And yet there have been days of yore,
When pretty maids their posies bore
To crown its prow, its deck to trim,
And freighted a whole world of whim.
A thousand stories it could tell,
But it loves secrecy too well.

Come closer, my sweet girl, pray do!
There may be still one left for you.

CXVI.

Satire! I never call'd thee very fair,
But if thou art inclined to hear my pray'r,
Grant the bright surface that our form reflects,
The healthy font that braces our defects :
But O! to fulminate with forked line
Another's fame or fortune, ne'er be mine!
Against the wretch who dares it, high or low,
Against him only, I direct my blow.

*

*

*

*

*

Well; you have seen our Prosperos, at whose beck Our ship, with all her royalty, is wreck.

From sire to son descends the wizard book

That works such marvels.

Look behind you! look!

There issue from the Treasury, dull and dry as

The leaves in winter, Gifford and Matthias.
Brighter and braver Peter Pindar started,
And ranged around him all the lighter-hearted.
When Peter Pindar sank into decline,

Up from his hole sprang Peter Porcupine.

*

Honester men and wiser, you will say, Were satirists.

*

Unhurt? for spite? for pay?
Their courteous soldiership, outshining ours,
Mounted the engine and took aim from tow'rs.
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 pleas'd alike the playful and severe.
The slimmer cur at growler Johnson snarls,
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.

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 lookt well in gall-dyed crape alone.
Beneath the starry sky, 'mid garden glooms,
In meditation deep, and dense perfumes,

Young's cassock was flounced round with plaintive 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.

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 hist about his breast.
He, who might else have been more tender, first
From Scottish saltness caught his rabid thirst.
Praise Keats .

"I think I've heard of him."

Shelley stands foremost."

"With you

And his lip was blue.

"I hear with pleasure any one commend
So good a soul; for Shelley is my friend."
One leaf from Southey's laurel made explode
All his combustibles.

"An ass! by God!"

Who yet surmounted in romantic Spain

Highths our brisk courser never could attain.
I lagg'd; he call'd me; urgent to prolong

My matin chirpings into mellower song.

Mournfuller tones came then . . O ne'er be they
Drown'd in night howlings from the Forth and Spey!
Twice is almighty Homer far above

Troy and her towers, Olympus and his Jove.
First, when the God-led Priam bends before

Him sprung from Thetis, dark with Hector's gore :

A second time, when both alike have bled,
And Agamemnon speaks among the dead.
Call'd up by Genius in an after-age,
That awful spectre shook the Athenian stage.
From eve to morn, from morn to parting night,
Father and daughter stood before my sight.
I felt the looks they gave, the words they said,
And reconducted each serener shade.

Ever shall these to me be well-spent days,
Sweet fell the tears upon them, sweet the praise.

CXVII.

The form

Boastfully call we all the world our own:
What are we who should call it so ?
Erect, the eye that pierces stars and suns,
Droop and decay; no beast so piteously.
More mutable than wind-worn leaves are we;
Yea, lower are we than the dust's estate;
The very dust is as it was before;
Dissever'd from ourselves, aliens and outcasts
From what our pride dared call inheritance,
We only live to feel our fall and die.

CXVIII.

When the mimosas shall have made
(O'erarching) an unbroken shade;
And the rose-laurels let to breathe
Scarcely a favourite flower beneath;
When the young cypresses which now
Look at the olives, brow to brow,
Cheer'd by the breezes of the south
Shall shoot above the acacia's growth,
One peradventure of my four
Turning some former fondness o'er,
At last impatient of the blame
Cast madly on a father's name,
May say, and check the chided tear,
"I wish he still were with us here."

CXIX.

Everything tells me you are near;

The hail-stones bound along and melt, In white array the clouds appear,

The spring and you our fields have felt.

Paris, I know, is hard to quit;

But you
have left it; and 'twere silly
To throw away more smiles and wit
Among the forests of Chantilly.
Her moss-paved cell your rose adorns
To tempt you; and your cyclamen
Turns back his tiny twisted horns
As if he heard your voice again.

CXX.

MARIE-ANTOINETTE.

O gentlest of thy race!
How early do we trace

The wrath of Fate on thee!

Not only that thy head
Was hurl'd among the dead,
The virtuous, wise, and free,
O Marie-Antoinette!
Do generous souls regret
Thy sceptred destiny,

But, winning all the heart
Of mortal like Mozart,

His bride thou couldst not be.
Thou liftedst the sweet child
From slippery floor: he smiled,

Kist thee, and call'd thee wife.

Ah! could it have been so,
How free wert thou from woe,
How pure, how great, for life!

One truth is little known :
"Tis this; the highest throne
Is not the highest place
Even on the earth we tread :
Some can raise up the dead,
And some the royal race.

CXXI.

November! thou art come again
With all thy gloom of fogs and rain,
Yet woe betide the wretch who sings
Of sadness borne upon thy wings.
The gloom that overcast my brow,
The whole year's gloom, departs but now;
And all of joy I hear or see,

November! I ascribe to thee!

CXXII.

Retire, and timely, from the world, if ever
Thou hopest tranquil days;

Its gaudy jewels from thy bosom sever,
Despise its pomp and praise.

The purest star that looks into the stream
Its slightest ripple shakes,

And Peace, where'er its fiercer splendours gleam,
Her brooding nest forsakes.

The quiet planets roll with even motion

In the still skies alone;

O'er ocean they dance joyously, but ocean

They find no rest upon.

CXXIII.

GUIDONE AND LUCÌA.

I love to wander, both in deed and thought,
Where little rills their earliest tunes are taught:
I love to trace them into secret nooks,

And watch their winning ways and serious looks,
Where, as they rise up leisurely and slow,
The long-hair'd moss for ever waves below.
No few have splasht my face for venturing thus
Among their games, games never meant for us:
We are weak creatures, brief and dark our day,
But children of immortal breed are they.
Yet side by side with Reno, many a mile,
Thro' narrow dell and intricate defile,

I have run too; and both were well content;
He chafed sometimes, but never harm was meant.
The waters here start sundered, rocks between,
Some beetle-brow'd, and others brightly green :
Loudly they call each other, nor in vain,
Laugh at the rocks, spring, and embrace again.
My little Reno winds his stream along
Thro' pastoral scenes by pastoral pipe unsung,
And leaps and hazards many sportive falls,
But grows sedater near Bologna's walls.

Among the mountains which from high o'erlook
That solemn city and that wayward brook,
Pure as the snow that on the summit lies,
Fresh as the stream and radiant as the skies,

Wert thou, Lucia! Could thy girlish breast
Enjoy more sacred, more seraphic rest?