The Poetical Works of Thomas Pringle With A Sketch of his Life, by Leitch Ritchie |
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LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM. |
 | The Poetical Works of Thomas Pringle |  |
LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.
This fair Volume to our eye
Human life may typify.
View the new-born infant's face
Ere yet Mind hath stamped its trace,
Or the young brain begun to think—
'Tis like this book ere touched by ink.
Look again: As time flows by
Expression kindles in the eye,
And dawning Intellect appears
Gleaming through its smiles and tears;
Lightening up the living clay,
Year by year, and day by day;
While the Passions, as they change,
Write inscriptions deep and strange,
Telling to observant eyes
Life's eventful histories.
Human life may typify.
View the new-born infant's face
Ere yet Mind hath stamped its trace,
Or the young brain begun to think—
'Tis like this book ere touched by ink.
Look again: As time flows by
Expression kindles in the eye,
And dawning Intellect appears
Gleaming through its smiles and tears;
Lightening up the living clay,
Year by year, and day by day;
While the Passions, as they change,
Write inscriptions deep and strange,
Telling to observant eyes
Life's eventful histories.
Lady, even so thy book
By degrees shall change its look,
As each following leaf is fraught
With some penned or pictured thought,
Or admits the treasured claims
Of endeared and honoured names;
While gleams of genius and of grace,
Like fine expression in a face,
Lend even to what is dark or dull
Some bright tinge of the beautiful.
By degrees shall change its look,
191
With some penned or pictured thought,
Or admits the treasured claims
Of endeared and honoured names;
While gleams of genius and of grace,
Like fine expression in a face,
Lend even to what is dark or dull
Some bright tinge of the beautiful.
Farther still in graver mood
Trace we the similitude?
Apter yet the emblem grows
As we trace it to a close.
Life, with all its freaks and follies,
Mummeries and melancholies,
Fond conceits, ill-sorted matches,
Is—a book of shreds and patches;
Stained, perchance, with many a blot,
And passages were well forgot,
And vain repinings for the past:
While Time, who turns the leaves so fast,
(The hour-glass in his other hand
With its ever-oozing sand,)
Presents full soon the final page
To the failing eye of Age,
Scribbled closely to the ending—
And, if marred, past hope of mending.
Trace we the similitude?
Apter yet the emblem grows
As we trace it to a close.
Life, with all its freaks and follies,
Mummeries and melancholies,
Fond conceits, ill-sorted matches,
Is—a book of shreds and patches;
Stained, perchance, with many a blot,
And passages were well forgot,
And vain repinings for the past:
While Time, who turns the leaves so fast,
(The hour-glass in his other hand
With its ever-oozing sand,)
Presents full soon the final page
To the failing eye of Age,
Scribbled closely to the ending—
And, if marred, past hope of mending.
1828.
| The Poetical Works of Thomas Pringle | |