Young courage, buoyant on the venturous surge, Swims light and joyous with the out-bound tide, And brings a freight of crimson shells, and weeds, And wreathed trumpets, curiously convolved, So childhood passes—but the whistling breeze Sinks sudden in the darkness of the waves, Where will he go? To lands of pearl and gold Wakeful and cautious cruise? or launching forth On the vast main, spread every glittering sail But hold-no more.— Too long we dally with a quaint conceit, Thrice happy they, who rest, ere day declines, Which thou hast earned-may worthily rejoice, Placidly smiling in their calm old age, And blessing Heaven that they can bless the day When thou wast born. TO A POSTHUMOUS INFANT. CHILD of woman, and of Heaven, Of half thy heritage of love Was drawn from atmosphere of death Smiler, that shalt ne'er beguile, Father's tear with baby smile, Never laugh on father's knee, Knows thy father aught of thee ? May the spirit of the Blest, Look upon its earthly nest? Breathe upon thine infant slumbers, To form, "to kindle, or controul?" His own, the new-born fatherless? HOMER. Far from all measured space, yet clear and plain One steadfast light gleams through the dark, and long, How fortified with all the numerous train Of human truths, Great Poet of thy kind, When Priam wept, or shame-struck Helen pined. VALENTINE. TO A FAIR ARTISTE. Written in 1813. These, if not the first verses that I ever wrote, are the first with which I succeeded in pleasing even myself:-in fact, the first in which I was able to express a preconceived thought in metre. I have selected them from a mass of juvenile, or more properly, puerile poetry, not as any better, or much worse, than the rest, but from the pleasant associations connected with them. It will do nobody any harm, and to some may be an agreeable remembrancer of old times. The young lady to whom it was addressed is the eldest daughter of the late William Green, an artist of great merit, who possessed a true sense of the beautiful in nature. The lady is now a wife and mother, and probably regards the pictorial skill of her youth, and the compliments it may have gained her, as things that have been. O, MISTRESS of that lovely art Which can to shadows form impart― Can fix those evanescent tints, Fainter by far than lovers' hints, And bring the scenes we love to mind, |