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159

SONG

The smile that now is bright'ning
Thy tender cheek and lucid eye,
Is like the summer light'ning
Which flashes o'er this evening sky;
160

So innocently does it grace
Thy gentle, pensive, modest face.
The frown which passing over
Thy features, scarcely dims their day,
May even please thy lover,
For like a sunny cloud in May,
Although it change, it cannot chase
The glories of that heavenly face.
The blush that now adorning
Thy cheek, sheds beauty on my sight,
Is like the rosy morning
That dawns upon a lovely night;
For so this last charm takes the place,
The former held in thy sweet face.
161

SONG

Oh, maiden fair, thy pure and peaceful breast
Glows not like some we too oft trust in vain,
As erring sea-birds fondly stoop for rest
When winds are strong, upon the restless main:
Yet, maiden fair, thine eyes shed cheerful light,
Like that of those twin-stars which still the storm,
For thro' them looks the soul that makes them bright,
Mild as thy speech, and lovely as thy form.
Oh, maiden fair, to those auspicious eyes
No evil passions e'er have sent a tear,
Nor envious, nor repining thoughts, with sighs,
Disturbed thy quiet bosom's native cheer:
So, maiden fair, though richly colored rays
In yon unclouded sun's clear beams combine,
More happy gleams compose the light that plays
Gently in that calm thoughtful glance of thine.
162

THE CARRIER'S ADDRESS TO THE PATRONS OF THE MARYLANDER

Health, Patrons, and prosperity!—once more
Time, like the snake that was in days of yore,
His symbol, casts the old year as it were
His slough, and in the new, shows fresh and fair.
As rose the prophet at the witch's call,
His visage mantled in a gloomy pall,
Today th' enchantress Fancy, bids arise
The shadowy future to our eager eyes.
Let Fear to others paint the face beneath,
In hues of sadness, misery, and death:
For you may cheer of mind and hope portray
A smiling aspect brilliant as the day,
Replete with promise of auspicious hours,
And lives like path-ways strewed with fragrant flowers.
The past is past—its pains should merely seem
The unimportant shadows of a dream:
If to its parted pleasures memory sends
A thought, regard them but as absent friends.
“Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest,”
So let the old-year vanish to its rest.
Not with it will depart your honest zeal
163

In his behalf, whose weal is public weal,—
Th' illustrious Statesman's, whose contested cause
Is that of union, liberty, and laws,—
The cause, at which, it will be prov'd again,
Slander's fell vipers hissed and hiss in vain.
But this is New-Year's day—unwilling we
To mar its wonted, old festivity!—
Bright be each hearth, and plentiful each board,
Upon its throne sit light each bosom's lord;
And may no generous hand by cold distress
Be closed to him who bears this poor address!!
Enjoy not, oh! the festival alone,
But make his New-Year merry as your own.
164

THE BEAUTY—a Fragment

“Qua puella nihil umquam festivius, amabilius, nec modo longiore vita, sed prope immortalitate dignius vidi.”

—Pliny [Jr., Epistolae, V, xvi, 1].

All history is but a smoky column
By heated minds sent up into the past;
Vain, unsubstantial, mutable, and solemn,
It soars, to terminate in clouds at last;
It is unsolid at its very base—
What should it be in any loftier place?
I turn away, then, and disdain to borrow,
Thou authorized romance, a theme from thee,
False record of true folly, guilt and sorrow,
That have been, are, and shall not cease to be!
And lingering Memory, led by Time along,
Reverts to one deserving of my song.
Amid the common crowd, she seemed a grain
Of gold among the sands of life's dull stream;
She cheered this sleep, perturbed and full of pain,
Which men call life, like some delightful dream;
So, as I see such seldom, she was not
Calmly beheld, nor soon to be forgot.
I speak not of the form that blest the sight
Of her beholder—for it fills his mind,
165

And verse to others about charms so bright,
Were like discourse on sunbeams to the blind;
Suffice it then to say, no fairer one
Hath ever cast a shadow from the sun.
In her fine fancy lovely thoughts disported
Like Naiads playing amid classic waters:
Nature gave her the mental grace that's courted
Vainly from art, by earth's less gifted daughters;
Lodged in the beauteous person of this woman,
The soul, “at Rome,” conformed and was a Roman.
The signs of genius on her face were seen,
That dangerous but fascinating boon,
And gentle passions ruled her, as a queen
Rules in the east—for as the shining moon
Dims the thick stars that gem a summer's night,
Her modesty obscured these lights with light.
Her voice was sweet as she was—with one lay
She stilled the spell-bound phantoms of the main,
As Indian wizards used to charm away
166

Less baneful reptiles from their native plain;
For ev'n in speech her soft tones could delight
Like music heard in visions of the night.
Enough;—on graver subjects I have mused
Too much, as was my pleasure, pain, or duty—
My heart and harp have been too long disused,
To celebrate aright this perfect beauty.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
167

THE GRAVE

“Oh! to possess such lustre—and then lack!”
—[Byron,] Don Juan [III, lxix, 8].

Beneath these rankly spreading weeds,
This lowly mound, and dreary stone,
The sordid earth worm darkly feeds
On one men loved to look upon:—
Of gentle race and beauty rare,
The land delightingly she ranged,
And now she slumbers deeply there,
Ah! the heart aches to think how changed.
I saw her once in life, and said
So beautiful a thing could not
But breathe awhile, and then be made
To share in death the common lot;—
'Twas idly thought!—her form so fair
Is buried in this narrow cave;
But late she lit this upper air,
And now—I look upon her grave!
I mourn for her, though nought to me
In kindred, or indeed in heart;
Save something that I liked to see
And wished not ever to depart:—
168

A pleasant sight—a creature I
Gazed on, in no unquiet mood,
And turned from most unwillingly
To glance on things of meaner blood.
A selfish grief! she lies within
A place of solitary rest;
Where care shall never entrance win,
Nor anguish wring her lovely breast!
Light hearted girl! I would that thou
Could'st change thy state with me,
That I might sleep the tomb below,
And sunlight shine again on thee.
169

ODE

To the Twelfth-Night Queen

Hommage à la beauté

Though beauty's gentle royalty
Doth need no coronation,
We place a diadem on thee,
And hail thine elevation.
Unchallenged—for “the right divine,”
To homage in such forms as thine,
Surrounding eyes must own,
From our subjected hearts, fair Queen,
We gladly bless thine opening reign,
And bow before thy throne.
That throne should be as one of flowers,
Free from the thorns that lie
Thickly about the painful hours
Of common sovereignty.
The pleasurable cares that wait
Upon thy shortlived queenly state,
To those of monarchs are,
As the light crown thy brows have graced
To that on regal temples placed,
More heavy—not so fair.
Titania of this fairy-eve!
Rule happily thy year;
170

Thy power no human heart can grieve,
Nor cost like most a tear.
And when is done thy gentle reign,
Become one bosom's queen again;
And deem, as many deem,
The kingdom upon earth most blest
Is that made in one loving breast,
And floating down life's stream.

MELANCHOLY'S CURSE OF FEASTS

Pale, funeral flowers
His drinking garlands twine;
The star, named “Wormwood”, fall
On the grape's tears, his wine!
171

A lacrymary glass
To him his goblet be;
Along the lighted board,
No gladness let him see!
Hang shadowy skeletons
In his Egyptian halls;
Be dark handwritings traced
On his Assyrian walls!
Let each vase semble well
A cinerary urn;
Its fruit, to ashes like
The dead sea apples, turn!
Thus into wretched mirth
Of hours, his life compress,—
A miserable mass
Of grief and drunkenness.
173

CLEONICE (fragments)

He starts, he strikes—whose life-blood wets his blade?
Alas, 'tis that of the Byzantine maid!—
Despair, false satrap!—what avail thee now
Platea's laurels wreath'd about thy brow?—
They may perchance avert the lightning's force,
But not the fiery arrows of remorse.
To guard thy haunted solitude from pain,
Those Median and Egyptian slaves are vain;
Thine oriental feasts and Persian state,
The pomps Barbaric which around thee wait,
Appease not, cannot unto sleep persuade
Unhappy Cleonice's angry shade.
Seek if thou wilt the blooming royal bride,
To thine ambitious fancy long allied;
Describe a woman once divine and fair
Now ashes, and a sprite with dabbled hair
Say that, repeating with vindictive air,—
“Go to the doom that pride and lust prepare,”
It nightly comes to trouble thy repose
Till Gods, men, fiends, appear alike thy foes;
Let the great King, thy master and her sire,
Its absence from thy midnight couch require;
174

Then, if his voice be unavailing, lie
With Cleonice yet—despair and die!
—The moon had set
But countless stars, like strange unpitying eyes,
Looked down, and feasted on my miseries.
175

CORNELIUS AGRIPPA

[_]

Henry Cornelius Agrippa was born of a noble family, at Cologne, Sept. 14, 1486—entered the service of the Emperor Maximilian—served in Italy seven years—became a Doctor of Laws and Physic—was knighted on the field of battle—knew 8 languages—pretended to have found the philosopher's stone—wrote the “Treatise of the Excellence of Women”—was pensioned by Francis Ist. Invited, A. D. 1529, by Henry VIII, Margaret of Austria, Charles V, and other sovereigns —appointed Historiographer to Charles V— promised Bourbon victory, but forgot to predict his death.

Died at Grenoble, A. D. 1535; according to some authorities, in great misery.

For his fabulous adventure with the boarder and

176

devil at Louvain, see the “Disquisitiones Magicæ” of Martin Del Rio, and Bayle's Dict[ionary].

Hast ever read, my gentle reader, pray,
Of one Agrippa?—Aught? you have—if not
Elsewhere, you've seen him mentioned in the Lay
Of that more potent wizard, Walter Scott,
Who tells in numbers half as sweet as mine
How he showed Surrey his fair Geraldine.
As for his probity, I praise it not;
For often travelling with empty pockets,
Instead of paying honestly his shot
In angels, nobles, marks, sequins, or ducats,
He gave for board and lodging what seemed cash,
But turned as soon as he was gone to trash.
His circulating medium was some scraps,
In fact, of paper, and had seen no mint;
And this his magic, hazarding perhaps
At paper-currency an early hint,
Mine host deluded into the condition
(See Shakespeare) of “a scurvy politician.”
177

Why should we censure him?—such acts are known
To be most common 'mongst the wise and free;
The glorious French Republic, and our own,
Paid, History saith, the costs of liberty
In like coin; since Agrippa, many a debtor
Has satisfied his creditors no better.
I marvel he, a famous man-at-arms
Imbrued, as has been stated, with humanities
Should so have lent his mighty mind to charms,
Spells, periapts, and all such sinful vanities.
For to the nineteenth century's condign praise
The best men are no conjurors now-a-days.
Yet though he was not like the common rout
Of conjurors, whose art consists in cant
As to his wisdom there is room for doubt
Since he was married twice and died in want:
His lights too, I must say, appear but dim in
The Treatise of the Excellence of Women.
[OMITTED]
So honour but appears a glassy bubble
Which a breath sullies, and a blow destroys,
A trifle won with toil, preserved with trouble,
And lost with grief by women and by boys:
178

Yet one is the sublime of life—the other,
The beautiful—a sister and a brother!
Straying one day into the sage's cell,
A student found his book upon the table;
So down he sat him, and began to spell
The text thereof as well as he was able—
I say to spell, for sentences uncouth
In mystic characters perplex'd the youth.
It was a curious volume altogether,
Bearing an odd, grotesque, unearthly look,
With binding of some unknown sort of leather
And boards of ancient wood;—in short a book
Like those strange tomes a German stall displays
Saved from the libraries of former days.
I have seen such in convent and in college,
Amid much learned dust and classic lumber:
Taking the words of others for the knowledge
They taught, I would not break their sacred slumber,
But, certes, they did seem for nothing good,
Save proof that men could print before the flood.
[OMITTED]
I call them taps, by which I mean not such
As common knuckles make on any wood,
For these were sounds that seemed akin to touch,
Like those that shake the heart, and chill the blood,
179

When dust falls dully on the coffin-lid
Beneath which something dear to us lies hid.
I hate digressions both in love and writing,
Preferring method and a constant passion,
But when the opportunity's inviting,
I can't help following the female fashion;
So now and then I wander from my subject,
As the soul's wishes sometimes change their object.
The mountainous earth, says Newton, Prince of Sages,
Might be condensed into a schoolboy's marble;
Then what if I expand to many pages
What pedants have been pleased in one to garble?
For know I take the facts of this same tale
From dull Del Rio and egregious Bayle.
Moreover that this narrative may fill
A proper portion of our pleasant book,
I'm forced to use my ornamental skill,
Therein resembling an expert French cook;
180

Give whom a herring, and as I'm a sinner,
The varlet cooks it into a good dinner.
In fine, if you affect a stricter mode
Of rhyming, and would keep your bard in fetters,
Bethink thyself that time's an episode
In vast Eternity, where years are letters,
And life's a foolish incoherent sentence
Touching brief pleasures and a long repentance.
Agrippa was, sans question, a great man,
That is, he was a famous charlatan.

THE IMMORTAL

I

It is the time of which we doubt
If it be day or night;
181

For though the eastern stars shine out
With clear and tender light;
The skirts of the departing day
Yet brightly in the west delay,
And emblem with the air and wave,
The cheerful deathbed of the brave.
The moon grows plainer in the sky,
And seems approaching to my eye.
The trees begin to cast afar
Faint shadows from the evening-star—
That star more worth than all the rest,
The fairest earliest and best,
Whose pale, and pure, and pensive light,
Falls like a blessing on the sight—
That dewy mournful lovely one,
Which seems the widow of the sun,
And, hating to survive its mate,
Denies to shine too long or late—
That planet with the glowing grace
Of feverish beauty on its face,
Which sadly beautiful appears
As vivid eyes half quenched in tears.
I sought the old secluded hall,
Where I had left my child:
182

The roof was bending to its fall,
Its look was strange and wild.
The front presented to my view,
Mosses and stains of every hue;
Part of the building, overthrown,
Was but a shapeless pile of stone.
Rank weeds, in unimpeded sport,
O'er-ran the solitary court;
The dial in the midst, was hid
By coarse and noxious flowers,—
And this was well, for what had I
To do with sunny hours!
As I moved up the pathway wide,
A viper glided by my side
Athwart the ruined portal spread
The fearless spider's snare—
The loathsome insect felt secure
That none would enter there.
The tattered arras loosely shook
Its colourless remains,
As gusts of melancholy winds
Sighed through the broken panes,
Which once my ancient scutcheon bore—
183

But which now strewed the rotting floor.
My father's picture on the hearth
Lay low and dim with dust—
The hooks by which it hung on high,
Had yielded unto rust.
The handless clock had ceased to chime,
As conscious I cared not for time.
All was confusion, disarray,
Neglect, gloom, silence, and decay.

FRAGMENTS,

probably connected with “Rodolph”

[I
That each mind is the whole world, each]

That each mind is the whole world, each
As doctrine may receive,
As well as aught that wise men teach,
Or those as wise believe;
For easy 'tis, I ween, to show
It true as any truth I know.
184

[II
Thy smile was like a burst of light]

Thy smile was like a burst of light.

[III
The cold weak precepts I deride]

The cold weak precepts I deride,
That bid me forfeit this thy kiss—
Preferring wisely such as guide
The wise-one's heart to certain bliss.

[IV
Disgusted with men's idle strife]

Disgusted with men's idle strife,
He left them in his mood;
And sought a better way of life
In utter solitude.

[V
Yon sun is but an idle light]

Yon sun is but an idle light,
Since it no longer shines on thee:
This earth became an irksome sight
When thou didst cease a sight to be.

[VI
Thou child of sleep (a dream)]

Thou child of sleep (a dream)—

[VII
Take love away from life]

Take love away from life,
You take away its pleasures.
185

[VIII
self esteem]

self esteem,
Which is indeed your R[odolph]'s sweetest dream.

TO INFELICIA

Discard that melancholy mien,
Suppress those rising sighs;
Nought in life's low and wretched scene,
Deserves to dim those eyes—
To break “the calm” of such a breast,
Or rob thee of one hour of rest.

[ASPASIA]

Take in a sigh which syllables thy name
The final breath I fondly vowed to thee
Ere my lost heart grew old.
Aspasia!—Oh, Aspasia!—
(Falls and dies.)
186

[SELF-ESTEEM]

I know that perfect self esteem
Is boyhood's most seductive dream:
Like others, when my course began,
I revelled in it,—but the man
To whom experience betrays
The sordor of life's miry ways,
Feels that the hope is—Oh! how vain,
To tread them through without a stain.
187

LINES,

Written for a lady, to be given with a ring, fashioned as a serpent;—the motto being,—“Let memory be the Slave of the Ring.”

Before we part, this mimic snake
I charm, and send to thee,
That it may keep from Time's attack
Thy memory of me.
Thus, amid Eastern India's lands,
As travellers have told,
The Rajah from all hostile hands
Protects his buried gold.

TO A FRIEND

I

A weary lot is mine, sweet girl,
A weary lot is mine—
A hopeless soul, a wishful heart,
188

Unworthy both to act their part
In fellowship with thine.

II

Much, something, nothing—whatso'er
I must hereafter be—
The time, that in thy presence fled,
Shall be regarded, like the dead,
With tender memory.

III

And if the smoke of heated minds
(All history, at last!),
Ending in clouds its dubious column,
At once fantastical and solemn,
Ascend into the past,—

IV

Nor yet, when I have disappeared,
Derive from any light
Spectra, which may afford one trace
Of me to those about the base,
Who gaze upon its height;—

V

Why, be it so:—I am not now
Ambitious, although proud;
189

And none, that bitterly hates shame,
Is more indifferent to fame,
Which gathers round the shroud.

VI

But let thy thoughts embalm my name,
Till I “play out the play;”
Then, from its ambient spicery,
Thou too, fair lady, shalt be free
To cast that name away.

VII

Nature is mutability;
And thou perchance wilt laugh
To read, in future years, what I
Conclude with an unwonted sigh,—
Our friendship's epitaph.

THE LOVER'S DREAM

I mused, as is my wont, of thee—
My mind was full of sadness,—
And thought was with me as with one
Who never yet knew gladness;—
190

But calmness o'er my spirit fell,
And like a quiet stream
That flows into a burning land,
There came a gentle dream.
Methought, remote from human haunts,
With sunny skies above,
We dwelt among delightful scenes,
And all our life was love:—
Our wedded souls, like pleasant sounds
In music softly blending,
Together made a harmony
That should have known no ending;
And lasting were that life intense,
If joy might be its measure,—
For though but moments unto time,
It was an age to pleasure!—
The rapture of such fleeting dream,
Outweighs all known of pain,
Except its waking, which, for worlds,
I would not feel again.
191

INVITATION AND REPLY

(Impromptu)

Come, fill, my friend, the bumper bright,
And give a parting pledge to sorrow,
Let's very merry be to-night,
And what the Gods decree to-morrow.
If I must fill more bumpers bright,
I give indeed a pledge to sorrow,
For I shall be dead-drunk to-night,
And sick as death itself to-morrow.

EPIGRAM

Epigram on a Midshipman mast-headed on board of the Fr[igate] United States

Lo! I have risen by my faults or fates,
To lofty place in the United States:
To me alone, this happy day, 'tis given
To sit thus high, and conversant with heaven.
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