Woe! woe to Tyrants! from the lyre And not unhallowed was the page Love listening while the Lesbian Maid O ye, who patiently explore That were, indeed, a genuine birth Of genius from the dust: What Horace gloried to behold, R CVI ODE TO LYCORIS: MAY 1817 I AN age hath been when Earth was proud To be sustained; and Mortals bowed Who then, if Dian's crescent gleamed, II In youth we love the darksome lawn Then, Twilight is preferred to Dawn, Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Thee, thee my life's celestial sign!) Pleased with the harvest hope that runs Pleased while the sylvan world displays Its ripeness to the feeding gaze; Pleased when the sullen winds resound the knell Of the resplendent miracle. III But something whispers to my heart That, as we downward tend, Lycoris life requires an art Seem to recal the Deity Of youth into the breast: May pensive Autumn ne'er present Still, as we nearer draw to life's dark goal, CVII THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS WE walked along, while bright and red And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said, "The will of God be done!" A village schoolmaster was he, With hair of glittering grey; As blithe a man as you could see On a spring holiday. And on that morning, through the grass, And by the steaming rills, We travelled merrily, to pass A day among the hills. "Our work," said I, 66 was well begun, Then, from thy breast what thought, So sad a sigh has brought?" A second time did Matthew stop; Upon the eastern mountain-top, "Yon cloud with that long purple cleft Brings fresh into my mind A day like this which I have left And just above yon slope of corn Such colours, and no other, Were in the sky, that April morn, Of this the very brother. With rod and line I sued the sport Which that sweet season gave, And, to the church-yard come, stopped short Beside my daughter's grave. Nine summers had she scarcely seen, The pride of all the vale ; And then she sang;-she would have been A very nightingale. |