WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE.

I was not train'd in academic bowers,
And to those learned streams I nothing owe
Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow;
Mine have been anything but studious hours.
Yet can I fancy, wandering mid thy towers,
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap;

My brow seems tight'ning with the doctor's cap,
And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers.

Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain,

And my scull teems with notions infinite.

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach

Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein, And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite!

TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN THE "BLIND BOY."

RARE artist! who with half thy tools, or none,
Canst execute with ease thy curious art,
And press thy powerful'st meanings on the heart,
Unaided by the eye, expression's throne!
While each blind sense, intelligential grown
Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight;
Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might,
All motionless and silent seem to moan
The unseemly negligence of nature's hand,
That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine,
Oh mistress of the passions! artist fine!
Who dost our souls against our sense command,
Plucking the horror from a sightless face,
Lending to blank deformity a grace.

35*

WORK.

WHO first invented work, and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing spirit down

To the ever-haunting impunity

Of business in the green fields, and the town—
To plough, loom, anvil, spade-and oh! most sad,
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
Who but the being unbless'd, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
Task ever plies mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel→
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-
In that red realm from which are no returnings;
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye
He and his thoughts keep pensive working-day.

LEISURE.

THEY talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,
That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press,
Which only works and business can redress:
Of divine leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke
But might I, fed with silent meditation,
Assoiled live from that fiend occupation-
Improbus Labor, which my spirits hath broke-
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit:
Fling in more days than went to make the gem,
That crown'd the white top of Methusalem:
Yea, on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky,
The heaven-sweet burden of eternity.

DEUS NOBIS HÆC OTIA FECIT.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.

ROGERS, of all the men that I have known
But slightly, who have died, your brother's los
Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across
My mind an image of the cordial tone

Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest
I more than once have sat; and grieve to think,
That of that threefold cord one precious link
By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest.
Of our old gentry he appear'd a stem-
A magistrate who, while the evil-doer
He kept in terror, could respect the
And not for every trifle harass them,
As some divine, and laic, too oft do.
This man's a private loss, and public too.

poor,

THE GIPSY'S MALISON.

"SUCK, baby, suck, mother's love grows by giving,
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting;
Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.

Kiss, baby, kiss, mother's lips shine by kisses,
Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings
Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses
Tend thee the kiss that poisons mid caressings.

Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces,
Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging;
Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses
Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging."

So sang a wither'd beldam energetical,

And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical.

TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS,

PUBLISHED UNDER THE NAME OF BARRY CORNWALL.

LET hate or grosser heats their foulness mask
Under the vizor of a borrowed name;
Let things eschew the light deserving blame :
No cause hast thou to blush for thy sweet task.
"Marcian Colonna” is a dainty book;
And thy "Sicilian Tale" may boldly pass;
Thy "Dream" "bove all, in which, as in a glass,
On the great world's antique glories we may look.
No longer, then, as "lowly substitute,

FACTOR, OF PROCTOR, for another's gains,"
Suffer the admiring world to be deceived;
Lest thou thyself, by self of fame bereaved,
Lament too late the lost prize of thy pains,

And heavenly tunes piped through an alien flute.

TO J. S. KNOWLES, ESQ.,

ON HIS TRAGEDY OF VIRGINIUS.

TWELVE years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then
Esteemed you a perfect specimen

Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends
To teach us colder English how a friend's

Quick pulse should beat. I knew you brave, and plain,
Strong-sensed, rough-witted, above fear or gain;

But nothing further had the gift to espy.

Sudden you reappear. With wonder I

Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a scene

Only to his inferior in the clean

Passes of pathos: with such fence-like art

Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart.

Almost without the aid language affords,

Your piece seems wrought. That huffing medium, words (Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway Our shamed souls from their bias,) in your play

We scarce attend to.

Hastier passion draws
Our tears on credit: and we find the cause

Some two hours after, spelling o'er again

Those strange few words at ease, that wrought the pain.
Proceed, old friend; and, as the year returns,
Still snatch some new old story from the urns
Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before
Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you more.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERY-DAY BOOK."

I LIKE you and your book, ingenuous Hone!
In whose capacious, all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of tradition's shown;

And all that history-much that fiction-weaves

By every sort of taste your work is graced.
Vast stores of modern anecdote we find,
With good old story quaintly interlaced-
The theme as various as the reader's mind.

Rome's lie-fraught legends you so truly paint-
Yet kindly-that the half-turn'd Catholic
Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint,
And cannot curse the candid heretic.

Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page;
Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased behold,
And, proudly conscious of a purer age,

Forgive some fopperies in the times of old.

Verse-honouring Phoebus, father of bright days,
Must needs bestow on you both good and many,
Who, building trophies of his children's praise,
Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any.

Dan Phœbus loves your book-trust me, friend Hone-
The title only errs, he bids me say:

For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown,
He swears 'tis not a work of every day.

S 3