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Ye maggots, feast on Nicol's brain,
For few sic feasts ye've gotten;
And fix your claws in Nicol's heart,
For deil a bit o't's rotten.

Weep not, beloved Friends! nor let the air
For me with sighs be troubled. Not from life
Have I been taken; this is genuine life
And this alone, the life which now I live...

Perhaps some needful service of the State
Drew TITUS from the depth of studious bowers,
And doomed him to contend in faithless courts,
Where gold determines between right and wrong....

There never breathed a man who, when his life
Was closing, might not of that life relate
Toils long and hard. The warrior will report
Of wounds, and bright swords flashing in the field,...

Not without heavy grief of heart did He
On whom the duty fell (for at that time
The father sojourned in a distant land)
Deposit in the hollow of this tomb
A brother's Child, most tenderly beloved!...

ISAACUS NEWTONUS:
QUEM IMMORTALEM
TESTANTUR TEMPUS, NATURA, COELUM:
MORTALEM
HOC MARMOR FATETUR.


Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

If modest youth, with cool reflection crown'd,
And every opening virtue blooming round,
Could save a parent's justest pride from fate,
Or add one patriot to a sinking state;...

Heroes and kings! your distance keep:
In peace let one poor poet sleep,
Who never flatter'd folks like you:
Let Horace blush, and Virgil too.

"To point a moral." - JOHNSON.


Fairest Lady and Noble, for once on a time,
Condescend to accept, in the humblest of rhyme,
And a style more of Gay than of Milton,...

Blue dust of evening over my city,
Over the ocean of roofs and the tall towers
Where the window-lights, myriads and myriads,
Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers.

By time and counsel do the best we can,
Th' event is never in the power of man.

Except the heaven had come so near,
So seemed to choose my door,
The distance would not haunt me so;
I had not hoped before.

But just to hear the grace depart
I never thought to see,...

Except to heaven, she is nought;
Except for angels, lone;
Except to some wide-wandering bee,
A flower superfluous blown;

Except for winds, provincial;
Except by butterflies,...

How has New England's romance fled,
Even as a vision of the morning!
Its rites foredone, its guardians dead,
Its priestesses, bereft of dread,
Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!...

I.


The shadow of the houses leave behind,
In the cool boscage of the grove reclined,
The wine of friendship from love's goblet drink,
And entertain with cheerful speech the mind.

...

Somewhere in the realms supernal
Is a home prepared for me,
Where my joys shall be eternal,
And my spirit ever free;
Mortal vision helps not here,
God conceals it from my sight,...

There was a morrice on the moonlight plain,
And music echoed in the woody glade,
For fay-like forms, as of Titania's train,
Upon a summer eve, beneath the shade
Of Netley's ivied ruins, to the sound...

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms!

Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot,...

[The fact which suggested this poem is related by Clarke in his Travels.]

I.

Blue sky above, blue sea below,
Far off, the old Nile's mouth,
'Twas a blue world, wherein did blow...

[The fact to which the following verses refer, is related by Dr. Edward Clarke in his Travels.]


Blue sunny skies above; below,
A blue and sunny sea;
A world of blue, wherein did blow...