Watchful to guard;--those fair and ample lawns
Flank’d with their woods luxuriant; numerous fields
Rich in the food of flocks and herds, that range
A second Canaan; or, of higher use,
Wave wide their bending gold in Ceres’ smile.
Yes; to protect them e’en with Argus’ eyes,
From menial riot, and the injurious arts,
Servile and peculant, was thine;--to spread,
With even hand, the delegated store
Of liberal charity. Then didst thou rouse
To daily action thy experienced skill;
Talents commensurate to highest trust;
Attachment warm, and all the energies
That brave the winter storms, and scorn the suns
Parching the plains at noon-tide; strenuous still
Well to discharge thy duty. Ah, too well,
For thine own safety, was that duty done!
Less faithful service ill could brook the glance
Piercing extortion’s veil; nor would endure
Thy voice of just reproof, nor the firm hand
Curbing profusion. Then were form’d those wiles,
That, woven round thy late confiding lord,
And his ingenuous lady, by degrees,
Disgraced thee in their trust; themselves all truth,
Long deeming faithful those who very long
Had bask’d in their bright rays, while thou to them
Wert but a man of yesterday. And thus
Those smiles benign, that cheered thee through thy months
Of arduous designation, faded grown,
Sunk, ere ’twas long, in that unpierc’d eclipse
Suspicion gendered, which the kindling heart
Suspected without cause, so seldom knows
Patient to suffer. All the Briton woke,
And, for an interval, Discretion lost
Remembrance of that maxim, which enjoins
The servant to submission, meek of eye,
Of voice unmurmuring, howsoe’er accused
Where real fault is none. So did’st thou rush
Into the snare which Falsehood had prepared
To banish whom it fear’d; make thee provoke
The fate which Goodness, by delay, perchance
Had learnt thou did’st not merit. Much I grieved
Talents so rare, and energies so prompt,
Should, through misdeeming, be forsaken found
By thy thrice gracious lord. The deep, dark work
Of evidence untrue, from Hate avow’d,
And from dissembled Friendship; while the last,
Assuming grief for errors well devised,
Won thy abused master to belief.
So sly IAGO warp’d the noble MOOR!
So ZANGA pitied LEONORA’S guilt!
’Twas a black cloud burst o’er thee. For a time
Thou stood’st like a young tree by lightning struck,
Struck, but not blasted. Yet thy leaves did droop
As they would wither. Soon the timely dew
Of springing Hope revived them. In those hours
Mark’d I the starting tear, by manly pride
Dispersed or ere it fell; the quivering lip
And the clear conscience which rebuked thy nerves,
Steadying them quickly. Now the hour is come,
Ample of recompence; th’ illustrious house
That nursed thy youth to virtue, and that gave,
Resign’d thee rather to more arduous trust,
Opes wide its sheltering gates, and reinstates
Him whom it deems incapable of fraud,
Or scarce less guilty negligence; since years
Of faithfulness unswerving, had inspired
Such confidence, as no delusive breath,
Calumniating through interest, could destroy.
Well knows thy generous young lord, that he,
Whom his loved father, wise and good, had train’d,
Trusted, and never found that trust betray’d,
Could not at once apostatize, and rush
On vices unhabitual, that must wrong
His noble patron, while they madly risk’d
Destruction to his own well-founded hopes.
And that young lord, heir of his father’s spirit,
He is the day-spring which succeeds the storm
That shook his forest-tree; his are the dews
In whose kind balm its lately drooping leaves
Smile on the sun!--And he is haply serv’d
By one of proved fidelity, whose heart[156]
No sting of envy feels, no jealous fears
Illiberal; but who welcomes thy return
With all a brother’s gladness. Upright men
Act ever thus, and love congenial worth.
That strain was gratulant; yet, ah! the thought
Is ever grievous, that his lord and thine,
In youth’s high noon, and in the rising hours
Of life and fame, droops heart-struck o’er the tomb;
Turns the impassion’d, recollecting eye,
On a crush’d rose, and its soon-perish’d bud!
Lamented fate! that he should inly pine
In double deprivation; often steal
Beneath the shadowy languish of the moon,
Mourning his blasted hopes; a loved, lost wife,
Fair as the spring when May’s pellucid morns
Crimson the orient; while no sparkling stream,
Fresh from the rock, in those soft hours of prime,
Was purer than her mind. She died!--yet still
All was not lost!--An infant pledge of love,
Sweet transcript of her mother’s charms, a while
Smiled consolation!--but O! second pang
Scarcely less keen, when to the recent grave
Of his soul’s treasure, he resign’d her child!
Yet, surely happiness is still in store
For B----’s virtue, thus severely tried,
When time has balm’d his wounds! in store for him
Who loses not in grief’s funereal gloom,
The care of others’ welfare!--O! for him
May that coy flower of life blossom again,
Twined with no spray ill-omen’d!--So desires
Her heart, which oft has ponder’d and deplored
The lurking cypress in his bridal wreath.
Servant obliged, deserve his guardian love,
Who, with a youthful Daniel’s judgement weighs
A charge improbable; who clears thy fame,
Who gives thee back to fair prosperity
And gratitude’s superior bliss!--Be thine
To serve him long and truly! To that end
Oft pour thy secret soul to Heaven in prayer,
Whose aiding grace, never implored in vain,
When ask’d sincerely, shall direct thy ways;
Shine on the zenith of thy life; illume
Waning existence, and shall pour its light
Into the dreary chambers of the grave;
Confine of boundless bliss, or utter woe,
As faith and virtue, or as scorn and sin
Refine, or stain our being. Faithful thou
First to thy God, from him receive the power
Well to discharge thy debt to human worth.
TO
ROBERT HARPER, ESQ.
SENT TO HIM THE NIGHT BEFORE HE TOOK HIS BRIDE TO THEIR HOUSE IN LONDON.
This evening’s shade no mirth, no joy beguiles,
Beneath that roof, fair Catherine’s home so long;
Grief, ill conceal’d, in forced and transient smiles,
Sits on each heart, and falters on each tongue.
Yes, Harper, e’en on thine;--since, if thy brow
From Nature’s hand its candid traits obtain’d,
Thou hast an heart to feel for all who know,
And love and lose the treasure thou hast gain’d.
Long on your mutual fate, that every star
Propitious to the weal of life may shine,
Still shall my soul implore, when distant far
From her, whose hand, and vows, and heart are thine,
Oft as her form shall to my memory rise,
And wake, with kindest wishes, selfish sighs.
BALLAD
IN THE
ANCIENT SCOTCH DIALECT,
AULD WILLIE’S FAREWELL,
A Free-Booter, taken in a Border Battle, and condemned to be
Executed.[157]
Fareweel my ingle, bleezing bright[158]
When the snell storm’s begun;[159]
My bouris casements aw sae light,[160]
When glints the bonnie sun!
Fareweel my deep glen, speck’d wi’ sloe,
O’ tangled hazles full;
Green leas and heathery hills, where low[161]
My kine and glourin bull.[162]
Fareweel my red deer, jutting proud,
My rooks, o’ murky wing!
Fareweel my wee birds, lilting loud,[163]
Aw in the merry Spring!
Fareweel my sheep, that sprattle on,
In a lang line, sae braw,[164]
Or lie on cliffs, the rocks aboon,[165]
Like late-left patch o’ snaw.
Fareweel my burn, that wimpling rins,[166]
My clattering brig o’ yew!
My scaly tribe, wi’ gowden fins,
Sae nimbly flickering through![167]
Fareweel my boat, and lusty oars,
That skelp wi’ miekle spray![168]
Fareweel my braes on Tiviot shores,[169]
That cool the Simmer’s day!
Fareweel my neighbours, whase swift steed
O’er Saxon bounds ha’ scower’d,
Soom’d drumlie floods when moons were dead,[170][171]
And ilka star was smoor’d![172]
Maist dear for a’ ye shared wi’ me
When scaith and prey did goad,[173]
And danger, like a wraith, did flee[174]
Along the darksome road.
Fareweel my winsome wife, sae gay,[175]
Fu’ fain frae hame to gang,
Wi’ spunky lads to geck and play,[176]
The flowrie haughs among![177]
Fareweel my gowk! thy warning note[178]
Then aft-times ca’ed aloud,
Tho’ o’ the word that swal’d thy throat,
Gude faith, I was na’ proud.
And pawky gowk, sae free that maid’st,[179]
Or e’er I hanged be,
Would I might learn if true thou said’st
When sae thou said’st to me!
ADDRESSED
TO THE
REV. THOMAS SEDGEWICK WHALLEY,
ON LEAVING HIS SEAT, MENDIP LODGE, IN SOMERSETSHIRE, OCT. 10th, 1804.
Farewell, my friend! who ’mid thy Alpine bowers,
Hast sooth’d and cheer’d my soul, depress’d by woe!
Thine many a potent spell to wing the hours,
And in life’s winter bid the spirit glow.
Yes, e’en tho’ sorrow aid the frost of time,
To blight the forms of fancy as they rise,
Till all of Great, of Lovely, of Sublime,
Is view’d with tearful tho’ admiring eyes.
High on thy mountain-eminence I stand,
Or range the lawny walk, that zones its brow,
See vales, and woods, and lesser hills expand,
As in a map, the verdant steeps below.
Pledges of life, see villas throng’d acquire
Sweet power to socialize the blooming plains;
Pledges of Life Eternal, many a spire
Turn to the orient sun their golden vanes.
While yonder, stretching far its amber line,
Dividing England from the Cambrian strand,
Wide in the blush of morning glows the brine,[180]
That bears our commerce to each distant land.
These, seen from the full shades that crown thy hill,
Or from thy gay Veranda’s light arcade,[181]
With poignant transport must the bosom fill,
If peace and joy its secret sense pervade.
On me the various landscape shines in vain,
Since the grave’s iron slumber seals those eyes
Now, that must never view thy bright domain,
Or meet thy rays of genius as they rise;
Each generous kindness, worth without alloy,
Meet them, and blend with them congenial fires,
O! in that thought, my sensible of joy
Sinks in my breast, and ere it warms, expires.
Nor yet the Tuscan splendours of thy walls,
Where all of elegance and art unite
To charm the eye, that vanish’d sense recalls;--
No, not one spark of its extinguish’d light!
But when I see thee, Friend, thus high upraised
Above pale Envy’s reach, on Fortune’s shrine,
And when my eyes have on those blessings gazed
Which for thy heart the wreaths of comfort twine;
When all her soften’d emanations live
In the consoling sweetness of thy smiles,
Then from thy joys my joyless hours receive
Reflected peace, that transiently beguiles;
Beguiles to sweet forgetfulness the grief,
That dim in deprivation shrouds my heart;
Mine, while life still is mine, be that relief
A Friend’s dear bliss now only can impart.
Long be thy gentle consort the mild light,
Shedding content o’er all thy waning days!
And may they stretch with long protracted flight,
And bear to Heaven thy grateful pious praise!
And may Distemper’s mist from thee and thine,
Thy lovely FRANCES, and thy faithful wife,
Fly, like the rain when Summer mornings shine,
Nor stain with one pale cloud thy eve of life!
EDWY, farewell! to Lichfield’s darken’d grove,
With aching heart, and rising sighs, I go,
Yet bear a grateful spirit as I rove
For all of thine which balm’d a cureless woe.
THE
GRAVE OF YOUTH.
When life is hurried to untimely close
In the years of crystal eyes and burnish’d hair,
Dire are the thoughts of death;--eternal parting
From all the precious soul’s yet known delights,
All she had clung to here;--from youth and hope,
And the year’s blossom’d April;--bounding strength,
Which had out-leap’d the roes, when morning suns
Yellowed their forest-glade;--from reaper’s shout
And cheerful swarm of populous towns;--from Time,
Which tells of joys forepast, and promises
The dear return of seasons, and the bliss
Crowning a fruitful marriage;--from the stores
Of well-engrafted knowledge;--from all utterance,
Since, in the silent grave, no talk!--no music!
No gay surprise, by unexpected good,
Social, or individual!--no glad step
Of welcome friend, with more intenseness listen’d
Than warbled melody!--no father’s council!
No mother’s smile!--no lover’s whisper’d vow!--
There nothing breathes save the insatiate worm,
And nothing is but the drear altering corse,
Resolving silently to shapeless dust
In unpierc’d darkness and in blank oblivion.
TO
MRS SKERETT,
WRITTEN, NOV. 1805.
Of gentle manners, and enlighten’d mind,
Wert thou, Albinia, in thy youth’s soft prime,
When thrice ’twas ours, in converse free and kind,
Short space to gild of swiftly-passing time.
And with thy brother, to whose cultured youth[182]
The classic Fanes their radiant stores display’d,
While warmth of heart, genius, and manly truth,
Then, as through life, his ardent spirit sway’d.
So once again, to blend the soul’s clear stream!
Charm’d would my sense that pleasing view discern,
But hope is cold on the presented theme,
And her dear hands a darken’d mirror turn.
Yet, friends esteem’d, to memory oft ye rise,
Bright from the past, as refluent pleasures cheer;
Though ye no more may glad these mortal eyes.
Far spent my day, and the long night is near!
TO
MISS CATHERINE MALLET.
Yet two short days, my Catharine! then no more,
Beneath our long-loved spires, thy graceful form
Shall lightly glide, to cheer my languid hour
With emanations sparkling, soft, and warm,
Shed from the mind’s rich stores; and with the charm
Of language accurate, by habit taught
Th’ ideal train with happiest powers to arm,
That rise in swift subservience to each thought,
Whether with Reason’s strength, or Fancy’s radiance fraught.
Now damp November’s desolating gale
Covers the brooks with shrunk and yellow leaves;
His iron skies scowl on our darling vale,
Nor aught from sway more stern the scene reprieves.
Of thee, since Destiny my heart bereaves,
Lone wintry sighs in unison ascend
With the chill blast which faded Nature grieves.
On me her griefs, but not her hopes attend;
Spring shall return to her, when distant far my friend!
No Expectation tells, with voice benign,
That future years shall give her back to me!
Thou may’st again behold these turrets shine,
These bowers may spread, these meadows bloom for thee,
But here no more wilt thou thine Anna see!
Yet not for that shroud those mild eyes in gloom!
She twines the cypress wreath, by Heaven’s decree,
For many a victim of the ruthless tomb;
Set are her heart-dear orbs where no blest mornings come!
For thee, loved maid, extracted be each thorn
That lurks amid the roses of thy fate,
Knowledge and Taste are thine, and bid thee scorn
Each shaft of Envy, Falsehood, Pride, and Hate;
For thou hast soar’d where they have never sat;
Traced Genius in his sun-track; with rapt gaze,
Adored bright Nature in her scenic state,
And in thy morn of life, and riper day,
Fed thy clear lamp of Faith from Truth’s unclouded ray!
_Lichfield, Nov. 1805._
IMPROMPTU,
WRITTEN IN THE BLANK LEAVES OF
MISS ANNA BURT’S REPOSITORY OF FRIENDSHIP.
Before thine altar, Virtue, ever kneel
The maid whose beauty charms the kindling heart!
The maid, ordain’d Affection’s power to feel,
In Nature’s truth and in the scorn of Art!
Enchanting ANNA, if aright I read,
Stands in the level of that cordial prayer;
Hers be the rosy and the amaranth wreath,
Which Love and Friendship for the Good prepare!
So may her years in placid currents flow,
Gay as her smile, and radiant as her eye;
Pure as her blush, where those soft colours glow
Warm May diffuses in the orient sky!
Live, gentle Nymph, to bless and to be blest,
Tho’ rare such lot in life’s ambiguous maze;
Transient, at least, be all that wounds thy breast
Till melt thy finite in eternal days!
ELEGY,
WRITTEN AS FROM A FRENCH LADY,
WHOSE HUSBAND HAD BEEN THREE YEARS PRISONER OF
WAR AT LICHFIELD.
Fled are the years Love should have call’d his own,
Bearing my wasted youth they roll’d away;
Dost thou conceive, my husband, how I moan
Thro’ the long, lonely, disappointed day?
Night comes.--Ah! every instant, as it flies,
Feeds my impatience to behold thee here.--
Morning will soon relume the darken’d skies,
But when shall my soul’s morning re-appear?
Each separated moment dost thou count
With a regret solicitous as mine?
Ruthless the foe who swells their vast amount,
And bids thee in unransom’d bondage pine!
For thee, I judge thee by myself, and know,
Dear, hapless Exile! all thou must endure;
The cheerless days, and every heart-sick woe
That Liberty might chase, and Love should cure.
Yet, O! when absence all my soul o’er-powers,
Why does thy pen with-hold the only aid?
When gales blow homeward from the hostile shores,
Why are th’ expected lines of Love delay’d?
Question unwise!--Does not this heart require
Trust in my husband’s tenderness and truth?
What else can slake the slow-consuming fire
My peace that scorches, and that wastes my youth?
Trust in his love my heart demands,--and, Oh!
Another confidence blest power obtains,
Rescuing my senses from severer woe,
Than e’en this cruel banishment ordains;
Reliance that kind Heaven preserves his life,
His health from wasting by Disease’s brands;
That not to their restraints his faithful wife
Owes her late baffled hopes and vacant hands.
If she may judge his feelings by her own,
And grateful Memory urges that she may,
He numbers tear for tear, and groan for groan,
Thro’ the slow progress of the joyless day.
With sweet remembrances my thrilling heart
Full of the Past surrounds itself in vain;
They rise!--they charm!--but soon, alas! impart,
By sad comparison, increase of pain.
No fond deception, nor yet Hope, nor Fear
Arrest the pace of life-exhausting Time!--
He might return!--one word, and he is here!--
Ah! why are bonds for him who knows not crime?
Fierce War ordains them!--Fiend of human kind!--
Fetters and death one murder overtake;
From thee the Guiltless no exemption find,
Thy murder’d millions glut the vulture’s beak!
And from such fate remember, O my soul,
Exile and bonds severe redemption prove;
That thought drops sweetness in the bitter bowl
Quaff’d to the dregs by long-divided love.
Oft to my aid this consciousness I call,
To close the eyes, which still have op’d to weep.--
When Night and Sorrow spread their mingled pall,
That thought distills th’ oblivious balm of sleep.
All things around me seem to expect him here;
My Husband’s favourite robe enfolds me still;
Here have I rang’d the books he lov’d,--and there
Placed the selected chair he us’d to fill.
Again to be resum’d, if yielding Fate,
At length, would give him back to love and me;
Then should I see him there reclin’d sedate,
Our darling children clinging round his knee!
And lo! at yonder table where they stand!--
Their glances o’er the map of England stray;
Ah! on the too, too interesting land
How bends thy ANNISE her intense survey!
And now she smiles, and to her brother turns,
Her finger placed on Lichfield!--there, she says,
There is our dear, dear father!--O! how yearns
My very soul to mark their ardent gaze!
Frequent, this killing absence to beguile,
Anxious I watch, as traits of thee arise,
I see them playing in my ANNISE’ smile,
I meet them in thy FREDERIC’S candid eyes.
Their strengthen’d bloom, their much expanded mind
Shall recompense my beauty’s vanish’d trace;
Yet thou wilt love me more, when thou shalt find
Thy absence written on my faded face.
Dearest, farewell!--tho’ misery now be ours,
Slow time will bring the re-uniting day,
When Thou, and Joy, shall bless these lonely bowers,
By sweet excess o’er-paying long delay!
TO
MISS MANSEL,
OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Pure are the orient tints of early bloom,
That o’er thy cheek, in soft suffusion, play;
Bright are the streaming lustres, which illume
The silent eloquence those eyes convey.
So pure, so bright, as opening life aspires,
Dear ISABELLA, be thy happy youth!
And may thy soul’s hereditary fires
Guide thee indevious to the shrines of Truth,
And set thy pleasures on a scale so high,
That all which frolic Beauty’s hope impels,
Insidious Flattery’s betraying joy,
Intrigue’s light page, and Dissipation’s spells,
Shall meet seduceless the undazzled gaze,
That Nature’s charms and Wisdom’s page explores
Beneath pale moons while classic Camus strays,
And when red Morning blushes on his shores!
So shall thy heart, which mild Affection fills,
Be, when fierce Passion’s fatal fervour glows,
Cold as the summit of Helvetian hills
When the sun strikes their unobeying snows.
Then borne o’er each vain wish and idle care,
By the mind’s soaring and superior powers,
Thy painless sighs shall be as vernal air,
Thy tears as dews exhaling from the flowers.
ADDRESS
TO THE
YOUNG ROSCIUS.[183]
E’en as the sun, beneath the Line, comes forth,
Where no prelusive glimmerings warn the night,
Strips her dense mantle from the sabled earth,
And pours himself at once in floods of light,
So on our eyes, young Day-Star, didst thou break,
In dazzling effluence and resistless charm,
Ere in thy soul those passions could awake
That look’d, and breath’d, and lighten’d from thy form.
We saw them, at thy magic call, appear,
Tho’ but till then to manhood only known;
Yes, ere upon thy head the thirteenth year
The violets of a primy Spring had strown.
In all Expression’s subtlest shades they came
Thro’ that Promethean glance, those varied tones,
Love, Jealousy, and Horror, Rage, and Shame,
Their hopes, their fears, their transports, and their groans.
In thee, and in the scorn of gradual Art,
Genius her proudest miracle began;
Gave thee despotic empire o’er the heart,
Long years ere growth and strength might stamp thee man.
Beneath the crown upon that infant brow,
The robe imperial on that fairy frame,
Stream’d all which grace and grandeur can bestow,
All which a monarch’s dignity proclaim.
Thy Proteus soul each garb of feeling wore,
Fire in thine eye, and passion in thine air;
And still became thee, and in equal power,
Garlands of love, and laurel’d wreaths of war.
Now thrice has Phœbus pass’d each duteous sign
Since first thy talents met our wondering gaze;
Still in augmenting lustre seen them shine,
Still scorning, like himself, all borrow’d rays.
Seen the expansion of thy fair renown,
Thy powers, thy graces rising with thy years.--
So bright thy morn, what splendours wait thy noon!
What trains of light, eclipsing all thy peers!
When Youth and Art’s proud summit thou shalt gain,
Passions that now are but illusive deem’d,
Then shall their empire in thy heart attain,
Then _be_ what long, by miracle, they _seem’d_:
And when they glow in all their genuine fire,
Deeply are felt as gloriously pourtray’d,
O! may they nought in actual life inspire
That can thy virtue, or thy peace invade!
Above pale Envy’s reach, thy soaring fame
Long may accordant multitudes attest!
And prosp’rous Love, and pure Religion frame
The shield impassive for thy youthful breast!
And may advancing life for thee display
The gems of knowledge, and of joy the flowers;
Shine unobscur’d on thy consummate day,
With softest sun-set gild thine evening hours.
On wealth and rank while rolls Oblivion’s stream,
Thy memory o’er its whelming waves shall climb,
For thy dear country shall record thy name,
And bind thy splendant wreaths on the dark brow of Time.
A FAVOURITE CATS DYING SOLILOQUY,
ADDRESSED TO
MRS PATTON OF LICHFIELD.
Long years beheld me PATTON’S mansion grace,
The gentlest, fondest of the feline race;
Before her frisking thro’ the garden glade,
Or at her feet, in quiet slumber, laid;
Prais’d for my glossy back, of tortoise streak,
And the warm smoothness of my snowy neck;
Soft paws, that sheath’d for her the clawing nail,
The shining whisker, and meand’ring tail.
Now feeble age each glazing eye-ball dims,
And pain has stiffen’d these once supple limbs;
Fate of eight lives the forfeit gasp obtains,
And e’en the ninth creeps languid thro’ my veins.
Much, sure, of good the future has in store,
When Lucy basks on PATTON’S hearth no more,
In those blest climes where fishes oft forsake
The winding river and the glassy lake;
There, as our silent-footed race behold
The spots of crimson and the fins of gold,
Venturing beyond the shielding waves to stray,
They gasp on shelving banks, our easy prey;
While birds unwing’d hop careless o’er the ground,
And the plump mouse incessant trots around,
Near wells of cream, which mortals never skim,
Warm marum creeping round their shallow brim;[184]
Where green valerian tufts, luxuriant spread,
Cleanse the sleek hide, and form the fragrant bed.
Yet, stern dispenser of the final blow,
Before thou lay’st an aged Grimalkin low,
Bend to her last request a gracious ear,
Some days, some few short days to linger here!
So, to the guardian of her earthly weal
Shall softest purs these tender truths reveal:
Ne’er shall thy now expiring Puss forget
To thy kind cares her long-enduring debt;
Nor shall the joys that painless realms decree,
Efface the comforts once bestow’d by thee;
To countless mice thy chicken bones preferr’d,
Thy toast to golden fish and wingless bird:
O’er marum border and valerian bed
Thy Lucy shall decline her moping head;
Sigh that she climbs no more, with grateful glee,
Thy downy sofa and thy cradling knee;
Nay, e’en by wells of cream shall sullen swear,
Since PATTON, her lov’d mistress, is not there.
TO
LITTLE CATHERINE HARPER,
AGED THREE YEARS,
PRESENTING HER WITH A BLUE SATTIN BONNET.