CHILDE ALARIQUE,

A POET'S REVERIE.

IN THREE PARTS.

A

POET'S REVERIE.

We poets in our youth begin in gladness,

But thereof comes in the end Despondency and Madness.

Wordsworth.

"Tis not, as heads that never ache suppose,
Forgery of fancy and a dream of woes.

Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sight,
Each tuned to harmony disposed aright;

The screws reversed, a task, which, if he please,
God, in a moment, executes with ease,

Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose,
Lost, till he tune them, all their power and use.