WILT thou forget the happy hours
Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Heaping over their corpses cold
Blossoms and leaves instead of mould? Blossoms which were the joys that fell,
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.
Forget the dead, the past? Oh yet
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it! Memories that make the heart a tomb, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, And with ghastly whispers tell
That joy, once lost, is pain.
MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O sun! or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?
(FROM WESTMINSTER BRIDGE).
EARTH has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
METHINKS that to some vacant hermitage My feet would gladly turn—to some dry nook Scooped out of living rock, and near a brook Hurled down a mountain cove from stage to stage, Yet tempering, for my sight, its bustling rage In the soft heaven of a translucent pool; Thence creeping under sylvan arches cool, Fit haunt of shapes whose glorious equipage Would elevate my dreams. A beechen bowl, A maple dish, my furniture should be;
Crisp, yellow leaves my bed; the hooting owl My night-watch: nor should e'er the crested fowl From thorp or vill his matins sound for me,
Tired of the world and all its industry.
GIVE me a cottage on some Cambrian wild Where, far from cities, I may spend my days, And by the beauties of the scene beguil'd, May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways. While on the rock I mark the browsing goat, List to the mountain-torrent's distant noise, Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note,
I shall not want the world's delusive joys; But with my little scrip, my book, my lyre, Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more; And when, with time, shall wane the vital fire, I'll raise my pillow on the desert shore, And lay me down to rest where the wild wave Shall make sweet music o'er my lonely grave. Henry Kirke White.
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