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Now gentle sleep hath clos'd up those eyes,
Which waking kept my boldest thoughts in awe,
And free access unto that sweet lip lies
From whence I long the rosy breath to draw....

Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze
Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore;
Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar
Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;...

O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped!
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead!...

Sweet wreck of loveliness! alas, how soon
The sad brief summer of thy joys hath fled:
How sorrows Friendship for thy hapless doom,
Thy beauty faded, and thy hopes all dead....

Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even
Silently takest thine aethereal way,
And with surpassing glory dimm'st each ray
Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven, -...

Brother belov'd if health shall smile again,
Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek:
If e'er returning vigour bid these weak
And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,...

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,...

I saw pale Dian, sitting by the brink
Of silver falls, the overflow of fountains
From cloudy steeps; and I grew sad to think
Endymion's foot was silent on those mountains....

Good Kosciusko, thy great name alone
Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;
It comes upon us like the glorious pealing
Of the wide spheres, an everlasting tone....

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,...

Though his words might well deceive me,
Though to earth abased I bend,
Christian guide, thou wilt not leave me,
Thus on earth without a friend!

I thought his vows were oaths in heaven,...

He dropt a tear on Susan's bier,
He seem'd a most despairing swain;
But bluer sky brought newer tie,
And, would he wish her back again?

The moments fly, and when we die,...

AN OLD SWEETHEART.



As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design,...

O Jean, my Jean, when the bell ca's the congregation
Owre valley an' hill wi' the ding frae its iron mou',
When a'body's thochts is set on his ain salvation,
Mine's set on you.
...

That kind heart you were jealous of, my nurse
Who sleeps her sleep beneath the humble turf,
I'd like to give her flowers, wouldn't you?
The dead, the poor dead, have their sorrows too,...

An angel stood beside the bed
Where lay the living and the dead.

He gave the mother, her who died,
A kiss that Christ the Crucified

Had sent to greet the weary soul...

The Text is from Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia (1609), reprinted almost verbatim in Tom Durfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy.

...

When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,...

Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told.
His mercy fills the Khyber hills, his grace is manifold;
He has taken toll of the North and the South, his glory reacheth far,...

Draw back my curtains, Mary,
An' oppen t' windey wide;
Ay, ay, I know I'm deein',
While to-morn I'll hardlins bide.
But yit afore all's ovver,
An' I lig cowd as snow,...