The world it is empty, the heart will die, I've lived and loved, and that was to-day— LINES. SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF BERENGARIUS OB. ANNO DOM. 1088. O more 'twixt conscience staggering and the Να Pope, appear, Soon shall I now before my God REFLECTION ON THE ABOVE. Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed, All are not strong alike through storms to steer Right onward. What? though dread of threatened death And dungeon torture made thy hand and breath That truth, from which, through fear, thou twice didst start, Fear haply told thee, was a learned strife, Or not so vital as to claim thy life; And myriads had reached Heaven, who never knew Where lay the difference 'twixt the false and true! Ye, who secure 'mid trophies not your own, Like the weak worm that gems the starless night, And was it strange if he withdrew the ray The ascending day-star with a bolder eye SANCTI DOMINICI PALLIUM; A DIALOGUE BETWEEN POET AND FRIEND, FOUND WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF AT THE BEGINNING OF BUTLER'S BOOK OF THE CHURCH. POET. NOTE the moods and feeling's men betray, And heed them more than aught they do or say; The lingering ghosts of many a secret deed Still-born or haply strangled in its birth; These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed! These mark the spot where lies the treasure Worth! At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze ERE THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT. RE the birth of my life, if I wished it or no, No question was asked me-it could not be so! If the life was the question, a thing sent to try, And to live on be Yes; what can No be? to die. NATURE'S ANSWER. Is't return'd, as 'twas sent ? Is't no worse for the wear? Think first, what you are! Call to mind what you I were! gave you innocence, I gave you hope, Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope. Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair? * This phenomenon, which the author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passage of the Aids to Reflection: 66 Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music, on different characters, holds equally true of Genius ; as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognises it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."-Aids to Reflection, p. 220. POET. What think I now? Ev'n what I thought before ;— boasts tho' may deplore, What Still I repeat, words lead me not astray When the shown feeling points a different way. Snooth can say grace at slander's feast, And bless each haut-gout cooked by monk or priest; So much for you, my Friend! who own a Church, And who shall blame him that he purrs applause, Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt, I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws 27* THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS. I. FROM his brimstone bed at break of day, To visit his snug little farm the Earth, II. Over the hill and over the dale, And he went over the plain, And backward and forward he switched his long tail As a gentleman switches his cane. III. And how then was the Devil drest? Oh! he was in his Sunday's best: His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through. IV. He saw a Lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill hard by his own stable ; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel. V. He saw an Apothecary on a white horse Ride by on his vocations; And the Devil thought of his old friend VI. He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility; |