Hear thy sweet accents charm the winter eve,
And through the hours of slumber’s stealing sway
Thy balmy breathings on my cheek perceive!
What full reward for every woe, that shed
Gloom on th’ impassion’d years, irrevocably fled! (j.)
EVANDER to EMILLIA.
’Tis o’er!--the bright star like a meteor fire,
An instant shone, then vanish’d from our sight!
Fierce, in unbaffled rule, paternal ire
Quenches its beams in everlasting night.
With guardian care a dying mother strove
To shield from penury resistless love;
But that kind care a father’s proud disdain
Meets with derision’s smile, and sternly proves it vain.
O! pitiless of spirit!--but away,
Ye weak complaints, ye unavailing groans!
Now, stung by Disappointment’s madd’ning sway,
Scruples, and fears, my desperate love disowns.
Oft did they wound thee;--I abjure their crimes!
Extinct all hope of more propitious times,
Long years of wasted youth elapsed I see,
And former terrors curse--e’en tho’ they throbb’d for thee.
Her hovering ghost, whose violated boon
Sought from the scourge of power our loves to save,
Shall see us meet,--now,--in this night’s pale noon,
And lock our hands across her sacred grave.
There thy decisive vows my soul shall claim;
By the last silence of her mouldering frame,
By Death’s dark shrines and unresisted power,
That only his dread stroke shall e’er divide us more.
Still can EMILLIA’s heart, like mine, desire?
Then Fate in vain may spread her direst loom;
Nor yet, if Persecution light her pyre,
Shall its fierce flames our destin’d joys consume.
A robe of pure asbestos we can wear,
And while the raging fires around us glare,
With arms entwined our solemn steps shall move,
Safe in the shielding garb, supplied by faithful love.
All that affrights the prosperous and the vain,
Reproach, with taunting lip, and scornful brow,
And shuddering penury, and fever’d pain,
To blast the powers of life, the spirit bow;
The bed of death, the dim funereal gloom,
A timeless pall, an unlamented doom,
Clasp’d in each other’s arms, be firmly scorn’d,
Nor ought of wealth and pride, for love renounced, be mourn’d!
Then shall I gaze on my EMILLIA’s form
Through the long summer’s day and winter’s night;
Her smile my sun, her frown my only storm,
Her health and love, my sources of delight;
Her grave, my quiet bed of lasting rest,
Where power, and hate, no longer shall molest,
Reproach and penury no more dismay,
While undivided sleeps our earthly-hapless clay.
HONORA,
AN ELEGY.[16]
HONORA’s fled, I seek her favourite scene
With hasty step, as I should meet her there;
The hasty step and the disorder’d mien
Fond expectation’s anxious semblance wear.
This bowery terrace, where she frequent stray’d,
And frequent cull’d for me the floral wreath,
That tower, that lake,--yon willow’s ample shade[17],
All, all the vale her spirit seems to breathe.
I seize the loved resemblance it displays,
With mixture strange of anguish and delight;
I bend on vacancy an earnest gaze,
Where strong illusion cheats my straining sight.
But ah, it fades!--and no relief I find,
Save that which silence, memory, hope confer;
Too soon the local semblance leaves my mind,
E’en where each object seem’d so full of her.
And Memory, only Memory, can impart
The dear enduring image to my view;
Has she not drawn thee, loveliest, on my heart
In faithful tints, and permanent as true?
Transcending all associate forms disclose
Of evanescent likeness; or each grace
The breathing pencil’s happiest effort throws
O’er the bright lines that imitate thy face.
As much too fix’d as theirs too fleeting found,
The pencil but one look, one gesture brings;
But varying charms, each accent’s thrilling sound
From Recollection’s juster portrait springs.
Be then th’ embosom’d image only sought,
Since perfect only can its magic prove!
O! rise with all HONORA’s sweetness fraught,
Vivid, and perfect, as her ANNA’s love.
Shew me how fair she seems, when on the gale
Her waving locks, in soft luxuriance, play;
As lightly bounding down the dewy vale,
She pours her rival beauties on the day!
How fair, e’en when displeasure’s darkening frown,
And scorn itself are lovely on her brow;
Like summer shades, that sweep the vale adown,
Pass o’er the flowers, and heighten all their glow;
Yet fairer, when her brightening spirit spreads,
In blest vicissitude, the cheering ray,
As Sensibility, quick veering, sheds
Its clouds and sun-shine o’er her April-day.
But fairest when her vermeil lips disclose,
In many a magic smile and melting tone,
The varied accent through the pearly rows,
That proves the mental graces all her own.
THE ANNIVERSARY.
WRITTEN JUNE 1769.
Ah, lovely Lichfield! that so long hast shone
In blended charms, peculiarly thine own;
Stately, yet rural; through thy choral day,
Though shady, cheerful, and though quiet, gay;
How interesting, how loved, from year to year,
How more than beauteous did thy scenes appear!
Still, as the mild Spring chased the wintry gloom,
Devolved her leaves, and waked her rich perfume,
Thou, with thy fields and groves around thee spread,
Lift’st, in unlessen’d grace, thy spiry head;
But many a loved inhabitant of thine
Sleeps where no vernal sun will ever shine.
Why fled ye all so fast, ye happy hours,
That saw HONORA’s eyes adorn these bowers?
These darling bowers, that much she loved to hail,
The spires, she call’d “the Ladies of the Vale!”
Fairest, and best!--Oh! can I e’er forget
To thy dear kindness my eternal debt?
Life’s opening paths how tenderly it smooth’d,
The joys it heighten’d, and the pains it sooth’d?
No, no! my heart its sacred memory bears,
Bright ’mid the shadows of o’erwhelming years;
When mists of deprivation round me roll,
’Tis the soft sun-beam of my clouded soul.
Ah, dear HONORA! that remember’d day,
First on these eyes when shone thy early ray!
Scarce o’er my head twice seven gay springs had gone,
Scarce five o’er thy unconscious childhood flown,
When, fair as their young flowers, thy infant frame
To our glad walls an happy inmate came.
O! summer morning, of unrivall’d light,
Fate wrapt thy rising in prophetic white!
June, the bright month, when Nature joys to wear
The livery of the gay, consummate year,
Gave that envermeil’d day-spring all her powers,
Gemm’d the light leaves, and glow’d upon the flowers;
Bade her plumed nations hail the rosy ray
With warbled orisons from every spray.
Purpureal Tempe, not to thee belong
More poignant fragrance, or more jocund song.
Thrice happy day! thy clear auspicious light
Gave “future years a tincture of thy white;”
Well may her strains thy votive hymn decree,
Whose sweetest pleasures found their source in thee;
The purest, best that memory explores,
Safe in the past’s inviolable stores.--
The ardent progress of thy shining hours
Beheld me rove through Lichfield’s verdant bowers,
Thoughtless and gay, and volatile and vain,
Circled by nymphs, and youths, a frolic train;
Though conscious that a little orphan child
Had to my parents’ guidance, kind and mild,
Recent been summon’d, when disease and death
Shed dark stagnation o’er her mother’s breath.
While eight sweet infants’ wailful cries deplore
What not the tears of innocence restore;
And while the husband mourn’d his widow’d doom,
And hung despondent o’er the closing tomb,
To us this loveliest scion he consign’d,
Its beauty blossoming, its opening mind.
His heart-felt loss had drawn my April tears,
But childish, womanish, ambiguous years
Find all their griefs as vanishing as keen,
Youth’s rising sun soon gilds the showery scene.
On the expected trust no thought I bent,
Unknown the day, unheeded the event.
One sister dear, from spleen, from falsehood free,
Rose to the verge of womanhood with me;
Gloom’d by no envy, by no discord jarr’d,
Our pleasures blended, and our studies shared;
And when with day and waking thoughts they closed,
On the same couch our agile limbs reposed.
Amply in friendship by her virtues blest,
I gave to youthful gaiety the rest;
Considering not how near the period drew
When that transplanted branch should meet our view,
Whose intellectual fruits were doom’d to rise,
Food of the future’s heart-expanding joys;
Born to console me when, by Fate severe,
The Much Beloved[18] should press a timeless bier,
My friend, my sister, from my arms be torn,
Sickning and sinking on her bridal morn;
While Hymen, speeding from this mournful dome,
Should drop his darken’d torch upon her tomb.
’Twas eve;--the sun, in setting glory dress’d,
Spread his gold skirts along the crimson west;
A Sunday’s eve!--HONORA, bringing thee,
Friendship’s soft Sabbath long it rose to me,
When on the wing of circling seasons borne,
Annual I hail’d its consecrated morn.
In the kind interchange of mutual thought,
Our home myself and gentle sister sought;
Our pleasant home[19], round which th’ ascending gale
Breathes all the freshness of the sloping vale;
On her green verge the spacious walls arise,
View her fair fields, and catch her balmy sighs;
See her near hills the bounded prospect close,
And her blue lake in glassy breadth repose.
With arms entwined, and smiling as we talk’d,
To the maternal room we careless walk’d,
Where sat its honour’d mistress, and with smile
Of love indulgent, from a floral pile
The gayest glory of the summer bower
Cull’d for the new-arrived,--the human flower,
A lovely infant-girl, who pensive stood
Close to her knees, and charm’d us as we view’d.
O! hast thou mark’d the Summer’s budded rose,
When ’mid the veiling moss its crimson glows?
So bloom’d the beauty of that fairy-form,
So her dark locks, with golden tinges warm,
Play’d round the timid curve of that white neck,
And sweetly shaded half her blushing cheek.
O! hast thou seen the star of eve on high,
Through the soft dusk of Summer’s balmy sky,
Shed its green light, and in the glassy stream
Eye the mild reflex of its trembling beam?
So look’d on us, with tender, bashful gaze,
The destined charmer of our youthful days;
Whose soul its native elevation join’d
To the gay wildness of the infant mind,
Esteem and sacred confidence impress’d
While our fond arms the beauteous child caress’d.
Dear Sensibility! how soon thy glow
Dyed that fair cheek, and gleam’d from that young brow!
How early, Generosity, you taught
The warm disdain of every groveling thought,
Round sweet HONORA, e’en in infant youth,
Shed the majestic light of spotless truth;
Bid her for others’ sorrow pour the tear,
For others’ safety feel th’ instinctive fear;
But for herself, scorning the impulse weak,
Meet every danger with unaltering cheek;
And through the generally unmeaning years
Of heedless childhood, to thy guardian cares,
Angelic Friendship, her young moments give,
And heedless of herself for others live.
ODE TO CONTENT.
Mild as the star-beam on the silent wave,
Soft as the tints of yon etherial bow,
That bends its bright arch o’er the dark concave,
And bids the storm its destined limit know,
Do thou, Content, with equal step sedate,
Rise o’er the mind’s dim clouds, and break the storms of Fate!
O! welcome as the spirit of the morn,
Whose diamond eyes prelude a golden day,
Choir’d by the linnets from the blossom’d thorn,
The green hill yellowing in her dewy ray,
As o’er its timid bosom soft she glides,
Silvering the winding rill, that warbles down its sides!
While, with a loosen’d zone, gay Pleasure strays,
Crowning with rosy wreaths the frolic hours,
While busy Fame collects immortal bays,
And Hope reclines in amaranthine bowers,
Round thee, Content, health-breathing sweets exhale,
As crops thy gentle hand yon lilies of the vale.
On fair HONORA may thy influence shine
For her thy cheek with purest blushes glow!
More does she prize one halcyon plume of thine
Than all that decks Ambition’s jewel’d brow.
Near her may thy light steps perpetual rove
With the associate forms of Fancy, Truth, and Love!
EPISTLE
TO
MISS HONORA SNEYD.--WRITTEN, SEPT. 1770.[20]
Alone, beneath these bowers, last night I stray’d,
The spires high peering o’er their green arcade;
There see thy friend delusion’s power employ
To bid one faithless moment gleam with joy;
For this thy name pervades the twilight gloom,
Borne by soft echoes round the sacred dome.
I call’d HONORA in that cheerful tone,
Which oft pursued, when for an instant flown,
And always brought thee back, with lively air,
The rising thought, or sprightly song to share.
Ah! dearest, mark thou, with a pitying smile,
The flattering, soothing, self-deceiving guile!
Back on the half-closed door I turn’d mine eye,
And taught my heart to fancy thou wert nigh;
That, as thou’rt wont, at Love’s alarm’d request,
Thou hadst return’d to seek a warmer vest,
To shield thee from the dangers evening brings,
Chill gales, and night-dews on her humid wings;
That I should see thee glide the steps adown
Fleet in the haste, with which thou still wert prone
Again to seek the friend, who never yet
Thy wish’d return with heart ungladden’d met.
Yet, why, thou urgest, by deception gain
A mimic joy, that must increase the pain
When Disappointment brings her sick chagrin
To lone Privation’s melancholy scene?
But O! each varied species Sorrow knows
Endured for thee, HONORA, welcome grows
More than or festal wit, or syren air,
Which thou, my life’s adorner, dost not share.
Calm were the gales, the Moon, serenely bright,
Shed her white efflux thro’ the noon of night,
And the long shadows of the spires were drawn
Distinct, with all their turrets, on the lawn.
Raised to their summit, my enthusiast eyes
Hail’d those loved witnesses of all my joys;
Of each expanding charm that crown’d thy youth,
Beauty and wit, and elegance and truth;
Warm hopes and smiles gilding the happy years,
Dimm’d but by transient Sorrow’s April-tears.
O! how those pleasures deck’d the rising days,
Winter’s pale dawn, and Summer’s kindling rays!
Shall e’er again, I cried, in thrilling strains,
Such orient mornings tinge yon golden vanes?
Fatigued, at length, on those proud heights to dwell,
On the moist, silver’d ground my glances fell;
But still each thought with fair HONORA staid,
Who late, enervate, from her Lichfield stray’d;
Seeking, where Bristol’s tepid fountains rise,
The health that fled beneath our colder skies.
Then thus again, in half-formed accents, stole
Th’ impassion’d dictates of her ANNA’s soul.
Ah! sure she must, at those soft springs, regain
The strength that wasted on her favourite plain!
Their lenient power the fever’s course shall break,
That dyed with hectic flash her lovely cheek;
Parch’d that moist lip, and from its vermeil hue
Exhaled energic Health’s ambrosial dew;
And, banishing the Wood-Nymph’s airy grace,
Sunk the light step in Languor’s stealing pace;
Bade the warm sense of Pleasure fade and cloy,
And veil’d the facile smile of Youth and Joy.
Yet that she will return, my soul divines,
Bright o’er its fears that dear dependence shines;
Return, with frame unclouded by disease,
With sense of pleasure, and the wish to please.
Thus, to the downcast eye of musing thought,
Fondness and Hope their glowing visions brought;
Charm’d to anticipate, with cheering powers,
The sweet revival of those happy hours,
When, brief or long, the ever-gladden’d day
Left on our pillows, as it stole away,
Not one regret, save for its rapid flight,
And not a fear, but lest some cruel blight,
From injured health, or accidental harm,
Deny the successor its power to charm,
And shroud that ardent Spirit which explores
Science’ bright fanes, and Fancy’s fairy bowers.
So, while the past and future were combined
In the light chains, by Hope and Memory twined,
Up to those conscious spires I look’d once more,
Whispering my heart that Heaven would soon restore
HONORA to her loved domestic scene,
With Health’s clear spirit glowing thro’ her mien.
Surprised, I saw their spiral summits hazed,
Dim, and more dim, receding as I gazed;
And scarce a minute passed, ere in a cloud
The mist convolving, form’d a total shroud.
Damp on my heart the dark’ning omen fell,
And rising tears within my eye-lids swell.
So late this moon-deck’d night, high o’er the fanes,
When not a breeze crept on the neighbouring plains,
Sat tracing their fair forms in state serene,
With shadowy pencil, on the silver’d green.
And now,--but let me not my peace resign,
Grim Superstition, at thy sable shrine!
Demon of Night, and baseless terror fly,
Nor charge with omens the capricious sky!
Vows not Honora that the vital flame
Relumes its course thro’ her late languid frame?
Yes,--the light form, the fair expressive face,
Assume their pristine bloom, their nameless grace.
Soon shall my soul that fervid spirit find
Darting each varied effluence of mind;
And since in those dear veins the purple tide
Begins once more in even streams to glide,
My gladden’d eye, in Hope’s perspective cast,
Sees future days enchanting as the past;
As blest a consciousness the sun illume,
And gild the dimness of the wintry gloom;
Shed wonted lustre o’er the Spring’s soft hours,
And deck in brighter glow her rising flowers;
While sweeter still the woodland pours its strains,
And morns as roseate tinge yon golden vanes.
ELEGY
WRITTEN AT THE SEA-SIDE,
AND ADDRESSED TO
MISS HONORA SNEYD.
I write, HONORA, on the sparkling sand!--
The envious waves forbid the trace to stay:
HONORA’s name again adorns the strand!
Again the waters bear their prize away!
So Nature wrote her charms upon thy face,
The cheek’s light bloom, the lip’s envermeil’d dye,
And every gay, and every witching grace,
That Youth’s warm hours, and Beauty’s stores supply.
But Time’s stern tide, with cold Oblivion’s wave,
Shall soon dissolve each fair, each fading charm;
E’en Nature’s self, so powerful, cannot save
Her own rich gifts from this o’erwhelming harm.
Love and the Muse can boast superior power,
Indelible the letters they shall frame;
They yield to no inevitable hour,
But will on lasting tablets write thy name.
EPISTLE
TO
MISS HONORA SNEYD, MAY 1772.
WRITTEN IN A SUMMER EVENING, FROM THE GRAVE OF A SUICIDE.[21]
It suits the temper of my soul to pour
Fond, fruitless plaints beneath the lonely bower,
Here, in this silent glade, that childhood fears,
Where the love-desperate maid, of vanish’d years,
Slung her dire cord between the sister trees,
That slowly bend their branches to the breeze,
And shade the bank that screens her mouldering form,
From the swart Dog-Star, and the wintry storm.
Ah! dear Honora, summer sheds again
Music, and fragrance, light, and bloom, in vain,
While my sick heart thy smiles no longer cheer,
Nor melt thine accents on my listening ear.
An hour has finish’d its appointed date,
Since on this lone recorded turf I sate.--
How quiet is the green seclusion found!
How deep the solitude that broods around!
No labouring hinds on yonder meads appear,
No human voice, no distant step, I hear;
Yet the sweet linnets warble on the bough,
And tender ringdoves languishingly coo;
The nearly-meeting trees, with plenteous spray,
Arch o’er the darkling lane that winds away
Far to the right.--In front, the silent fields
Now shadows sweep, now evening radiance gilds;
While, to the left, soft sun-beams, as they wane,
Yellow the green paths of the lonely lane;
Where lavish hedgerows boast the wilding’s bloom,
Where briar-roses shed their rich perfume;
And gadding woodbines, as their branches wave,
Waft all their fragrance to the hapless grave.
Ah! much I grieve that summer hours consume,
Unshared by thee, the rival of their bloom;
Hours that soft joys should thro’ the heart infuse,
And steep the eye-lids in their balmy dews.
To thee, Honora, sister of my soul,
To thee be all their blessings as they roll!
And yet, at times, let kind regret be thine,
Steal o’er thy charms, and shade them as they shine,
For that thy Anna, from her friend away,
Sighs ’mid the glories of the summer day!
Thou say’st, ---- To me, now destined to remain
In the joy-hallow’d groves, and conscious plain,
Less irksome must our grieved disunion prove,
Than rise to thee the pains of absent love,
Torn as thou art, in all thy tender truth,
From the dear haunts of our long happy youth;
But sure, of parted friends, her lot we find
Pressing the heaviest on the mournful mind,
Who lingers where each object seems array’d
In the fair semblance of the absent maid;
Where bowers and lawns her stamp and image bear,
At once, alas! so distant, and so near!
And, to the aching heart, and tearful eye,
Stand the mute spectres of departed joy.
TIME PAST.
WRITTEN JAN. 1773.
Return, blest years! when not the jocund Spring,
Luxuriant Summer, nor the amber hours
Calm Autumn gives, my heart invoked, to bring
Joys, whose rich balm o’er all the bosom pours;
When ne’er I wish’d might grace the closing day,
One tint purpureal, or one golden ray;
When the loud storms, that desolate the bowers,
Found dearer welcome than Favonian gales,
And Winter’s bare, bleak fields than Summer’s flowery vales.
Yet not to deck pale hours with vain parade,
Beneath the blaze of wide-illumined dome;
Not for the bounding dance;--not to pervade
And charm the sense with music;--nor, as roam
The mimic passions o’er theatric scene,
To laugh, or weep;--O! not for these, I ween,
But for delights, that made the heart their home,
Was the grey night-frost on the sounding plain
More than the sun invoked, that gilds the grassy lane.
Yes, for the joys that trivial joys excel,
My loved HONORA, did we hail the gloom
Of dim November’s eve;--and, as it fell,
And the bright fire shone cheerful round the room,
Dropt the warm curtains with no tardy hand;
And felt our spirits and our hearts expand;
List’ning their steps, who still, where’er they come,
Make the keen stars, that glaze the settled snows,
More than the sun invoked when first he tints the rose.
Affection,--Friendship,--Sympathy,--your throne
Is winter’s glowing hearth;--and ye were ours,
Thy smile, HONORA, made them all our own.
Where are they now?--alas! their choicest powers
Faded at thy retreat;--for thou art gone,
And many a dark, long eve I sigh alone,
In thrill’d remembrance of the vanish’d hours,
When storms were dearer than the balmy gales,
And the grey barren fields than green luxuriant vales.
LICHFIELD,
AN ELEGY.
WRITTEN MAY 1781.
Distinguish’d city![22]--round thy lofty spires
Bellona’s spears, and Phœbus’ golden lyres,
Threw gleams of glory, whose unfading flame,
Amidst thy country’s annals, gilds thy name.
Has Beauty made thee its peculiar care,
Bade thee arise pre-eminently fair?
Or do remember’d days, that swiftly flew,
When life and all her blooming joys were new,
To my thrill’d spirit emulously bring
Illusions brighter than the shining Spring?
Yet, independent of their glowing spell,
Around thy spires exclusive graces dwell;
For there alone the blended charms prevail
Of city stateliness, and rural dale.
High o’er proud towns where Gothic structures rise,
How rare the freshness of unsullied skies!
Oft cling to choral walls the mansions vile,
Unseemly blots upon the graceful pile!
Here not one squalid, mouldering cell appears,
To mar the splendid toil of ancient years;
But, from the basis to the stately height,
One free and perfect whole it meets the sight,
Adorn’d, yet simple, though majestic, light;
While, as around that waving basis drawn,
Shines the green surface of the level lawn,
Full on its breast the spiral shadows tall,
Unbroken, and in solemn beauty, fall.