207 SONNETS. TO THOMAS BARNES, ESQ. WRITTEN FROM HAMPSTEAD. DEAR Barnes, whose native taste, solid and clear, The throng of life has strengthened without harm, You know the rural feeling, and the charm Or noise of numerous bliss from distant sphere. This charm our evening hours duly restore,- Or watch-dog, or the ring of frosty road. Wants there no other sound then?-Yes, one more, The voice of friendly visiting, long owed. TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET. GREEN little vaulter in the sunny grass, Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong At your clear hearts; and both seem giv'n to earth To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth. TO KOSCIUSKO WHO NEVER FOUGHT EITHER FOR BONAPARTE OR THE ALLIES. 'Tis like thy patient valour thus to keep, While Freedom's ill-found amulet still is made Of selfish mockeries. There, as in the sweep Of stormier fields, thou earnest with thy blade, There came a wanderer, borne from land to land Upon a couch, pale, many-wounded, mild, His brow with patient pain dulcetly sour. Men stoop'd, with awful sweetness, on his hand, And kissed it; and collected Virtue smiled, To think how sovereign her enduring hour. P TO STOTHARD. THY fancy lives in a delightful sphere, For never since those southern masters fine, Has the true woman's gentle mien divine Looked so, as in those breathing heads of thine, Therefore, against our climate's chilly hold, A THOUGHT OF THE NILE. Ir flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, And times and things, as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands, Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands That roamed through the young earth, the glory extreme Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands. Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong, As of a world left empty of its throng, And the void weighs on us; and then we wake, Our own calm journey on for human sake. |