Works

Thou art before me, and I see no more
Pilate or soldiers, but the purple flung
Around the naked form the scourge had wrung,
To naked Truth thus witnessing, before...

Well it becomes thee, Britain, to avow
JOHNSON's high claims! - yet boasting that his fires
Were of unclouded lustre, TRUTH retires
Blushing, and JUSTICE knits her solemn brow;...

Cou'd aweful Johnson want poetic ear,
Fancy, or judgment? - no! his splendid strain,
In prose, or rhyme, confutes that plea. - The pain
Which writh'd o'er Garrick's fortunes, shows us clear...

Lo! modern Critics emulously dare
Ape the great Despot; throw in pompous tone
And massy words their true no meaning down!
But while their envious eyes on Genius glare,...

Broad-based, broad-fronted, bounteous, multiform,
With many a valley impleached with ivy and vine,
Wherein the springs of all the streams run wine,
And many a crag full-faced against the storm,...

The dusk of day's decline was hard on dark
When evening trembled round thy glowworm lamp
That shone across her shades and dewy damp
A small clear beacon whose benignant spark...

Day was a full-blown flower in heaven, alive
With murmuring joy of bees and birds aswarm,
When in the skies of song yet flushed and warm
With music where all passion seems to strive...

Hew hard the marble from the mountain's heart
Where hardest night holds fast in iron gloom
Gems brighter than an April dawn in bloom,
That his Memnoniah likeness thence may start...

The bitterness of death and bitterer scorn
Breathes from the broad-leafed aloe-plant whence thou
Wast fain to gather for thy bended brow
A chaplet by no gentler forehead worn....

Thunder: the flesh quails, and the soul bows down.
Night: east, west, south, and northward, very night
Star upon struggling star strives into sight,
Star after shuddering star the deep storms drown....

O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:...

Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven, the domain
Of Cynthia, the wide palace of the sun,
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,
The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters: Ocean...

Sing on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough,
Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain:
See, aged Winter, 'mid his surly reign,
At thy blythe carol clears his furrow'd brow.
...

In sad procession borne away
To sound of funeral knell,
Affection's tribute thus we pay,
And in earth's shelt'ring bosom lay
The friend to whom but yesterday
We gave the sad farewell.
...

I wus mighty good-lookin' when I wus young,
Peert an' black-eyed an' slim,
With fellers a-courtin' me Sunday nights,
'Sp'cially Jim.

The likeliest one of 'em all wus he,...

1

There is a mystic thread of life
So dearly wreath'd with mine alone,
That Destiny's relentless knife
At once must sever both, or none.


2
...

FIRST VISIT.

1832.


As St. Jerome who died some ages ago,
Was sitting one day in the shades below,
"I've heard much of English bishops," quoth he,...

"This much I dare say, that, since lording and loitering hath come up, preaching hath come down, contrary to the Apostles' times. For they preached and lorded not; and now they lord and preach not.... Ever since the Prelates we...

("Un jour, le morne esprit.")

[Bk. VI. vii., Jersey, September, 1855.]


One day, the sombre soul, the Prophet most sublime
At Patmos who aye dreamed,...

"To the winds give our banner!
Bear homeward again!"
Cried the Lord of Acadia,
Cried Charles of Estienne;
From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From its bed in the ocean,...