Works

Handsome you are, and proper you will be
Despite of all your infortunity:
Live long and lovely, but yet grow no less
In that your own prefixed comeliness:
Spend on that stock: and when your life must fall,...

When I through all my many poems look,
And see yourself to beautify my book,
Methinks that only lustre doth appear
A light fulfilling all the region here.
Gild still with flames this firmament, and be...

Let there be patrons, patrons like to thee,
Brave Porter! poets ne'er will wanting be:
Fabius and Cotta, Lentulus, all live
In thee, thou man of men! who here do'st give
Not only subject-matter for our wit,...

Though joy attend Thee orient at the birth
Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most
To watch thy course when Day-light, fled from earth,
In the grey sky hath left his lingering Ghost,...

God bless ye, brothers! in the fight
Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail,
For better is your sense of right
Than king-craft's triple mail.
Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban,...

When, Reverend Sir, your good design,
To clothe our Pilgrim gravely fine,
And give him gentler mien and gait,
First reached my ear, his doubtful fate
With dread suspense my mind oppressed,...

If I dare write to you, my lord, who are
Of your own self a public theatre,
And, sitting, see the wiles, ways, walks of wit,
And give a righteous judgment upon it,...

I

The wise and great of every clime,
Through all the spacious walks of Time,
Where'er the Muse her power display'd,
With joy have listen'd and obey'd.
For taught of heaven, the sacred Nine...

You are a lord, an earl, nay more, a man
Who writes sweet numbers well as any can;
If so, why then are not these verses hurled,
Like Sybil's leaves, throughout the ample world?...

How dull and dead are books that cannot show
A prince of Pembroke, and that Pembroke you!
You who are high born, and a lord no less
Free by your fate than fortune's mightiness,...

Not in their houses stand the stars,
But o'er the pinnacles of thine!

(On its Centenary)

My dear Stock Exchange, -
I am given to understand
That to-day you are a hundred years old,
And that to-day therefore
You will celebrate...

And hast Thou help for such as me,
Sin-weary, stained, forlorn?
"Yea then,--if not for such as thee
To what end was I born?"

But I have strayed so far away,
So oft forgotten Thee....

Believe me, Edwards, to restrain
The license of a railer's tongue
Is what but seldom men obtain
By sense or wit, by prose or song:
A task for more Herculean powers,
Nor suited to the sacred hours...

FROM THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.


'Tis evening now; beneath the western star
Soft sighs the lover through his sweet cigar,
And fills the ears of some consenting she...

Here's a health to thee, Bard of Erin!
To the goblet's brim we will fill;
For all that to life is endearing,
Thy strains have made dearer still!

Wherever fond woman's eyes eclipse...

This morning in my attic high
The Demon came to visit me,
And seeking faults in my reply,
He said: "I would inquire of thee,

"Of all the beauties which compose
Her charming body's potent spell,...

Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a King in Babylon
And you were a Christian Slave.

I saw, I took, I cast you by,
I bent and broke your pride....

Hastings! I knew thee young, and of a mind,
While young, humane, conversable, and kind,
Nor can I well believe thee, gentle then,
Now grown a villain, and the worst of men....

The pages of thy book I read,
And as I closed each one,
My heart, responding, ever said,
"Servant of God! well done!"

Well done! Thy words are great and bold;
At times they seem to me,...