I Knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near,
And I said, “If there ’s peace to be found in the world,
A heart that is humble might hope for it here!”
It was noon, and on flowers that languished around
In silence reposed the voluptuous bee;
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound...
Inscribed to R. Aiken, Esq.
“Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short but simple annals of the poor.”
—GRAY.
MY loved, my honored, much-respected friend,
No mercenary bard his homage pays:
With honest pride I scorn each...
From “The Traveller”
REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po,
Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door,
Or where Campania’s plain forsaken lies,
A weary waste expanding to the skies:
Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled...
From “The Traveller”
TURN me to survey
Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread:
No product here the barren hills afford
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword;
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But...
Friend after friend departs:
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
That finds not here an end;
Were this frail world our only rest,
Living or dying, none were blest.
Beyond the flight of time,
Beyond this vale of death,
There surely is some blessèd clime
Where life is not a breath,
...
There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;
O, the last ray of feeling and life must depart
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart!
Yet it was not that Nature had shed o’er the scene
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green;
’T was not the soft magic of streamlet or...
HE ’s gane, he ’s gane! he ’s frae us torn,
The ae best fellow e’er was born!
Thee, Matthew, Nature’s sel’ shall mourn
By wood and wild,
Where, haply, pity strays forlorn,
Frae man exiled.
Ye hills, near neebors o’ the starns,
That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
Ye cliffs, the haunts of...
And doth not a meeting like this make amends
For all the long years I ’ve been wand’ring away—
To see thus around me my youth’s early friends,
As smiling and kind as in that happy day?
Though haply o’er some of your brows, as o’er mine,
The snow-fall of Time may be stealing—what then?
Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine,...
“a Temple to Friendship,” cried Laura, enchanted,
“I ’ll build in this garden; the thought is divine.”
So the temple was built, and she now only wanted
An image of Friendship, to place on the shrine.
So she flew to the sculptor, who sat down before her
An image, the fairest his art could invent;
But so cold, and so dull, that the youthful...
WREATHE the bowl
With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
We ’ll take a flight
Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us!
Should Love amid
The wreaths be hid
That Joy, the enchanter, brings us,
No danger fear
While wine is...
