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2
A REVERIE.
“—incipe! nil est.
Culpantur frustra calami.
Hor. Ser. 2, 3.
Culpantur frustra calami.
Hor. Ser. 2, 3.
As thus I sate in musing mood,
With nought to break my solitude,
Mingling and mangling bits of rhymes
And changing each a thousand times;
Now catching at a straggling thought
And shifting it about, when caught,
To see in what form it would look
The best, in paper or in book;
And now, relinquishing as vain
Each futile project of my brain—
The candles had been long neglected,
And thieves too might have been detected,
Which both their reddening wicks infested,
Allowed to reign there unmolested;
'Twas then, when they began to glimmer,
Growing irregularly dimmer,
Now burning steady, dull, and slow,
And sinking gradually low;
Now quickening up, and shedding bright,
But wavering and trembling light;
That all my thoughts and projects gone,
And not one left to rhyme upon,
I dashed my pen into the fire,
And swore I would renounce the lyre.
1825
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