His virtues or his failings, we shall find The record there of friendships, held like rocks, And enmities, like sun-touch'd snow, resign'd; Of fealty, cherish'd without change or chill, In those who served him, young, and serve him still;

Of generous aid, given with that noiseless art Which wakes not pride, to many a wounded

heart;

Of acts-but no-not from himself must aught

Of the bright features of his life be sought.

While they, who court the world, like Milton's cloud,

"Turn forth their silver lining" on the crowd,
This gifted Being wraps himself in night;
And, keeping all that softens, and adorns,
And gilds his social nature hid from sight,
Turns but its darkness on a world he scorns.

[1832

Verses to the Poet Crabbe's Inkstand.

ALL as he left it !-even the pen

So lately at that mind's command,
Carelessly lying, as if then

Just fallen from his gifted hand.

Have we then lost him? scarce an hour,
A little hour, seems to have past,
Since Life and Inspiration's power
Around that relic breathed their last.

Ah, powerless now-like talisman,

Found in some vanish'd wizard's halls,

Whose mighty charm with him began, Whose charm with him extinguish'd falls.

Yet though, alas! the gifts that shone
Around that pen's exploring track,
Be now, with its great master, gone,
Nor living hand can call them back;

Who does not feel, while thus his eyes
Rest on the enchanter's broken wand,
Each earth-born spell it work'd arise
Before him in succession grand?

Grand, from the Truth that reigns o'er all;

The unshrinking Truth, that lets her light Through Life's low, dark interior fall, Opening the whole, serenely bright:

Yet softening, as she frowns along,

O'er scenes which angels weep to see― Where Truth itself half veils the wrong, In pity of the misery.

True Bard!—and simple, as the race
Of true-born poets ever are,

When, stooping from their starry place,
They're children, near, though gods, afar.

How freshly doth my mind recall,

'Mong the few days I've known with thee,

One that, most buoyantly of all,

Floats in the wake of memory;

When he, the poet, doubly graced,

In life, as in his perfect strain,

With that pure mellowing power of Taste,
Without which Fancy shines in vain ;

Who in his page will leave behind,
Pregnant with genius though it be,
But half the treasures of a mind,
Where Sense o'er all holds mastery:

Friend of long years! of friendship tried
Through many a bright and dark event;
In doubts, my judge-in taste, my guide-
In all, my stay and ornament!

He, too, was of our feast that day,

And all were guests of one, whose hand Hath shed a new and deathless ray

Around the lyre of this great land

In whose sea-odes-as in those shells
Where Ocean's voice of majesty
Seems still to sound-immortal dwells
Old Albion's Spirit of the Sea.

Rogers.

Such was our host; and though, since then,
Slight clouds have risen 'twixt him and me,
Who would not grasp such hand again,
Stretch'd forth again in amity?

Who can, in this short life, afford

To let such mists a moment stay,

Campbell.

Moore.

When thus one frank, atoning word,
Like sunshine, melts them all away?

Bright was our board that day, though one
Unworthy brother there had place;
As 'mong the horses of the Sun,
One was, they say, of earthly race.

Yet, next to Genius is the power
Of feeling where true Genius lies
And there was light around that hour
Such as, in memory, never dies;

Light which comes o'er me, as I gaze,
Thou Relic of the Dead, on thee,
Like all such dreams of vanish'd days,
Brightly, indeed—but mournfully!

SHELLEY.

From Letter to Maria Gisborne.

[1820

-SHAKESPEARE, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest
Who made our land an island of the bless'd.

From Peter Bell the Third. [1819

ALL things that Peter saw and felt

Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And, when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seem'd to melt,

Like cloud to cloud, into him.

And so, the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting

To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.

He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.

He had as much imagination

As a pint-pot ;-he never could Fancy another situation,

From which to dart his contemplation, Than that wherein he stood.

Yet his was individual mind,
And new-created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined
Those new creations, and combined
Them by a master-spirit's law.

Thus although unimaginative-
An apprehension clear, intense,
Of his mind's work, had made alive,
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.

But from the first 'twas Peter's drift To be a kind of moral eunuch : He touch'd the hem of Nature's shift