TO THE YOUNG ARTIST,

KAYSER OF KASERWERTH.

KAYSER ! to whom, as to a second self,

Nature, or Nature's next-of-kin, the Elf, Hight Genius, hath dispensed the happy skill To cheer or soothe the parting friend's Alas! Turning the blank scroll to a magic glass, That makes the absent present at our will; And to the shadowing of thy pencil gives Such seeming substance, that it almost lives.

Well hast thou given the thoughtful Poet's face ! Yet hast thou on the tablet of his mind

A more delightful portrait left behind—
Even thy own youthful beauty, and artless grace,
Thy natural gladness and eyes bright with glee !
Kayser! farewell!

Be wise! be happy! and forget not me.

1833.

JOB'S LUCK.*

SLY Beelzebub took all occasions

To try Job's constancy and patience;
He took his honours, took his health,
He took his children, took his wealth,
His camels, horses, asses, cows—

And the sly Devil did not take his spouse.

* Printed in The Morning Post, Sept. 26, 1801, with the title of The Devil Outwitted; and somewhat differently in The Keepsake for 1829.

But Heaven that brings out good from evil,
And loves to disappoint the Devil,
Had predetermined to restore
Twofold all Job had before,

His children, camels, horses, cows,-
Short-sighted Devil, not to take his spouse !

ON AN INSIGNIFICANT.

'TIS Cypher lies beneath this crust

Whom Death created into dust.

PROFUSE KINDNESS.

Νήπιοι οὐκ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ πάντος.—Hesiod.

WHAT a spring-tide of Love to dear friends in

a shoal!

Half of it to one were worth double the whole!

CHARITY IN THOUGHT.

To praise men as good, and to take them for such, Is a grace, which no soul can mete out to a

tittle;

Of which he who has not a little too much,

Will by Charity's gauge surely have much too little.

A THOUGHT SUGGESTED BY A VIEW OF SADDLEBACK IN CUMBERLAND.*

ON stern Blencartha's perilous height

The winds are tyrannous and strong;
And flashing forth unsteady light
From stern Blencartha's skiey height,
As loud the torrents throng!
Beneath the moon, in gentle weather,
They bind the earth and sky together.

But oh! the sky and all its forms, how quiet!
The things that seek the earth, how full of noise
and riot !

SONG, EX IMPROVISO,

ON HEARING A SONG IN PRAISE OF A

LADY'S BEAUTY. †

'TIS not the lily brow I prize,

Nor roseate cheeks nor sunny eyes,
Enough of lilies and of roses!

A thousand fold more dear to me
The look that gentle Love discloses,-
That look which Love alone can see.

Ἔρως ἄει λάληδρος έταιρος.

N many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal;

*The Amulet, 1833.

+ The Keepsake, 1830.

But in far more th' estranged heart lets know The absence of the love which yet it fain would show.

WHAT IS LIFE?*

RESEMBLES life what once was deem'd of
Too ample in itself for human sight? [light,
An absolute self-an element ungrounded—
All that we see, all colours of all shade

Is

By encroach of darkness made?—

very life by consciousness unbounded?

And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath, A war-embrace of wrestling life and death?

HUMILITY THE MOTHER OF CHARITY.

FRAIL creatures are we all! To be the best,

Is but the fewest faults to have :

Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest
To God, thy conscience, and the grave.

66

ON AN INFANT

WHICH DIED BEFORE BAPTISM.

BE, rather than be call'd, a child of God,"
Death whisper'd with assenting nod,

Its head upon its mother's breast,

*The Literary Souvenir, 1829.

The Baby bow'd, without demurOf the kingdom of the Blest

Possessor, not inheritor.

-E cœlo descendit yvwbɩ σeavтóv.-Juvenal.

Γνώθι σεαυτόν —and is this the prime

And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time !Say, canst thou make thyself ?-Learn first that

trade;

Haply thou mayst know what thyself had made. What hast thou, Man, that thou darest call thine

own ?

What is there in thee, Man, that can be known ?—
Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought,

A phantom dim of past and future wrought,
Vain sister of the worm,-life, death, soul, clod—
Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God!

Beareth all things.—2 Cor. xiii. 7.

ENTLY I took that which ungently came,

GENT

And without scorn forgave :-Do thou the

same.

A wrong done to thee think a cat's-eye spark Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart

dark.

Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin, Fear that the spark self-kindled from within,