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Alas! that snows are shed

Upon thy laurel'd head,

Hurtled by many cares and many wrongs!

Malignity lets none

Approach the Delphic throne;

A hundred lane-fed curs bark down Fame's hundred

tongues.

But this is in the night, when men are slow

To raise their eyes, when high and low, The scarlet and the colourless, are one; Soon Sleep unbars his noiseless prison, And active minds again are risen ;

Where are the curs? dream-bound, and whimpering in the sun.

At fife's, or lyre's, or tabor's sound

The dance of youth, O Southey, runs not round,

But closes at the bottom of the room

Amid the falling dust and deepening gloom,

Where the weary sit them down,

And Beauty too unbraids, and waits a lovelier

crown.

We hurry to the river we must cross,

And swifter downward every footstep wends;
Happy, who reach it ere they count the loss
Of half their faculties and half their friends!
When we are come to it, the stream

Is not so dreary as they deem

Who look on it from haunts too dear;

The weak from Pleasure's baths feel most its chilling air!

No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven

To poet, sage, or hero given :

No heart more tender, none more just
To that He largely placed in trust:
Therefore shalt thou, whatever date
Of years be thine, with soul elate
Rise up before the Eternal throne,

And hear, in God's own voice, "Well done!"

Not, were that submarine

Gem-lighted city mine,

Wherein my name, engraven by thy hand,
Above the royal gleam of blazonry shall stand;
Not, were all Syracuse,

Pour'd forth before my Muse,

With Hiero's cars and steeds, and Pindar's lyre
Brightening the path with more than solar fire,
Could I, as would beseem, requite the praise
Shower'd upon my low head from thy most lofty
lays.

From To Andrew Crosse.

No longer do the girls for Moore
Jilt Horace as they did before.
He sits contented to have won
The rose-wreath from Anacreon,
And bears to see the orbs grow dim

That shone with blandest light on him.

[1846

Moore.

CHANGEFUL! how little do you know
Of Byron when you call him so!
True as the magnet is to iron
Byron hath ever been to Byron.

T

[1853

Byron.

His colour'd prints, in gilded frames,
Whatever the designs and names,
One image set before the rest,
In shirt with falling collar drest,
And keeping up a rolling fire at
Patriot, conspirator, and pirate.

To the Nightingale.

MELODIOUS Shelley caught thy softest song,

[1853

And they who heard his music heard not thine ;

Shelley.

Gentle and joyous, delicate and strong,

From the far tomb his voice shall silence mine.

[1863

Shelley,
Keats.

Dryden.

THOU hast not lost all glory, Rome!
With thee have found their quiet home
Two whom we followers most admire
Of those that swell our sacred quire;
And many a lower'd voice repeats
Hush! here lies Shelley! here lies Keats!

Satirists.

HONESTER men and wiser, you will say,

Were satirists.

Unhurt? for spite? for pay?

Their courteous soldiership, outshining ours,

[1846

Mounted the engine, and took aim from towers--
From putrid ditches we more safely fight,

And push our zig-zag parallels by night.
Dryden's rich numbers rattle terse and round,
Profuse, and nothing plattery in the sound.

And, here almost his equal, if but here,

Pope.

Pope pleased alike the playful and severe.
The slimmer cur at growler Johnson snarls,

Johnson.

But cowers beneath his bugle-blast for Charles.
From Vanity and London far removed,
With that pure Spirit his pure spirit loved,
In thorny paths the pensive Cowper trod,
But angels prompted, and the word was God.

Cowper.

Churchmen have chaunted satire, and the pews
Heard good sound doctrine from the sable Muse.
Frost-bitten and lumbaginous, when Donne,
With verses gnarl'd and knotted, hobbled on,
Thro' listening palaces did rhymeless South
Pour sparkling waters from his golden mouth.
Prim, in spruce parti-colours, Mason shone,
His Muse look'd well in gall-dyed crape alone.
Beneath the starry sky, 'mid garden glooms,
In meditation deep, and dense perfumes,

Donne.

Mason.

Young's cassock was flounced round with plaintive Young.

pun,

And pithier Churchill swore he would have none.
He bared his own broad vices, but the knots

Of the loud scourge fell sorest upon Scots.

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Byron was not all Byron; one small part
Bore the impression of a human heart.
Guided by no clear love-star's panting light
Thro' the sharp surges of a northern night,
In Satire's narrow strait he swam the best,
Scattering the foam that hiss'd about his breast.
He, who might else have been more tender, first
From Scottish saltness caught his rabid thirst.

Churchill.

Byron.

Milton.

Shakespeare. Dryden.

From To Wordsworth.

A MARSH, where only flat leaves lie,
And showing but the broken sky,
Too surely is the sweetest lay

That wins the ear and wastes the day.
Where youthful Fancy pouts alone
And lets not Wisdom touch her zone.

He who would build his fame up high,
The rule and plummet must apply,
Nor say “I'll do what I have plann’d,”
Before he try if loam or sand
Be still remaining in the place
Delved for each polish'd pillar's base.
With skilful eye and fit device

Thou raisest every edifice,

Whether in shelter'd vale it stand
Or overlook the Dardan strand,
Amid the cypresses that mourn
Laodameia's love forlorn.

We both have run o'er half the space
Listed for mortal's earthly race ;
We both have cross'd life's fervid line,
And other stars before us shine;
May they be bright and prosperous
As those that have been stars for us!
Our course by Milton's light was sped,
And Shakespeare shining overhead:
Chatting on deck was Dryden too,
The Bacon of the riming crew;
None ever cross'd our mystic sea

[1846

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