STANZAS FOR MUSIC

THERE be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming,
And the midnight moon is weaving

Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean

BORN in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
Next-for some gracious service unexprest,
And from its wages only to be guess'd-
Raised from the toilet to the table,-where
Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.
With eye unmoved, and forehead unabash'd,
She dines from off the plate she lately wash'd.
Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie-
The genial confidante, and general spy-
Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess-
An only infant's earliest governess!
She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
That she herself, by teaching, learn'd to spell.
An adept next in penmanship she grows,
As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
What she had made the pupil of her art,
None know-but that high Soul secured the heart,
And panted for the truth it could not hear,
With longing breast and undeluded ear.
Foil'd was perversion by that youthful mind,
Which Flattery fool'd not-Baseness could not blind,
Deceit infect not-near Contagion soil-
Indulgence weaken-nor Example spoil-
Nor master'd Science tempt her to look down
On humbler talents with a pitying frown-
Nor Genius swell-nor Beauty render vain-
Nor Envy ruffle to retaliate pain-
Nor Fortune change-Pride raise-nor Passion bow
Nor Virtue teach austerity-till now.
Serenely purest of her sex that live,
But wanting one sweet weakness-to forgive,
Too shock'd at faults her soul can never know,
She deems that all could be like her below:
Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend,
For Virtue pardons those she would amend.

But to the theme :-now laid aside too long,
The baleful burden of this honest song-

.• Mrs. Charlmont.

Though all her former functions are no more,
She rules the circle which she served before.
If mothers-none know why-before her quake;
If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;
If early habits-those false links, which bind
At times the loftiest to the meanest mind-
Have given her power too deeply to instil
The angry essence of her deadly will;
If like a snake she steal within your walls,
Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
If like a viper to the heart she wind,

And leave the venom there she did not find;
What marvel that this hag of hatred works
Eternal evil latent as she lurks,

To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
Skill'd by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,

While mingling truth with falsehood-sneers with smiles

A thread of candor with a web of wiles;
A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
To hide her bloodless heart's soul harden'd scheming;
A lip of lies-a face form'd to conceal;
And, without feeling, mock at all who feel:
With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
A cheek of parchment-and an eye of stone.
Mark, how the channels of her yellow blood
Ooze through her skin, and stagnate there to mud,
Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale-
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colors in that soul or face)-
Look on her features! and behold her mind
As in a mirror of itself defined:
Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged-
There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
Yet true to "Nature's journeymen," who made
This monster when their mistress left off trade-
This female dog-star of her little sky,
Where all beneath her influence droop or die.

Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought,
Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought-
The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
May the strong curse of crush'd affections light
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black-as thy will for others would create:
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,-

The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
Ther., when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with

prayer,

Look on thine earthly victims-and despair!
Down to the dust!--and, as thou rott'st away,
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear-
Thy name-thy human name-to every eye
The climax of all scorn should hang on high,
Exalted o'er thy less abhorr'd compeers-
And festering in the infamy of years.

TO.

WHEN all around grew drear and dark,
And reason half withheld her ray-
And hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;

In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When dreading to be deem'd too kind,
The weak despair-the cold depart;

When fortune changed-and love fled far,
And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast.
Thou wert the solitary star

Which rose and set not to the last.

Oh! blest be thine unbroken light!

That watch'd me as a seraph's eye, And stood between me and the night, For ever shining sweetly nigh.

And when the cloud upon us came, Which strove to blacken o'er thy rayThen purer spread its gentle flame,

And dash'd the darkness all away.

Still may thy spirit dwell on mine,

And teach it what to brave or brookThere's more in one soft word of thine Than in the world's defied rebuke.

Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree, That still unbroke, though gently bent, Still waves with fond fidelity

Its boughs above a monument.

551

The winds might rend-the skies might pour, But there thou wert-and still would'st be Devoted in the stormiest hour

To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

But thou and thine shall know no blight,
Whatever fate on me may fall;

For heaven in sunshine will requite
The kind-and thee the most of all.

Then let the ties of baffled love

Be broken-thine will never break; Thy heart can feel--but will not move; Thy soul, though soft, will never shake. And these, when all was lost beside, Were found and still are fix'd in theeAnd bearing still a breast so tried, Earth is no desert-ev'n to me.

ODE.

[FROM THE FRENCH.]
I.

WE do not curse thee, Waterloo !
Though Freedom's blood thy plain bedew;
There 'twas shed, but is not sunk-
Rising from each gory trunk,

His sister, Mrs. Leigh.