Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

Death comes to all. Not earth's collected wealth, Golcondian diamonds and Peruvian gold,

Can gain from him the respite of an hour.
He wrests his treasure from the miser's grasp,
Dims the pale rose on beauty's fading cheeks,
Tears the proud diadem from kingly brows,
And breaks the warrior's adamantine shield.

Man yields to death; and man's sublimest works Must yield at length to Time. The proud one thinks Of life's uncertain tenure, and laments

His transitory greatness. While he boasts
His noble blood, from ancient kings derived,
And views with careless and disdainful eye
The humble and the poor, he shrinks in vain

From anxious thoughts, that teach his sickening heart,
That he is like the beings he contemns,

The creature of an hour; that when a few,

Few years have past, that little spot of earth,

That dark and narrow bed, which all must press,

Will level all distinction. Then he bids

The marble structure rise, to guard awhile,

A little while, his fading memory.

Thou lord of thousands! Time is lord of thee:
Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his.
And may protract the blow, but cannot bar
His certain course, nor shield his destined prey.
The wind and rain assail thy sumptuous domes :
They sink, and are forgotten. All that is

Must one day cease to be. The chiefs and kings,
That awe the nations with their pomp and power,
Shall slumber with the chiefs and kings of old:
And Time shall leave no monumental stone,
To tell the spot of their eternal rest.

A

CHORAL ODE.

[Date unknown.]

Όστις του πλεονος μέρους.

SOPHOCLES Edipus at Colonas.

LAS! that thirst of wealth and power
Should pass the bounds by wisdom laid,
And shun contentment's mountain-bower,

To chase a false and fleeting shade !
The torrid orb of summer shrouds
Its head in darker, stormier clouds
Than quenched its vernal glow;

And streams, that meet the expanding sea,
Resign the peace and purity

That marked their infant flow.

Go seek what joys, serene and deep,
The paths of wealth and power supply!
The eyes no balmy slumbers steep:
The lips own no satiety,

Till, where unpitying Pluto dwells,

And where the turbid Styx impels

Its circling waves along,

The pale ghost treads the flowerless shore,
And hears the unblest sisters pour

Their loveless, lyreless song.

Man's happiest lot is not to be:

And, when we tread life's thorny steep,
Most blest are they, who, earliest free,
Descend to death's eternal sleep.
From wisdom far, and peace, and truth,
Imprudence leads the steps of youth,
Where ceaseless evils spring:
Toil, frantic passion, deadly strife,
Revenge, and murder's secret knife,
And envy's scorpion sting.

Age comes, unloved, unsocial age,
Exposed to fate's severest shock,

270

"OH, NOSE OF WAX! TRUE SYMBOL OF THE MIND."

As to the ocean-tempest's rage

The bleak and billow-beaten rock.
There ills on ills commingling press,
Morose, unjoying helplessness,
And pain, and slow disease:

As, when the storm of winter raves,

The wild winds rush from all their caves,

To swell the northern seas.

"OH, NOSE OF WAX! TRUE SYMBOL OF THE

MIND."

[Date unknown.]

H, nose of wax! true symbol of the mind

[ocr errors]

Which fate and fortune mould in all mankind

(Even as the hand moulds thee) to foul or fair

Thee good John Bull for his device shall bear,
While Sawney Scot the ductile mass shall mould,
Bestowing paper and receiving gold.

Thy image shrined in studious state severe,

Shall grace the pile which Brougham and Campbell rear:
Thy name to those scholastic bowers shall pass
And rival Oxford's ancient nose of brass.

A GOODLYE BALLADE OF LITTLE JOHN: SHEWINGE HOW HE RAYSED A DYVELL, AND COULDE NOTTE

L

LAYE HYMME.

[Date unknown.]

FYTTE THE FIRST.

ITTLE John he sat in a lonely hall,

Mid spoils of the Church of old:
And he saw a shadowing on the wall,
That made his blood run cold.

He saw the dawn of a coming day,

Dim-glimmering through the gloom:
He saw the coronet pass away

From the ancient halls where it then held sway,
And the mitre it's place resume.

He saw, the while, through the holy pile
The incense vapour spread;

He saw the poor, at the Abbey door,
Receiving their daily bread.

He saw on the wall the shadows cast

Of sacred sisters three:

He blessed them not, as they flitted past :
But above them all he hated the last,
For that was Charitie.

Now down from its shelf a book he bore,
And characters he drew,

And a spell he muttered o'er and o'er,
Till before him cleft was the marble floor,
And a murky fiend came through.

"Now take thee a torch in thy red right hand,”

Little John to the fiend he saith:

"And let it serve as a signal brand,
To rouse the rabble, throughout the land,
Against the Catholic Faith."

Straight through the porch, with brandished torch,
The fiend went joyously out:

And a posse of parsons, established by law,
Sprang up, when the lurid flame they saw,
To head the rabble rout.

And braw Scots Presbyters nimbly sped
In the train of the muckle black de'il;
And, as the wild infection spread,
The Protestant hydra's every head

Sent forth a yell of zeal.

And pell-mell went all forms of dissent,

Each beating its scriptural drum ;

Wesleyans and Whitfieldites followed as friends,
And whatever in onion Iarian ends,

Et omne quod exit in hum.

And in bonfires burned ten thousand Guys,
With caricatures of the pious and wise,
'Mid shouts of goblin glee,

And such a clamour rent the skies,
That all buried lunatics seemed to rise,
And hold a Jubilee.

FYTTE THE SECOND.

The devil gave the rabble scope

And they left him not in the lurch: But they went beyond the summoner's hope; For they quickly got tired of bawling "No Pope !" And bellowed, "No State Church!"

"Ho!" quoth Little John, "this must not be:
The devil leads all amiss:

He works for himself, and not for me:
And straightway back I'll bid him flee
To the bottomless abyss."

Again he took down his book from the wall,
And pondered words of might:

He muttered a speech, and he scribbled a scrawl:
But the only answer to his call

Was a glimpse, at the uttermost end of the hall, Of the devil taking a sight.

And louder and louder grew the clang
As the rabble raged without :
The door was beaten with many a bang;
And the vaulted roof re-echoing rang
To the tumult and the shout.

The fiendish shade, on the wall portrayed,
Threw somersaults fast and free,

And flourished his tail like a brandished flail,
As busy as if it were blowing a gale,

And his task were on the sea.

« ForrigeFortsett »