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Is the song of Rosa mute?
Once such lays inspired her lute!
Never doth a sweeter song
Steal the breezy lyre along,
When the wind, in odors dying,
Woos it with enamor'd sighing.
...

The wisest soul, by anguish torn,
Will soon unlearn the lore it knew;
And when the shrining casket's worn,
The gem within will tarnish too.

But love's an essence of the soul,...

Rose, when I remember you,
Little lady, scarcely two,
I am suddenly aware
Of the angels in the air.
All your softly gracious ways
Make an island in my days
Where my thoughts fly back to be...

My wooing's ended: now my wedding's near
When gloves are giving, gilded be you there.

Roses, you can never die,
Since the place wherein ye lie,
Heat and moisture mix'd are so
As to make ye ever grow.

Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey
When at the sacred font for thee I stood;
Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay:...

I.

All hail! inexorable lord!
At whose destruction-breathing word,
The mightiest empires fall!
Thy cruel, woe-delighted train,
The ministers of grief and pain,
A sullen welcome, all!...

Who tamed your lawless Tartar blood?
What David bearded in her den
The Russian bear in ages when
You strode your black, unbridled stud,
A skin-clad savage of your steppes?...

Dear President, whose art sublime
Gives perpetuity to time,
And bids transactions of a day,
That fleeting hours would waft away
To dark futurity, survive,
And in unfading beauty live,'...

(ON HIS TRANSLATION OF "THE ARABIAN NIGHTS")


Westward the sun sinks, grave and glad; but far
Eastward, with laughter and tempestuous tears,
Cloud, rain, and splendour as of orient spears,...

How blest art thou, canst love the countrey, Wroth,
Whether by choyce, or fate, or both!
And, though so neere the Citie, and the Court,
Art tane with neithers vice, nor sport:...

When factious rage to cruel exile drove
The queen of beauty,[1] and the court of love,
The Muses droop'd, with their forsaken arts,
And the sad Cupids broke their useless darts:...

Whether the fruitful Nile, or Tyrian shore,
The seeds of arts and infant science bore,
'Tis sure the noble plant, translated first,
Advanced its head in Grecian gardens nursed....

See and not see, and if thou chance t'espy
Some aberrations in my poetry,
Wink at small faults; the greater, ne'ertheless,
Hide, and with them their father's nakedness....

FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE.


nec venit ad duros musa vocata Getas.
OVID. ex Ponto, lib. 1. ep. 5.


Thou oft hast told me of the happy hours
Enjoyed by thee in fair Italia's bowers,...

'Tis sweet to recollect life's past controls,
And turn to days of sorrow when they're bye,
And think of gentle friends and feeling souls
That offered shelter when the storm was high,--...

No one talks more than a Poet;
Fain he'd have the people know it.

Praise or blame he ever loves;
None in prose confess an error,
Yet we do so, void of terror,

In the Muses' silent groves....

FROM THE BANKS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.


Not many months have now been dreamed away
Since yonder sun, beneath whose evening ray
Our boat glides swiftly past these wooded shores,...

Calvert! it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.
This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem...

LATE OF IPSWICH, AND ONE OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.


From thy sad sire and weeping kindred torn,
Thine is the crown of everlasting life;
On thy closed eye has burst a brighter morn,...