My thoughts are of a solitary place,
Where twilight dwells, where sunbeams rarely fall;
And there a wild-rose hangs in pensive grace,
Reflected in a fountain clear and small;
Above them rise dark shadowy trees and tall,
Whilst round them grow rank night-shades in the gloom,
Which seem with noxious influence to pall
The fountain’s light, and taint the flower’s perfume;
As fainly they would mar what they might not out-bloom.
These, mind me, Millhouse! of thy spirit’s light,
That twilight makes in life so dark as thine!
And though I do not fear the rose may blight,
Or that the fountain’s flow may soon decline;
Hope, is there none, the boughs which frown malign,
High over-head, should let in heaven’s sweet face;
Yet shall not these their life unknown resign,
For nature’s votaries, wandering in each place,
Shall find their secret shade, and marvel at their grace.
It appears from a small volume, published in 1823, entitled
“Blossoms--by Robert Millhouse--being a Selection of Sonnets from his
various Manuscripts,” that the Rev. Luke Booker, LL. D. vicar of Dudley,
deemed its author “a man whose genius and character seemed to merit the
patronage of his country, while his pressing wants, in an equal degree,
claimed its compassion.” The doctor “presumed to advocate his case and
his cause” before the “Literary Fund,” and a donation honourable to the
society afforded the poet temporary relief. This, says Millhouse, was
“at a time when darkness surrounded me on every side.” In a letter to
Dr. Booker, lamenting the failure of a subscription to indemnify him for
publishing his poems, when sickness had reduced a wife and infant child
to the borders of the grave, he says, “I am now labouring under
indisposition both of body and mind; which, with the united evils of
poverty and a bad trade, have brought on me a species of melancholy
that requires the utmost exertions of my philosophy to encounter.” About
this period he wrote the following:--