Their great creator, can not bring one back
With all his force, tho' he draw worlds around?
Witness me, little streams that meet before
My happy dwelling; witness Africo
And Mensola! that ye have seen at once
Twenty roll back, twenty as swift and bright
As are your swiftest and your brightest waves,
When the tall cypress o'er the Doccia
Hurls from his inmost boughs the latent snow.
Go, and go happy, light of my past days,
Consoler of my present! thou whom Fate
Alone could sever from me! One step higher
Must yet be mounted, high as was the last :
Friendship with faltering accent says “Depart,
And take the highest seat below the crown'd."
TO THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
Since in the terrace-bower we sate
While Arno gleam❜d below,
And over sylvan Massa late
Hung Cynthia's slender bow,
Years after years have past away
Less light and gladsome; why
Do those we most implore to stay
Run ever swiftest by!
Unjust are they who argue me unjust
To thee, O France! Did ever man delight
More cordially in him who held the hearts
Of beasts to his, and searcht into them all,
And took their wisdom, giving it profuse
To man, who gave them little in return,
And only kept their furs and teeth and claws.
What comic scenes are graceful, saving thine?
Where is philosophy like thy Montaigne's?
Religion, like thy Fenelon's? Sublime
In valour's self-devotion were thy men,
Thy women far sublimer: but foul stains
At last thou bearest on thy plume; thy steps
Follow false honour, deviating from true.
A broken word bears on it worse disgrace
Than broken sword; erewhile thou knewest this.
Thou huggest thy enslaver: on his tomb
What scrolls! what laurels! Are there any bound
About the braver Corday's? Is one hymn
Chaunted in prayers or praises to the Maid
To whom all maidens upon earth should bend,
Who at the gate of Orleans broke thy chain?
TO LADY CHARLES BEAUCLERK.
No, Teresita, never say
That uncle Landor's worthless lay
Shaland its place among your treasures. Altho' his heart is not grown old,
Yet are his verses far too cold
For bridal bowers or festive measures.
He knows you lovely, thinks you wise,
And still shall think so if your eyes
Seek not in noisier paths to roam;
But rest upon your forest-green,
And find that life runs best between
A tender love and tranquil home.
By that dejected city Arno runs
Where Ugolino claspt his famisht sons;
There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes
Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies;
And thence, sweet infant wanderer! when the Spring
Advanced, the Hours brought thee on silent wing,
Brought (while anemones were quivering round,
And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground)
Where stands fair Florence: there thy voice first blest
My ears, and sank like balm into my breast.
For many griefs had wounded it, and more
Thy little hands could lighten, were in store.
But why revert to griefs? thy sculptur'd brow
Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.
What then the bliss to see again thy face
And all that rumour has announced of grace!
urge with fevered breast the coming day . .
O could I sleep and wake again in May!
Unworthy are these poems of the lights
That now run over them; nor brief the doubt
In my own breast, if such should interrupt
(Or follow so irreverently) the voice
Of Attic men, of women such as thou,
Of sages no less sage than heretofore,
Of pleaders no less eloquent, of souls
Tender no less, or tuneful, or devout.
Unvalued, even by myself, are they,
Myself who rear'd them; but a high command
Marshall'd them in their station: here they are;
Look round; see what supports these parasites.
Stinted in growth and destitute of odour,
They grow where young Ternissa held her guide,
Where Solon awed the ruler; there they grow,
Weak as they are, on cliffs that few can climb.
None to thy steps are inaccessible,
Theodosia! wakening Italy with song
Deeper than Filicaia's, or than his
The triple deity of plastic art.
Mindful of Italy and thee, crown'd maid!
I lay this sere frail garland at thy feet. .
Altho' with Earth and Heaven you deal
As equal, and without appeal,
And bring beneath your ancient roof
Records of all they do, and proof,
No right have you, sequester'd Crosse,
To make the Muses weep your loss.
A poet were you long before
Gems from the struggling air you tore,
And bade the far-off flashes play
About your woods, and light your way.
With languour and disease opprest,
And years, that crush the tuneful breast,
Southey, the pure of soul is mute!
Hoarse whistles Wordsworth's watery flute,
Which mourn'd with loud indignant strains
The famisht Black* in Corsic chains :
Nor 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.
Others there are whose future day
No slender glories shall display;
But you would think me worse than tame
To find me stringing name on name,
And I would rather call aloud
On Andrew Crosse than stem the crowd.
Now chiefly female voices rise
(And sweet are they) to cheer our skies.
Suppose you warm these chilly days
With samples from your fervid lays.
Come! courage! man! and don't pretend
That every verse cuts off a friend,
And that in simple truth you fain
Would rather not give poets pain.
The lame excuse will never do. .
Philosophers can envy too.
Among the noblest of Wordsworth's Sonnets (the finest in any language, excepting a few of Milton's) is that on Toussaint L'Ouverture. He has exposed in other works the unmanly artifices and unprofitable cruelties of the murderer who consummated his crime by famine, when the dampness of a subterranean prison was too slow in its operation. Nothing is so inexplicable as that any honest and intelligent man should imagine the heroic or the sagacious in Buonaparte. He was the only great gambler unaware that the player of double or quits, unless he discontinues, must be loser. In Spain he held more by peace than he could seize by war; yet he went to war. Haiti he might have united inseparably to France, on terms the most advantageous and the most honorable, but he was indignant that a black should exercise the functions of a white, that a deliverer should be his representative, and that a delegate should possess the affections of a people, although trustworthy beyond suspicion. What appears to others his greatest crime appears to me among the least, the death of D'Enghien. Whoever was plotting to subvert his government might justly be seized and slain by means as occult. Beside, what are all the Bourbons that ever existed in comparison with Toussaint L'Ouverture? His assassin was conscious of the mistake; he committed none so fatal to his reputation, though many more pernicious to his power. If he failed so utterly with such enormous means as never were wielded by any man before, how would he have encountered the difficulties that were surmounted by Frederick of Prussia and by Hyder Ali? These are the Hannibal and Sertorius of modern times. They were not perhaps much better men than Buonaparte, but politically and militarily they were much wiser; for they calculated how to win what they wanted, and they contrived how to keep what they won.
Sweet are the siren songs on eastern shores,
To songs as sweet are pulled our English oars:
And farther upon ocean venture forth
The lofty sails that leave the wizard north.
Altho' by fits so dense a cloud of smoke
Puffs from his sappy and ill-season'd oak,
Yet, as the Spirit of the Dream draws near,
Remembered loves make Byron's self sincere.
The puny heart within him swells to view,
The man grows loftier and the poet too.
When War sweeps nations down with iron wings,
Alcæus never sang as Campbell sings;
And, caught by playful wit and graceful lore,
The Muse invoked by Horace bends to Moore.
Theirs, not my verses, come I to repeat,
So draw the footstool nearer to your feet.
Onward, right onward, gallant James, nor heed
The plunging prancers of a grease-heel'd breed.
Onward, our leader thro' the tower-lit scenes
Of genial Froissart and of grave Commines.
Minisht by death, by sickness, and by pain,
Poictiers sends forth her glorious few again :
Again o'er pennons gay and hawberks bright
The sable armour shines in morning light:
And cries of triumph from the brave and true,
And those who best reward them, swell for you.
TO CZARTORYSKI, ATTENDING ON FOOT THE FUNERAL OF THE POET MENINCIVICZ.
In Czartoryski I commend
The patriot's guide, the poet's friend.
King, sprung of kings, yet great and good
As any pure from royal blood;
O'er genius not ashamed to bear
The pall, or shed at home the tear.
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