ON A CORNELIAN HEART WHICH WAS BROKEN. ILL-FATED Heart! and can it be, That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain? Have years of care for thine and thee Yet precious seems each shatter'd part, LINES TO A LADY WEEPING. WEEP, daughter of a royal line, Weep-for thy tears are Virtue's tears- March, 1812. THE CHAIN I GAVE. FROM THE TURKISH. THE chain I gave was fair to view, These gifts were charm'd by secret spell, That chain was firm in every link, But not to bear a stranger's touch; That lute was sweet-till thou couldst think Let him, who from thy neck unbound Restring the chords, renew the clasp. "Tis past-to them and thee adieu- The Princess Charlotte. TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. And blend, while ages roll away, ADDRESS, April 19, 1819 SPOKEN AT THE OPENING OF DRURY-LANE THEATRE, SATURDAY, IN one dread night our city saw, and sigh'd, Ye who beheld (oh! sight admired and mourn'a, Yes-it shall be-the magic of that name As soars this fane to emulate the last, Some hour propitious to our prayes may boast O'erwhelm'd the gentlest, storm'd the sternest heart. Dear are the days which made our annals bright, Friends of the stage! to whom both Players and Plays Must sue alike for pardon or for praise, Whose judging voice and eye alone direct The boundless power to cherish or reject; If e'er frivolity has led to fame, And made us blush that you forbore to blame; This greeting o'er, the ancient rule obey'd, Scenes not unworthy Drury's days of old! Still may we please-long, long may you preside! Sheridan. VERSES FOUND IN A SUMMER-HOUSE AT WHEN Dryden's fool,* "unknowing what he sought," Supplied, and amply too, by innocence. Did modern swains, possess'd of Cymon's powers, When vice and folly mark them as they pass, The filth they leave still points out where they crawl.† • "Cymon, a clown, who ne'er had dreamt of love." DRYDEN'S Modernization of Chaucer. † At Hales-Owen the poet Shenstone was buried, and "The Leasowes" was immediately contiguous to it. It was probably some desecration of the poet's tomb, or of his works of Cate, that gave birth to these lines. THE WALTZ : AN APOSTROPHIC HYMN. "Qualis in Eurote ripis, aut per juga Cynthi, VIRGIL "Such on Eurota's banks, or Cynthia's height, The quire of nymphs, and overtops their heads."-DRYDEN's Virgil. TO THE PUBLISHER. SIR,-I am a country gentleman of a midland county. I might have been a parliament-man for a certain borough, having had the offer of as many votes as General T. at the general election in 1812.* But I was all for domestic happiness; as, fifteen years ago, on a visit to London, I married a middle-aged maid of honour. We lived happily at Hornem Hall till last season, when my wife and I were invited by the Countess of Waltzaway (a distant relation of my spouse) to pass the winter in town. Thinking no harm, and our girls being come to a marriageable (or, as they call it, marketabie) age, and having besides a Chancery suit inveterately entailed upon the family estate, we came up in our old chariot, of which, by the bye, my wife grew so much ashamed in less than a week, that I was obliged to buy a second-hand barouche, of which I might mount the box, Mrs. H. says, if I could drive, but never see the inside-that place being reserved for the Honourable Augustus Tiptoe, her partner-general and opera-knight. Hearing great praises of Mrs. H.'s dancing (she was famous for birthnight minuets in the latter end of the last century), I unbooted, and went to a ball at the Countess's, expecting to see a country dance, or, at most, cotillons, reels, and all the old paces to the newest tunes. But judge of my surprise, on arriving, to see poor dear Mrs. Hornem with her arms half round the loins of a huge hussar-looking gentleman I never set eyes on before; and his, to say truth, rather more than half round her waist, turning round, and round, and round, to a d-d see-saw up-and-down sort of tune, that reminded me of the "Black joke," only more "affettuoso," till it made me quite giddy with wondering they were not so. By-and-by they stopped a bit, and I thought they would sit or fall down.-but no; with Mrs. H.'s hand on his shoulder, "quam familiariter" + (as Terence said when I was at school), they walked about a minute, and then at it again, like two cockchafers spitted upon the same bodkin. I asked what all this meant, when, with a loud laugh, a child no older than our Wilhelmina (a name i never heard but in the Vicar of Wakefield, though her mother would call her after the Princess of Swappenbach) said, "Lord, Mr. Hornem, can't you see they are valtzing!" or waltzing (I forget which); and then up she got, and her mother and sister, and away they went, and round-abouted it till suppertime. Now, that I know what it is, I like it of all things, and so does State of the poll (last day), 5. My Latin is all forgotten, if a man can be said to have forgotten what he never remembered; but I bought my title-page motto of a Catholic priest for a three-shilling bank token, after much haggling for the even sixpence. I grudged the money to a papist, being all for the memory of Perceval and "No popery," and quite regretting the downfall of the pope, because we can't burn him any more. |