With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping clm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mused the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But ah! without the thoughts which then were mine:
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,
And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,
Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"
When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast,
And calm its cares and passions into rest,
Oft have I thought, 'twould soothe my dying hour,-
If aught may soothe when life resigns her power,-
To know some humbler grave, some narrow cell,
Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell.
With this fond dream, methinks, 'twere sweet to die-
And here it linger'd, here my heart might lie;
Here might I sleep, where all my hopes arose;
Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;
For ever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade,
Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd;
Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved,
Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved;
Blest by the tongues that charm'd my youthful ear,
Mourn'd by the few my soul acknowledged here;
Deplored by those in early days allied,
And unremember'd by the world beside.
LINES INSCRIBED UPON A CUP FORMED FROM A
START not-nor deem my spirit fled :
In me behold the only skull
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.
I lived, I loved, I quaff'd, like thee:
I died let earth my bones resign:
Fill up thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.
Better to hold the sparkling grape,
Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet's shape
The drink of gods, than reptile's food.
Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others' let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?
Quaff while thou canst another race,
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth's embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.
Why not since through life's little day
Our heads such sad effects produce?
Redeem'd from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs, to be of use.
ON REVISITING HARROW.*
HERE once engaged the stranger's view,
Young Friendship's record simply traced;
Few were her words, but yet, though few,
Resentment's hand the line defaced.
Deeply she cut-but not erased,
The characters were still so plain,
That Friendship once return'd, and gazed,-
Till Memory hail'd the words again.
Repentance placed them as before;
Forgiveness join'd her gentle name;
So fair the inscription seem'd once more,
That Friendship thought it still the same.
Thus might the record now have been:
But, ah! in spite of Hope's endeavour,
Or Friendship's tears, Pride rush'd between,
And blotted out the line for ever.†
These lines were suggested by finding the names of himself and a friend, which had been cut as a memorial, erased by that friend on account of some offence taken.
"The recording angel dropp'd a tear upon the word as he wrote it, and blotted it out for ever."-Sterne's Story of Lefevre.
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