When the chilling tear stands in my comfortless eye, Oh, how hard is the lot of the wandering boy! II. The winter is cold, and I have no vest, And my heart it is cold as it beats in my breast; III. Yet I once had a home, and I once had a sire, IV. But my father and mother were summoned away, And they left me to hardhearted strangers a prey; I fled from their rigor with many a sigh, And now I'm a poor little wandering boy. V. The wind it is keen, and the snow loads the gale, I'll go to the grave where my parents both lie, FRAGMENT. THE western gale, Mild as the kisses of connubial love, Plays round my languid limbs, as all dissolved, I lie, exhausted with the noontide heat; Dispensing coolness.-On the fringed marge The buskined wood-nymphs from the heat retire, And hark, how merrily, from distant tower, Such is the jocund wake of Whitsuntide, |