It is enough for me to prove

Yet how much less it were to gain, That what I loved, and long must love,

Though thou hast left me free, Like common earth can rot;

The loveliest things that still remain, To me there needs no stone to tell,

Than thus remember thee! 'Tis nothing that I loved so well.

The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity

Returns again to nie,
Yet did I love thee to the last
As fervently as thou,

And more thy buried love endears
Who didst not change through all the past,

Than aught, except its living years.
And canst not alter now.
The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

IF SOMETIMES IN THE HAUNTS OF Nor falsehood disavow:

MEN.
And, what were se, thou canst not sce
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

IF sometimes in the haunts of men

Thine image from my breast may fade, The better days of life were ours;

The lonely hour presents again The worst can be but mine :

The semblance of thiy gentle shade:

And now that sad and silent hour The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,

Thus much of thee can still restore, Shall never more be thine.

And sorrow unobserved may pour The silence of that dreamless sleep

The plaint she dare not speak before. I envy now too much to weep; Nor need I to repine

Oh, pardon that in crowds awhile That all those charms have pass'd away;

I waste one thought I owe to thee, I might have watch'd through long decay.

And, self-condemn'd, appear to smile,

Unfaithful to thy memory! The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd

Nor deem that memory less deat, Must fall the earliest prey;

That then I seem not to repine; Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,

I would not fools should overhear The leaves must drop away :

One sigh that should be wholly thine. And yet it were a greater grief

If not the goblet pass unquaft'd, To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,

It is not drain'd to banish care; Than see it pluck'd to-day ;

The cup must hold a deadlier draught, Since earthly eye but ill can bear

That brings a Lethe for despair. To trace the change to foul from fair,

And could Oblivion set my soul

From all her troubled visions free, I know not if I could have borne

I'd dash to earth the sweetest bowi To see thy beauties fade;

That drown'd a single thought of thee. The night that followed such a inorn

For wert thou vanish'd from my mind, Had worn a deeper shade:

Where could my vacant bosom turn! Thy day without a cloud hath passid,

And who would then remain behind And thou wert lovely to the last :

To honour thine abandon'd Urn? Extinguish'd, not decay'd ;

No, no-it is my sorrow's pride As stars that shoot along the sky

That last dear duty to fulfil; Shine brightest as they fall from high.

Though all the world forget beside,

'Tis meet that I remember still. As once I wept, if I could weep. My tears might well be shed,

For well I know, that such had been To think I was not near to keep

Tly gentle care for him, who now One vigil o'er thy bed;

Unmourn'd shall quit this mortal scene, To gaze, how fondly ! on thy face,

Where none regarded him but thou : To fold thee in a faint embrace,

And, oh! I feel in that was given Uphold thy drooping head;

A blessing never meant for me; And show that love, however vain,

Thou wert too like a dreain of heaven Nor thou nor I can feel again.

For earthly Love to merit thee.

DOMESTIC PIECES.

1816.

An adept next in penmanship she grows,

This female dog-star of her little sky, As many a nameless slander deftly shows:

Where all beneath her influence droop or die. What she had made the pupil of her art,

Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought, None know-but that high Soul secured the heart,

Save joy above the ruin thou hast wroughtAnd panted for the truth it could not hear,

The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou With longing breast and undeluded car.

Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now; Foild was perversion by that youthful mind,

Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain, Which Flattery fool'd not, Baseness could not blind,

And turn thee howling in unpitied pain. Deceit infect not, near Contagion soil,

May the strong curse of crush'd affections light Indulgence weaken, nor Example spoil,

Back on thy bosom with reflected blight ! Nor master'd Science tempt her to look down

And make thee ia thy leprosy of mind On humbler talents with a pitying frown,

As loathsome to thyself as to mankind ! Nor Genius swell, nor beauty render vain,

Til all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate, Nor Envy ruffle to retaliate pain,

Black-as thy will for others would create : Nor Fortune change, Pride raise, nor Passion bow,

Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust, Nor Virtue teach austerity-till now.

And thy soul welter in its hideous crust. Serenely purest of her sex that live,

Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed, But wanting one sweet weakness-to forgive;

The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread i Too shock'd at faults her soul can never know,

Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with She deems that all could be like her below:

prayer, Foe to all viče, yet hardly Virtue's friend,

Look on thine earthly victims-and despair ! For Virtue pardons those she would amend.

Down to the dust !-and, as thou rott'st away,

Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay. But to the theme, now laid aside too long,

But for the love I bore, and still must bear, The baleful Burthen of this honest song :

To her thy malice from all ties would tearThough all her former functions are no more,

Thy name—thy human name-to every eye
She rules the circle which she served before.

The climax of all scorn should hang on high,
If mothers--none know why-before her quake; Exalted o'er thy less abhorr'd compeers,
If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;

And festering in the infamy of years.
If early habits-those false links, which bind
At times the loftiest to the ineanest mind
Have given lier power too deeply to instil
The angry essence of her deadly will;

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.
If like a snake she steal withiu your walls,

WHEN all around grew drear and dark, Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;

And reason half withheld her ray, If like a viper to the heart she wind,

And hope but shed a dying spark And leave the venom there she did not find;

Which more misled my lonely way; What marvel that this hag of hatred works

In that deep midnight of the mind, Eternal evil latent as she lurks,

And that internal strife of heart, To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,

When dreading to be deem'd too kind,
And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?

The weak despair-the cold depart;
Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,

When fortune changed, and love fled far, While mingling truth with falsehood-sneers with And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast, siniles

Thou wert the solitary star A thread of candour with a web of wiles:

Which rose and set not to the last. A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,

Oh ! blest be thine unbroken light, To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd scheming;

That watch'd me as a seraph's eye, A lip of lies-a face form'd to conceal ;

And stood between inc and the night,
And, without feeling, mock at all who feel :

For ever shining sweetly nigh.
With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.

And when the cloud upon us came,
Mark, how the channels of her yellow blood

Which strove to blacken o'er thy rayOoze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud,

Then purer spread its gentle flame, Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,

And dash'd the darkness all away. Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale

Still may thy spirit dwell on mine, (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace

And teach it what to brave or brookCongenial colours in that soul or face)

There's more in one soft word of thine
Look on her features I and behold her mind

Than in the world's defied rebuke.
As in a mirror of itself defined:
Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged-

Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree.
There is no trait which might not be enlarged:

That still unbroke, though gently bent, Yet true to Nature's journeymen,' who made

Still waves with fond fidelity This monster when their mistress left off trade

Its boughs above a monument.

The winds might rend, the skies might pour, It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd But there thou wert--and still wouldst be

Deserved to be dearest of all: Devoted in the stormiest hour

In the desert a fountain is springing, To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

In the wide waste there still is a tree.

And a bird in the solitude singing,
But thou and thine shall know no blight,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee.
Whatever fate on ine may fall;
For Heaven in sunshine will requite
The kind—and thee the most of all.

EPISTLE TO AL'GUSTA.
Then let the ties of baffled love

My sister! my sweet sister ! if a name Be broken-thine will never break;

Dearer and purer were, it should be thine ; Thy heart can feel, but will not move ;

Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.

No tears, but tenderness to answer mine : And these, when all was lost beside,

Go where I will, to me thou art the same Were found and still are fix'd in thee;

A loved regret which I would not resign. And bearing still a breast so tried,

There yet are two things in my destinyEarth is no desert-ev'n to me.

A world to roam through, and a home with thee,

The first were nothing-had I still the last,
STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.

It were the haven of my happiness;
THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,

But other claims and other ties thou hast,

And mine is not the wish to make them less. And the star of my fate liath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover

A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past The faults which so many could find;

Recalling, as it lies beyond redress; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,– It shrunk not to share it with me,

He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore. And the love which my spirit hath painted If my inheritance of storms hath been It never hath found but in thee.

In other elements, and on the rocks Then when nature around me is siniling.

Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen, The last smile which answers to mine,

I have sustaind my share of worldly shocks, 1 (lo not believe it beguiling,

The fault was mine ; nor do I seek to screen Because it reininds me of thine ;

My errors with defensive paradox; And when winds are at war with the ocean,

I have been cunning in mine overthrow, As the breasts I believed in with me,

The careful pilot of my proper woe. If their billows excite an emotion,

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward : It is that they bear me from thee.

My whole life was a contest, since the day Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd, That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd And its fragments are sunk in the wave,

The gift-a fate, or will, that walk'd astray; Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

And I at times have found the struggle hard, To pain-it shall not be its slave.

And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay : There is many a pang to pursue me:

But now I fain would for a time survive, They may crush, but they shall not contemn ; If but to see what next can well arrive. They may torture, but shall not subdue me;

Kingdoms and empires in my little day 'Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

I have outlived, and yet I am not old; Though human, thou didst not deceive me, And when I look on this, the petty spray Though woman, thou didst not forsake,

Of my own years of trouble, which have rolld Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away : Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake; Something-I know not what-does st:ll uphold Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me; A spirit of slight patience ;-not in vain, Though parted, it was not to Ay,

Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain. Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir Nor, mute, that the world might belic.

Within me-or perhaps a cold despair, Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

Brought on when i!ls habitually recur.Nor the war of the many with one :

Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air, If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

(For even to this may change of soul refer, 'Twas folly not sooner to shun:

And with light armour we may learn to bear,) And if dearly that error hath cost me,

Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not And more than I once could foresee,

The chief companion of a calmer lot.
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

I feel almost at times as I have felt

In happy childhood, trees, and flowers, and brooks, From the wreck of the past, which hath perislı'd, Which do remember me of where I dwelt Thus much I at least na recall,

Ere my young mind was sacrificed to booky,