MISCELLANEOUS.

OX HER TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY.

Let not one be missing; nurse,

Saint-like seeming to direct him See them laid upon the hearse

To the Power that must protect him? Of infant slain by doom perverse.

Is she of the Heaven-born Three, Why should kings and nobles have

Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity; Pictured trophies to their grave;

Or some Cherub?
And we, churls, to thee deny
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie,

They you mention
A more harmless vanity ?

Far transcend my weak invention.
'Tis a simple Christian child,
Missionary young and mild,
From her stock of Scriptural knowledge,

Bible-taught without a college,
THE CHRISTENING.

Which by reading she could gather

Teaches bim to say OUR FATHER ARRAY'D-a half-angelic sight

To the common Parent, who In vests of pure Baptismal white,

Colour not respects, nor hue. The Mother to the Font doth bring

White and black in Him have part,
The little helpless nameless thing,

Who looks not to the skin, but heart.
With bushes soft and mild caressing,
At once to get a name and blessing.
Close by the babe the Priest doth stand,
The Cleansing Water at his hand,

TO A YOUNG FRIEND,
Which must assoil the soul within
From every stain of Adam's sin.

CROWN me a cheerful goblet, while I pray
The Infant eyes the mystic scenes,

A blessing on thy years, young Isola ; Nor knows what all this wonder means;

Young, but no more a child. How swift have And now he smiles, as if to say

flown “I am a Christian made this day;"

To me thy girlish times, a woman grown Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold,

Beneath

my heedless eyes ! in vain I rack Shrinking from the water cold,

My fancy to believe the almanac, Whose virtues, rightly understood,

That speaks thee Twenty-One. Thou shouldst Are, as Bethesda's waters, good.

have still Strange words — The World, The Flesh, The Remain'd a child, and at thy sovereign will Devil

Gambol'd about our house, as in times past. Poor Babe, what can it know of Evil ?

Ungrateful Emma, to grow up so fast, But we must silently adore

Hastening to leave thy friends ! — for which Mysterious truths, and not explore.

intent, Enough for him, in after-times,

Fond Runagate, be this thy punishment: When he shall read these artless rhymes, After some thirty years, spent in such bliss If, looking back upon this day

As this earth can afford, where still we miss With quiet conscience, he can say

Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old "I have in part redeem'd the pledge

As we whom thou hast left! That wish was Of my Baptismal privilege;

cold. And more and more will strive to flee

O far more aged and wrinkled, till folks say, All which my Sponsors kind did then renounce Looking upon thee reverend in decay, for me.”

“This Dame, for length of days, and virtues

rare, With her respected Grandsire may compare." Grandchild of that respected Isola,

Thou shouldst have had about thee on this day THE YOUNG CATECHIST.*

Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate WHILE this tawny Ethiop prayeth,

Their Pride grown up to woman's grave estate. Painter, who is she that stayeth

But they have died, and left thee, to advance By, with skin of whitest lustre,

Thy fortunes how thou may'st, and owe to chance Sunny locks, a shining cluster,

The friends which nature grudged. And thou

wilt find, • A picture by Henry Meyer, Esq.

Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind

To thee and thy deservings. That last strain
Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again
Another cheerful goblet, while I say
“Health, and twice health, to our lost Isola"

Mary, youngest of the three,
Laughing idler, full of glee,
Arm in arm does fondly chain her,
Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her--

But she's going

SHE IS GOING. For their elder Sister's hair Martha does a wreath prepare Of bridal rose, ornate and gay: To-morrow is the wedding day.

She is going

Vex not, maidens, nor regret
Thus to part with Margaret.
Charms like yours can never stay
Long within doors; and one day

You'll be going.

SONNETS.

HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS.

TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER

IN THE “BLIND BOY." By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk : RARE artist! who with half thy tools, or none, The fair Maria, as a vestal, still;

Canst execute with ease thy curious art, And Emma brown, exuberant in talk.

And press thy powerful'st meanings on the With soft and Lady speech the first applies

heart, The mild correctives that to grace belong Unaided by the eye, expression's throne ! To her redundant friend, who her defies

While each blind sense, intelligential grown With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight : O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might, What music from your happy discord rises,

All motionless and silent seem to moan While your companion hearing each, and seeing, The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes ; That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, This lesson teaching, which our souls may O mistress of the passions; artist fine ! strike,

Who dost our souls against our sense command, That harmonies may be in things unlike ! Plucking the horror from a sightless face,

Lending to blank deformity a grace.

WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE.

WORK. I was not train'd in Academic bowers, And to those learned streams I nothing owe Who first invented work, and bound the free Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; And holyday-rejoicing spirit down Mine have been anything but studious hours. To the ever-haunting importunity Yet can I fancy, wandering mid thy towers, Of business in the green fields, and the town, Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap;

To plough, loom, anvil, spade-and oh ! most sad, My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, To that dry drudgery at the desk’s dead wood ? And I walk gowned ; feel unusual powers. Who but the Being unblest, alien from good. Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ;

Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, And my skull teems with notions infinite. That round and round incalculably reelBe still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach For wrath divine hath made him like a wheelTruths, which transcend the searching School. In that red realm from which are no returnings: men's vein,

Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite ! He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working day.

Of our old gentry he appear'd a stem-
LEISURE.

A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer
Taey talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,

He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth And not for every trifle harass them,

As some, divine and laic, too oft do.
press,
Which only works and business can redress :

This man's a private loss, and public too
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.
But might I, fed with silent meditation,

THE GIPSY'S MALISON,
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation-

"SUCK, baby, suck! mother's love grows by Improbus Labor, which my spirits hath broke

giving; I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit:

Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by Fling in more days than went to make the

wasting; gein

Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living That crown'd the white top of Methusalem :

Hands thee the cup that shall be death in Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,

tasting
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky,
The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity.

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. TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.

Hang, baby, hang ! mother's love loves such ROGERS, of all the men that I have known

forces, But slightly, who have died, your Brother's Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy loss

clinging; Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across Black manhood comes, when violent lawless My mind an image of the cordial tone Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." I more than once have sat; and grieve to think,

So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical, That of that threefold cord one precious link And bann'd the ungiving door with lips proBy Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. phetical.

DEUS NOBIS HEO OTIA PECIT.

courses

COMMENDATORY VERSES, ETC.

TO J. S. KNOWLES, ESQ.

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

scene

ON HIS TRAGEDY OF VIRGINIUS.

Only to his inferior in the clean TWELVE years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and Passes of pathos: with such fence like art then

Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart. Esteemed you a perfect specimen

Almost without the aid language affords, Of those fine spirits warm-sould Ireland sends, Your piece seems wrought. That huffing To teach us colder English how a friend's

medium, words, Quick pulse should beat. I know you brave, (Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway and plain,

Our shamed souls from their bias) in your Strong-sensed, rough-witted, above fear or gain; play But nothing further had the gift to espy. We scarce attend to. Hastier passion draws Sudden you reappear. With wonder I

Our tears on credit: and we find the cause

Some two hours after, spelling o'er again Verse-honouring Phæous, Father of bright Days, Those strange few words at ease, that wrought Must needs bestow on you both good and the pain.

many,
Proceed, old friend ; and, as the year returns, Who, building trophies of his Children's praise,
Still snatch some new old story from the urns Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any.
Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before
Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you Dan Phæbus loves your book-trust me, friend

Hone
The title only errs, he bids me say :

For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown,
TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS,

He swears, 'tis not a work of every day.

more.

PUBLISHED UNDER THE NAME OF BARRY CORNWALL.

ON HIS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POEMS OP MR, ROGERS.

66

9

glass,

LET hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask
Under the vizor of a borrow'd name;

TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ.
Let things eschew the light deserving blame :
No cause bast thou to blush for thy sweet task. CONSUMMATE Artist, whose undying name
Marcian Colonna” is a dainty book;

With classic Rogers shall go down to fame,
And thy “Sicilian Tale” may boldly pass ; Be this thy crowning work! In my young days
Thy
Dream 'bove all, in which, as in a How often have I, with a child's fond gaze,

Pored on the pictur'd wonders* thou hadst done: On the great world's antique glories we may Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison ! look.

All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view; No longer then, as “lowly substitute,

I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. Factor, or PROCTER, for another's gains,"

But, above all, that most romantic tale +
Suffer the admiring world to be deceived; Did o'er my raw credulity prevail,
Lest thou thyself, by self of fame bereaved, Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things,
Lament too late the lost prize of thy pains, That serve at once for jackets and for wings.
And heavenly tunes piped through an alien Age, that enfeebles other men's designs,
flute.

But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines.
In several ways distinct you make us feel
Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel.

Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; TO THE EDITOR OF THE “EVERY-DAY

And warmly wish you Titian's length of days. BOOK."

weaves.

I LIKE you, and your book, ingenuous Hone !
In whose capacious all-embracing leaves

TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE.
The very marrow of tradition's shown;
And all that history-much that fiction — What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate

Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate ?

Good sense-good humour ;-these are triviad By every sort of taste your work is graced.

things, Vast stores of modern anecdote we find, Dear M-, that each trite encomiast sings. With good old story quaintly interlaced But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt The theme as various as the reader's mind. From every low-bred passion, where contempt,

Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found Rome's lie-fraught legends you so truly paint A harbour yet; an understanding sound;

Yet kindly,—that the half-turn'd Catholic Just views of right and wrong; perception full Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint, Of the deform'd, and of the beautiful, And cannot curse the candid heretic.

In life and manners; wit above her sex,

Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks; Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, page;

To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth; Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased be- A noble nature, conqueror in the strife hold,

Of conflict with a hard discouraging life, And, proudly conscious of a purer age,

* Iustrations of the British Novelista, Forgive some fopperies in the times of old.

+ Peter Wixkire.