Works

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...

Far from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;...

I have my laurel chaplet on my head
If, 'mongst these many numbers to be read,
But one by you be hugg'd and cherished.

Peruse my measures thoroughly, and where
Your judgment finds a guilty poem, there...

Once I beheld the fairest of her kind,
And still the sweet idea charms my mind:
True, she was dumb; for Nature gazed so long,
Pleased with her work, that she forgot her tongue;...

Vane, young in yeares, but in sage counsell old,
Then whome a better Senatour nere held
The helme of Rome, when gownes not armes repelld
The feirce Epeirot & the African bold,...

effare causam nominis,
utrumne mores hoc tui
nomen dedere, an nomen hoc
secuta morum regula. AUSONIUS.


1816.


Sir Hudson Lowe, Sir Hudson Low,
(By name, and ah! by nature so)...

Stand forth, brave man, since fate has made thee here
The Hector over aged Exeter,
Who for a long, sad time has weeping stood
Like a poor lady lost in widowhood,
But fears not now to see her safety sold,...