University of Virginia Library

Born of poor parents, and a favourite child,
The youth of Alfred was untamed and wild.
Quick to receive, tenacious to retain,
And fond of learning—he was all in vain;
Indulgence narrowing e'en the span of time
Spared to improvement in his boyhood's prime.
Hence on his soul the lamp of classic lore
Its hallowed brilliance never deigned to pour—
A light deceptive when to dullness given,
But dealt to Genius, 'tis a light from heaven!
Yet skill was his to read and understand
The nervous language of his native land.
O'er England's tuneful page, when yet a boy,
He hung with unexpressed and speechless joy;
And while enraptured with his country's lyre,
The Muse laid on his heart her touch of fire!
Nor slept his heart beneath it, but replied
With the strong throb of welcome and of pride,
And vowed eternal constancy to one
By whom a new existence was begun.
Thenceforth to him the sky—or brightly starred,
Or when its morning blue no vapour marred—
The mountain wild, the forest and the glen
Had language never heard by common men!
Yet his was not the perseverance strong,
Which hour by hour is exercised in song,
Which rather forces than submits to ask
The aid of Inspiration to his task:
He seized his lyre, if Inspiration came,
And brushed it, glowing with a minstrel's flame;
But were her smile in gay caprice denied,
Like idle toy he threw his lyre aside.
Prompt at each call of passion or of whim,
Verse, but by moments, had a charm for him.

Aye, prompt at passion's every call was he!
From maid to maid he roved, as flits the bee
Amid young flowers—ah! not, like that, to sip
Of each pure blossom with untainted lip,
And leave it pure as ever. Alfred's kiss
Was blight to maiden bloom and maiden bliss.
A practised Angler in Love's summer deeps,
That eager throbbing of the heart when leaps
To the fine fraud the prey—which is a sign
Of skilless hand, and mars its own design—
With him was over. Cool and calm, he knew
His art successful, and his victim drew
From playfulness and freedom to his will,
With nerve unfluttered, and remorseless skill.
Deem him not blest!—If something like a sigh,
When fair in death the speckled captives lie,
May swell the captor's bosom, Woman's shame
A pang more deep and lasting well may claim.
Deem him not blest! Believe the poet, none
Find that in many all may find in one.
A truth which Alfred owned, when Lucy's eye,
Tenderly blue as April's morning sky—
Her lip like June's first rose-bud—and her form
Slight as the lily's bending in the storm—
First charmed him into virtue. Here he fixed,
And, dreaming now of happiness unmixed
With one whose virgin fame no stigma knew,
He swore, upon the altar, to be true.