ÀҾ˹éÒ˹ѧÊ×Í
PDF
ePub

III.

And not alone the written symbols show
Your spirits' sacred stores of love and truth,
Art's glorious magic bids the canvass glow

With all your grace and loveliness and youth;
The fairy forms that in my native land

Oft filled my fond heart with a parent's pride, Are gathered near me on this foreign strand, And smilingly, in these strange halls, reside; And almost I forget an exile's doom,

For while your filial eyes around me gleam, Each scene and object breathes an air of home, And time and distance vanish like a dream!

IV.

Oh! when sweet Memory's radiant calm comes o'er
The weary soul, as moonlight glimmerings fall

O'er the hushed ocean, forms beloved of yore
And joys long fled, her whispers soft recall;
At such an hour I live and smile again,

As light of heart as in that golden time
When, as a child, I trod the vernal plain,

Nor knew the shadow of a care or crime.
Nor dream of death, nor weariness of life,
Nor freezing apathy, nor fierce desire,
Then chilled a thought with unborn rapture rife,
Or seared my breast with wild ambition's fire.

V.

From many a fruit and flower the hand of Time

Hath brushed the bloom and beauty; yet mine eye, Though Life's sweet summer waneth, and my prime Of health and hope is past, can oft espy

Amid the fading wilderness around

Such lingering hues as Eden's holy bowers

In earth's first radiance wore, and only found
Where not a cloud of sullen sadness lours.
Oh! how the pride and glory of this world
May pass unmirrored o'er the darkened mind,
Like gilded banners o'er the grave unfurled,
Or Beauty's witcheries flashed upon the blind.

VI.

Though this frail form hath felt the shafts of pain,
Though my soul sickens for her native sky,
In visionary hours my thoughts regain

Their early freshness, and soon check the sigh
That sometimes from mine inmost heart would swell
And mar a happier mood. Oh! then how sweet,
Dear Boys! upon remembered bliss to dwell,

And here your pictured lineaments to greet!
'Till Fancy, bright Enchantress, shifts the scene
To British ground, and musical as rills,
Ye laugh and loiter in the meadows green,
Or climb with joyous shouts the sunny hills!
Calcutta, September 4, 1834.

LINES

WRITTEN ON THE RUINS OF RAJHMAHAL.

HAIL, stranger, hail! whose eye shall here survey
The path of Time, where ruin marks his way,
When wildly moans the solemn midnight bird,
And the gaunt jackal's piercing cry is heard;
If thine the soul with sacred ardour fraught,
Rapt in the poet's dream, or sage's thought,
To thee, these mouldering walls a voice shall raise,
And sadly tell how earthly pride decays;

How human hopes, like human works, depart,

And leave behind the ruins of the heart!

SONNET.

EVENING, ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES.

I WANDERED thoughtfully by Gunga's shore,
While the broad sun upon the slumbering wave
Its last faint flush of golden radiance gave,
And tinged with tenderest hues some ruins hoar.
Methinks this earth had never known before
A calm so deep-'twas silent as the grave.
The smallest bird its light wing could not lave
In the smooth flood, nor from the green-wood soar,
If but the tiniest branch its pinions stirred

Or shook the dew-drops from the leaves, unheard.

Like pictured shadows 'gainst the western beam
The dark boats slept, while each lone helmsman stood
Still as a statue !—the strange quietude

Enthralled my soul like some mysterious dream!

SONNET-GRIEF.

IMPASSIONED grief is dumb-no sign or sound
Can form its faithful language. Sorrow's dart
In fevered breasts awakes an inward smart

That friendship may not share. Oh! curse profound,
To bear each maddening passion darkly bound
Within that fearful cell, the shrouded heart!

The quivering lip, the quick convulsive start,

But feebly tell the strife. The crowd around
When sinks the strong man 'neath the sullen stream

Thus see but bubbles rise,-these ill reveal

The struggler's pangs! When mourners pant and teem
With secret thought, and voiceless anguish feel,
The world's calm brow-the charms of nature seem

To mock the smothered soul's unheard appeal!

ON CARE AND CONDENSATION IN WRITING.

When Apelles was reproached with the paucity of his productions, and the incessant attention with which he re-touched his pieces, he condescended to make no other answer than that he painted for perpetuity.

The Rambler.

Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only in three days composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred : Thou tell'st truth (quoth he); but here is the difference; thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages.

Webster's Dedication to the Reader of the White Devil, or Vittoria
Corombona.'

:

THERE are some writers who seem to regard mere quickness and facility of production as of more importance than the quality of the thing produced. They insult the public with a flippant boast of the little time which they have thought it necessary to bestow upon a work intended for its acceptance, and make that a subject of triumph which calls for an apology. If the public were in a state of intellectual deprivation, and were too voracious to be nice, these rapid writers might be looked upon as benefactors :but the case is precisely the reverse; the world abounds in books, both good and bad. There is at all events no demand for a greater number of the latter kind. We can afford to wait for the result of an author's best exertions, and are not obliged to accept with gratitude the first crude and hurried productions that he is disposed to offer*. It is not the task of a day for a man to enter into competition with such writers as Shakespeare and Milton, or Byron and Wordsworth, or to produce a work of whatever kind, which the world would not willingly let die. A reader is as little curious about the number of hours which

* I hate all those nonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his writing a play in a morning before breakfast. He had time enough to do it after.Hazlitt.

G

a poet may have taken to write his verses, as about the number

of arms or legs of his study chair. The question is, whether the verses are good or bad, and not how, when, or where, they were composed. Even the age of a writer is a consideration of very slight importance. His years have no inseparable connection Iwith his works. The latter stand alone in the world's eye, and are judged of by their intrinsic merit, and by this alone must

they live or die. There are no works in the language that have been long popular merely on account of the precocity of the author. The peculiar character and condition of a young poet may excite for a while the generous sympathy of the public mind, and direct a friendly attention to his productions, as in the case of Kirke White and Chatterton; but this adventitious popularity can never last. These two unhappy youths have already lost their first bloom of reputation, and we begin to value their productions according to their intrinsic worth alone, which, though far from being inconsiderable, has been greatly overrated. If their writings had been entirely destitute of genuine merit, the circumstances with which they were connected would not have saved them from an almost instantaneous oblivion. Who now reads Dermody* or Blackett? Southey's friend Jones, the butler,

* When only ten years of age, Dermody was accustomed to translate a short poem from the Greek or Latin, with the same ease and rapidity, with which a maturer genius would write a familiar private letter. Some of these translations are preserved in the account of his life, but they form no portion of the permanent literature of his country. The effusions of facility and precocity may be a nine days' wonder, but no more. Dermody was like Master Betty, the actor, who was only a surprising boy, and who became but an ordinary man. Untimely fruits rarely ripen. Dermody was the son of a respectable schoolmaster, and in his ninth year, was actually in the situation of a teacher of Greek and Latin in his father's establishment. Yet he lived to the age of twenty-seven, and though a prolific writer, left nothing behind him that the world will care to preserve. His earliest productions were his best, but even these have very little intrinsic merit. Men of true genius have been seldom remarkable in their childhood for any manifest superiority of talent. Great intellectual power is usually tardy in its development. There is often a seeming sluggishness or obtuseness in the early years of those gifted persons who subsequently tower above their

« ¡è͹˹éÒ´Óà¹Ô¹¡ÒõèÍ
 »