"WEAK is the will of Man, his judgment blind; Imagination
Remembrance persecutes, and Hope betrays;
Heavy is woe; and joy, for human-kind,
A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!"
Thus might be paint our lot of mortal days
Who wants the glorious faculty assigned
To elevate the more-than-reasoning Mind,
And colour life's dark cloud with orient rays.
Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined:

'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of Faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.

CALVERT! it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.

This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem-
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where'er I liked; and finally array
My temples with the Muse's diadem.
Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth;
If there be aught of pure, or good, or great,
In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays
Of higher mood, which now I meditate ;
It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived, Youth!
To think how much of this will be thy praise.

To the Memory of Raisley Calvert

PART II

Scorn not SCORN not the Sonnet; Critic! you have frowned,
the Sonnet Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakspeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains-alas, too few!

A saunter How sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks through The way ward brain, to saunter through a wood! a wood An old place, full of many a lovely brood,

Tall trees, green arbours, and ground-flowers in
flocks;

And wild rose tip-toe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like a bold Girl, who plays her agile pranks
At Wakes and Fairs with wandering Mounte-
banks,-

When she stands cresting the Clown's head, and
mocks

The crowd beneath her. Verily I think,
Such place to me is sometimes like a dream
Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam
Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,
And leap at once from the delicious stream.

HIGH is our calling, Friend!-Creative Art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned-to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,

Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness—
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!

FROM the dark chambers of dejection freed,
Spurning the unprofitable yoke of care,

Rise, GILLIES, rise: the gales of youth shall bear
Thy genius forward like a winged steed.
Though bold Bellerophon (so Jove decreed
In wrath) fell headlong from the fields of air,
Yet a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,
If aught be in them of immortal seed,
And reason govern that audacious flight
Which heaven-ward they direct. Then droop
not thou,

Erroneously renewing a sad vow

In the low dell 'mid Roslin's faded grove:
A cheerful life is what the Muses love,

A soaring spirit is their prime delight.

Το

B. R. Haydon 1815

Rise, Gillies,
Rise

Fair Prime FAIR Prime of life! were it enough to gild
of Life With ready sunbeams every straggling shower;
And, if an unexpected cloud should lower,
Swiftly thereon a rainbow arch to build

For Fancy's errands, then, from fields half-tilled
Gathering green weeds to mix with poppy flower,
Thee might thy Minions crown, and chant thy
power,

Unpitied by the wise, all censure stilled.

Ah! show that worthier honours are thy due;
Fair Prime of life! arouse the deeper heart;
Confirm the Spirit glorying to pursue
Some path of steep ascent and lofty aim;
And, if there be a joy that slights the claim
Of grateful memory, bid that joy depart.

The lost I WATCH, and long have watched, with calm regret Star Yon slowly-sinking star-immortal Sire

(So might he seem) of all the glittering quire!
Blue ether still surrounds him-yet—and yet ;
But now the horizon's rocky parapet

Is reached, where, forfeiting his bright attire,
He burns-transmuted to a dusky fire-
Then pays submissively the appointed debt
To the flying moments, and is seen no more.
Angels and gods! we struggle with our fate,
While health, power, glory, from their height
decline,
Depressed; and then extinguished: and our state,
In this, how different, lost Star, from thine,
That no to-morrow shall our beams restore !

I HEARD (alas! 'twas only in a dream)
Strains which, as sage Antiquity believed,
By waking ears have sometimes been received
Wafted adown the wind from lake or stream;
A most melodious requiem, a supreme
And perfect harmony of notes, achieved
By a fair Swan on drowsy billows heaved,
O'er which her pinions shed a silver gleam.
For is she not the votary of Apollo?

And knows she not, singing as he inspires,
That bliss awaits her which the ungenial Hollow
Of the dull earth partakes not, nor desires?
Mount, tuneful Bird, and join the immortal quires!
She soared-and I awoke, struggling in vain to
follow.

www

The Swan's song

If the whole weight of what we think and feel, Retirement
Save only far as thought and feeling blend

With action, were as nothing, patriot Friend!
From thy remonstrance would be no appeal;
But to promote and fortify the weal
Of her own Being is her paramount end;
A truth which they alone shall comprehend
Who shun the mischief which they cannot heal.
Peace in these feverish times is sovereign bliss:
Here, with no thirst but what the stream can slake,
And startled only by the rustling brake,
Cool air I breathe; while the unincumbered Mind,
By some weak aims at services assigned
To gentle Natures, thanks not Heaven amiss.