Works

Let us now take time and play,
Love, and live here while we may;
Drink rich wine, and make good cheer,
While we have our being here;
For once dead and laid i' th' grave,
No return from thence we have.

Impassioned singer of the happy time.
When all the world was waking into morn,
And dew still glistened on the tangled thorn,
And lingered on the branches of the lime,
Oh peerless singer of the golden rhyme,...

Your lines that linger for us down the years,
Like sparks that tell the glory of a flame,
Still keep alight the splendor of your name,
And living still, they sting us into tears....

I.

One happy year has fled, Sall,
Since you were all my own,
The leaves have felt the autumn blight,
The wintry storm has blown.
We heeded not the cold blast,
Nor the winter's icy air;...

Written at the Cottage of T. LEWIS, Esq. Woodbury Downs.


In the retirement of this lovely spot,
Sacred to friendship, industry, and worth,
To boundless hospitality and mirth,...

Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
In the dawning and the dew.
O'erblown with sunny shadows,
O'ersped with winds at play,...

I can see the back-log blazing and the sparkles take their flight
Up the cavernous old chimney on a merry Christmas night;
I can see the old folks smiling and the children's cheeks aglow,...

(See Note 32)

With friends you stalwart stand and fair,
To-day of fifty years the heir;
The past your works rejoicing praise,
But forward goes your gaze.
Your childlike faith, your spirit true,...

To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
Among strang'rs. Father and mother dear,
Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
And he my peace my parting, sword and strife....

In Sensibility's lov'd praise
I tune my trembling reed;
And seek to deck her shrine with bays,
On which my heart must bleed!

No cold exemption from her pain
I ever wish'd to know;...

Excuse is needless when with love sincere
Of occupation, not by fashion led,
Thou turn'st the Wheel that slept with dust o'erspread;
'My' nerves from no such murmur shrink, tho' near,...

Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
Thou, who display'dst a life of common-place,
Leaving no intimate word or personal trace
Of high design outside the artistry
Of thy penned dreams,...

Your head, your gesture, your air,
are lovely, like a lovely landscape:
laughter's alive, in your face,
a fresh breeze in a clear atmosphere.

The dour passer-by you brush past there,...

There has been many a grander deed since man had life to give,
And thousands have gone to certain death, eyes open, that men might live;...

Pardon my trespass, Silvia! I confess
My kiss out-went the bounds of shamefacedness:
None is discreet at all times; no, not Jove
Himself, at one time, can be wise and love.

No more, my Silvia, do I mean to pray
For those good days that ne'er will come away.
I want belief; O gentle Silvia, be
The patient saint, and send up vows for me.

Let us, though late, at last, my Silvia, wed;
And loving lie in one devoted bed.
Thy watch may stand, my minutes fly post haste;
No sound calls back the year that once is past....

O sweet sincerity! -
Where modern methods be
What scope for thine and thee?

Life may be sad past saying,
Its greens for ever graying,
Its faiths to dust decaying;
...

Since to the country first I came,
I have lost my former flame;
And, methinks, I not inherit,
As I did, my ravish'd spirit.
If I write a verse or two,
'Tis with very much ado;...

Behold; the Balance in the sky
Swift on the wintry scale inclines:
To earthy caves the Dryads fly,
And the bare pastures Pan resigns.
Late did the farmer's fork o'erspread...