Ye lowly children of the shelter’d vale,
Like modest worth by scornful pride disdain’d,
Your little, fleeting life,
Who waste unseen, unknown,
In verdant veil how bashfully enwrap’d,
Ye shun the officious hand, the searchful sight,
With down-cast, pensive eye,
And ever-musing heads!
Ah! when I view your meek, your humble mien,
And all your highly breathing fragrance taste,
How bleeds my sad’ning soul,
For unprotected worth!
How bleeds so think that mortal excellence
Is doom’d to live forgot, unheeded die!
For in your short-liv’d charms
Are pictur’d well its fate.
For ye, ere yet the morning’s rising gale
Shall wing its early course, may cease to greet
With the sweet breath of love
The wakeful wanderer’s way.
Nor longer, virtue’s boast! a little day,
A little hour, she blooms! Nor can her pow’r
Us helpless victims shield
From the unpitying grave.
Then come, my Anna’s faithful bosom deck:
For ever there true worth, true wisdom dwell.
Congenial to your state,
Soft in that heaven rest.
There shall no busy insect dare obtrude
Your sweets to rifle with perfidious kiss;
While ye more fragrance taste
Than in your native beds.
Your highest incense breathe, to emulate
Those more than op’ning morning’s purest sweets,
That sit on rosy lips
Of smiling chastity.
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IRREGULAR STANZAS
Upon the Death of a Young Lady.
It is vain! and her spirit has fled!
Matilda has sunk in the tomb;
The beauty of Nature lies mix’d with the dead:
Alas! how severe is the doom.
As a lily that blows in the vale,
That springs to perfection, and dies;
She bloom’d, and then sick’ned--but shall we bewail;
The grave of the pure is the path to the skies.
The victim of woe and despair,
Her soul now delights in its rest;
And roving with bliss thro’ the regions of air,
Unites in the songs of the blest.
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