TO T. HOOD, ESQ. WRITTEN AFTER READING HIS “PLEA OF THE MIDSUMMER
FAIRIES.”
Delightful bard! what praises meet are thine,
More than my verse can sound to thee belong;
Well hast thou pleaded, with a tongue divine,
In this thy sweet and newly breathed song,
Where, like the stream, smooth numbers gliding throng;
Gather’d, methinks I see the elfin race,
With the _Immortal_ standing them among,
Smiling benign with more than courtly grace;
Rescued I see them,--all their gambols trace,
With their fair queen Titania in her bower,
And all their avocations small embrace,
Pictur’d by thee with a Shakspearean power--
O when the time shall come thy soul must flee,
_Then_ may some hidden spirit _plead_ for thee.