Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sure Love was delegated, blythe and blest,
To warm, to amplify the human breast.
Love warms the weary savage when he goes
Thro' Nemea's desarts, or Norwegia's snows;
Strengthens the Indian lab'ring in the mine,
And gladdens him who pants beneath the line;
Fix'd the great cause from whence our joys began,
And gave refinement to perturbed man.
The wanton God, disportive with his skill,
Breaks the frail texture of the female will;
Directs the nymph devoted to his pow'r,
And guides the wish to meet the varying hour.
Inconstant Chloe then we should not blame,
Who acts obedient to th' impulsive flame.

With sympathetic sigh we read of those,
Whose passion prov'd the basis of their woes,
Whose hapless tales illume the classic page,
In Cleopatra's death, and Dido's rage.

How sweetly tuneful Sappho could complain
Leander's fate, and Ariadne's pain;
Byblis, her guilty passion and her tears,
Sad Eloise, and Procris jealous sears.
The noble ardor Reason should restrain,
Unbridl'd Love engenders mental pain.

I sing of Ella, poor, ill-fated maid,
By ruthless man abandon'd and betray'd;
A peerless child, to old Aractus giv'n,
To cheer the eve of life, by pitying heav'n.
Her form was moulded by the hand of Grace,
And Beauty sat triumphant in her face;
Her perfect mind, the theme of rival lays,
Beggar'd encomium, and exhausted praise.
With Honour's noblest emanations fraught,
Untouch'd, unsullied by licentious thought.
Born to diffuse delight, instruct, and please,
She blended wit, humility, and ease;
Lovely to all, enliven'd court or plain,
The sons of fashion, and the sylvan swain;
The youth assail'd her in a suppliant throng,
And woo'd their mistress in harmonious song;
Till Ella's name, mid lyric numbers shone,
In sonnets Ovid had been proud to own.
Infirm Aractus, with young joy, survey'd
Their adoration of the lovely maid!
To men like him Athenian loins gave birth,
When pagan morals strengthen'd human worth.

His high-born ancestry were dear to Fame,
And much he priz'd the glory of his name.
A race establish'd since the Norman band,
Seiz'd on the spoils of a divided land—
Refulgent Science beam'd on all he writ,
His passions paid their homage to his wit;
No vice could hold him, and no arts surprise,
In mirth exemplary, in anger wise.
He calm'd the bickerings of the rural throng,
And shew'd the bounds prescrib'd 'twixt right and wrong;
With mild rebuke would social errors scan,
And, passing judgment, felt himself a man.
Time's flattering ruin led him to decay,
And heav'n approv'd his inoffensive day.

When Phœbus' beam had rip'd the golden ear,
Th' accomplish'd Ella knew her eighteenth year;
To hail, to celebrate the annual morn,
When Ella, heaven's best substitute, was born,
Aractus gave a banquet to the sight,
Where all concenter'd that could yield delight;
Sweet spice was gather'd from those Indian isles,
Where Day's bright god intolerably smiles;
And pregnant clusters, cull'd by Tuscan slaves,
Whose sunny banks the azure Arno laves.
To glad the heart, to meliorate the head,
Pomona revell'd, and the vintage bled;

With rapturous smile he beckon'd nymphs and swains,
And half untenanted the neighbouring plains;
The op'ning gates receiv'd the brilliant throng,
Of motley masquers and the sons of song.

Amid the laughter-loving groupe, there came
A youth, the minion of immortal Fame!
The wily Edmund, fraught with subtlest arts,
To fascinate the clew of female hearts;
Of vast domains he was the haughty heir,
And form'd by Nature with peculiar care.
Replete with ev'ry blandishment of speech,
To soothe, subdue, insinuate, and beseech;
His mien was noble, his unbounded mind,
By the sweet voice of Science, was refin'd,
Unchain'd by moral law, he wanton'd free,
The favour'd offspring of Inconstancy.
With pilgrim habits was the spoiler drest,
The cross and cockle-shell adorn'd his breast.

Mixt with the fair, who crouded Pleasure's throne,
Ella with incontested beauty shone;
She beam'd attraction from her hazel eye,
The magazine of Love's artillery:
Clad as bright Dian, rov'd the matchless fair,
A waning moon was twisted in her hair;
Buskin'd, she look'd as eager to embrace,
The Parthian lance, or lead the early chace;

Goad the fleet savage o'er the mountain steep,
Or call responsive Echo from her sleep:
Her neck's white base was partially reveal'd,
Her ivory limbs a flowing robe conceal'd;
Its tint an exquisite purpureal bloom,
More rich than e'er was wrought in Persia's loom.
Her tresses borne upon the zephyrs wing,
Her cheeks, like dew-wash'd roses in the spring.
Elate, unmanacled she trod the ground,
And smil'd, enslav'd, and sung, and laugh'd around.

To shake her rectitude with mortal charms,
To touch her mind with passions potent arms;
Smiting his breast, and gathering a sigh,
Young Edmund met the blazes of her eye:
Destroyed the placid harbinger of rest,
And thron'd a rebel in her panting breast.
Disturb'd, with trembling joy the wounded maid,
The manly figure of the youth survey'd;
Her feelings struggled with her virgin pride,
She felt a rapture which she could not hide:
His lov'd idea o'er her senses stole,
And jarr'd those chords which harmonis'd her soul.

Uprais'd by transport, Edmund could descry,
The amorous wand'rings of his Ella's eye;
He seiz'd th' auspicious hour when love prevail'd,
And thus the captive mimic nymph assail'd:—
Turn, brilliant ruler of th' inconstant night,
Daughter of Bliss, and Handmaid of Delight?

Pity a hapless pilgrim, doom'd to roam,
In search of thee I left my peaceful home:
For you I'd wander Syria's flinty strand,
And tear the crescent from the abject land.
The nymphs of sweet Jerusalem restore,
Their antient honors and their sacred lore;
Lift up meek Sion's melancholy head,
And guard those temples where our Saviour bled:
Breathe but the issue of your gentle will,
Behold your slave to combat good or ill;
I'd lay my weary head mid Scythian snows,
Or where the heat with torrid fury glows;
Or dare the yawning deep, untam'd by Fear,
And smile, tho' Ruin shook his ebon spear.
Such deeds were happiness, would you but deign
To hear my vows and dissipate my pain:
But why thus arm'd, to strike the fanged foe,
With barbed arrow and the silver bow.
Ah! what avails the force of such disguise,
The power to wound was given to your eyes:
There Fate, submissive to your wishes, reigns,
Born to subdue, and lead mankind in chains.
Oh! would the wayward Muses but inspire
My fever'd fancy with that hallow'd fire,
Which radiant Phœbus exercised to praise,
His timid Daphne, in immortal lays;
Then should my verse be equal to my theme,
Nervous, august, persuasive, and supreme!

Then would I tempt my Ella to be kind,
And sing the conflicts of a sick'ning mind.
The fleeting moments, envious, steal away,
And Time contracts our beings with decay:
Shall we, like ideots, then forego our joys,
Whom Pain debilitates, and Time annoys?
When Pleasure wooes us with a cherub's face,
And infant Raptures plead for an embrace.
Tho' fame and wealth my young career attends,
Tho' I live circled by unnumber'd friends:
Yet what are friends, or wealth, or fame, to me,
I'd quit them all to gain one smile from thee:
Sweet paragon of beauty, fount of truth,
Pride of the world, and blessing of my youth.

Thus the dread tenant of the oozy Nile.
Labours the journeying victim to beguile;
Draws from his flinty breast a faithless tear,
And seems most lovely, when the least sincere.

The first soft numbers Ella heard him speak,
A deep suffusion ting'd her virgin cheek:
As bright and beauteous as Aurora's ray,
When from the east she gilds the new born day.
The recreant blush crept thro' the faint disguise,
Glow'd in her face and triumph'd in her eyes:
Her sighs o'erleap'd the barriers of her pride,
And spoke a language which her tongue denied.

The baneful incense in her fancy wrought,
Lodg'd in her bosom and debas'd her thought:
Creating Vanity, whose tyrant sway,
Matur'd those evils that disgrac'd her day;
Like a false minister by complex art,
She told the secrets of her sovereign's heart;
There, like a spunge, the smiling traitress lay,
Imbib'd her duties and usurp'd their sway.

From time to time, from hour to hour he strove,
To smooth the features of illicit Love:
Hoping his theme, by Sophistry refin'd,
Would move the hallow'd beacons from her mind.
Still Ella was allied to Honor's throng,
Her sense withstood the tenor of his song.

The jocund queen of bright Idalia's plains,
Survey'd his labours and deplor'd his pains;
Yoking her doves she left the blest abodes,
Impetuous sinking thro' th' ethereal roads:
As soft Favonius flutter'd by her side,
To chace the fogs from Vulcans radiant bride:
Touching the earth she bounded from her seat,
As fragrant herbage kiss'd her sandall'd feet;
Resplendant Flora deck'd the chosen ground,
And strew'd her roses prodigal round:
But ere the gathering herds could wand'ring gaze,
Or Nature gladden at her beauteous blaze,
The tender Goddess, blending with the air,
Shrouded and circumscrib'd the peerless fair:

Touch'd her young bosom with the sacred fire,
Till all the nymph was passion and desire;
The fiercer ecstasies her fancy view'd,
Each sense was strengthen'd, and each doubt subdu'd:
Wrapt in illusive hope, her breast was torn
With rapid pantings for the joy unborn.

When meek Discretion, whisp'ring, spoke her fears,
Love's regent shut the alleys of her ears;
When modest scruples in her bosom wrought,
That urchin slew them, ere they rose to thought:
Thrice she repell'd th' audacious youth away,
And thrice he ponder'd, ere he smote his prey;
So much her action aw'd, he'd left her charms,
Had not her eyes been warring with her arms.
A time there is, when yielding virgins own,
That conqu'ring love usurps the mental throne;
That luckless time the fraudful tempter saw,
Embrac'd his spoil, and made her will her law.

What can we do, when fervid Love inspires,
But own his triumphs, and indulge his fires?
Celestial commerce! as the souls unite,
Melting in bliss, and fainting with delight.

The conflict past, the soft convulsion o'er,
The victor sated and the zest no more,
Indignant Reason re-assum'd her reign,
The nymph look'd wild o'er Misery's domain:

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Engend'ring Thought supprest her active will,
Her eye-balls glisten'd, and her pulse was still;
Guilt's livid pencil banish'd half her charms,
And Horror wrapt her in his iron arms.

Thus the brown Indian, panting with the ray
That's fiercely shed in his meridian day,
Incautious plunging in the cooling waves;
His languid limbs, the reeking savage laves:
Led by Delight and confident of skill,
He gives a loose obedience to his will;
Floats on the glassy ocean unconfin'd,
And leaves, unmoan'd, his native beach behind;
Heedless of ruin; till, with deadly aim,
A raging eddy circles round his frame;
Then vainly labours to regain the shore,
But art is useless, and his powers are o'er:
The foaming whirlpool drowns the note of woe,
And draws the victim with the surge below.

Where was the honor to his wit or wile?
She fear'd no danger, as she knew no guile:
Her calm ideas, like the genial ray
Of lambent Phœbus, who illumes the day,
Reflected splendour on this mortal dream,
And brighten'd errors with a radiant beam.
When busy Obloquy's envenom'd tongue,
The evil points of human frailty sung,

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She marvell'd Infamy could e'er prevail!
Her reason stagger'd at the hapless tale.
She thought the cause of feminine disgrace,
Too black for love, too hideous for embrace;
It met her judgment indistinctly seen,
Weaken'd by doubts if vice had ever been;
On Nature's tree by slight adhesion borne,
She hung like snow upon the prickly thorn;
Unconscious that her worth could be assail'd,
Where Flatt'ry blaz'd, or social storms prevail'd.

Like gather'd flow'rets in the rage of day,
Her beauties shrunk progressive in decay;
Torn from the moral stem which fed their hue,
Each gaudy tint receded from the view;
And all those sweets which issued to the sense,
Were smote and superceded by Offence.
Her blood rebell'd to heighten her disgrace,
Fled her cold heart, and flush'd into her face.

Insane effusions gave the sire to know,
The sable origin of Ella's woe;
His heart grew heavy, as he heard the tale,
His eyes flash'd fire, his ruddy cheek turn'd pale;
Cold drops of terror on his temples hung,
Amazement froze the office of his tongue:
The placid relatives of Peace were slain,
The dart of Agony transfix'd his brain.

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Thus when old Ocean renovates his reign,
And leaps the bulwarks of the belgic plain;
He rushes in with a tremendous roar,
The mounds are crash'd around the rescu'd shore:
Swift as the bolts of Fate the liquid ruin flies,
And all the pride of cultivation dies.

With nerveless arm, unstrung by Time and Care,
He smote his bosom, and deform'd his hair;
Ere Nature clos'd upon his aching sight,
With all her stores of temporal delight,
Thus he complain'd:—Oh! Ella, cursed name!
Inmate of guilt, and advocate of shame!
Her deadly deeds have sullied my renown,
Circling my temples with a baneful crown;
Her smiles no future rapture can impart,
Her crimes have burst the cordage of my heart.
Is this, oh God! the fruit of holy praise!
Must this fill up the measure of my days?
Come, lenient Ruin, expedite relief,
Annihilate that worm which writhes with grief;
Bear me from Nature's ties, bisect Life's thread,
And mix my atoms with the melting dead.
If Jeptha struck his pious child to dust,
To shew th' Omnipotent he dare be just;
Then what should I? to punish Virtue's foe,
Whose Vices gave her to immortal Woe:
Led her base mind to journey with Disgrace,
And slurr'd the glories of an envied race.

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That man presumes, mid social conflicts thrown,
To call felicity one hour his own!
I thought the full-blown gladness of my will,
Firm as the Œtan or Olympian hill:
From Peace to Hate, from Love to Horror hurl'd,
I spurn my being, and abjure the world.

Could we foreknow the perils of our age,
Could we transcribe Fate's adamantine page;
Egregious myriads would on ruin run,
And, hapless, e'er they blossom'd, be undone:
But Heaven has wisely hid from human sight,
The seeds of Fate in everlasting night;
In love denied the future to reveal,
And barr'd the paths of scientific zeal.

Chain'd, like Prometheus, to a rock of woe,
Like him my blood and anathemas flow:
But far more keenly poignant is his smart,
Whose offspring six'd the vulture on his heart.

Flush'd with the candid properties of youth,
She shrunk with sympathy, and glow'd with truth;
Her dulcet notes could all my ills assuage,
And lead my Passions from the arm of Rage;
Whene'er she wander'd mid the jarring croud,
The vassal tribes with frame and spirit bow'd;
She mov'd like Peace with Charity endu'd,
Just dropt from Heaven to heal a mortal feud:

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Oh cruel Memory! to blaze the theme,
Oh curs'd despoiler! to obscure her beam.

Come, radiant Faith, thou hallow'd mental balm,
The earth-caught tumults of the wretched, calm!
Who stills the fever of the heated brain,
Whose voice extirpates intellectual pain:
When man's by congregated ills oppress'd,
He leans on God, is succour'd, and is bless'd.
He could no more or execrate or pray,
His spirit soar'd above the realms of day.

Shorn of her beams and fetter'd by her thought,
The fallen nymph the caves of Sadness sought;
Pre-damn'd in sentiment, to Anguish given,
She hid her visage from offended Heaven:
The sisterhood of Peace, who once she led,
Mov'd as she mov'd, and, as she follow'd, fled!

E'en thus the stricken deer for solace flies,
Piercing the forest's bosom with his cries;
As Life's warm blood runs issuing, 'neath the spear,
His vernal inmates scoff each ample tear,
Which rolls successive down his dappled face;
And fly his pains, or blazon his disgrace.

Ere Death's cold finger touch'd her beamy eyes,
I saw the victim, and I heard her sighs;

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But saw no more, alas! the playful wile,
The roseate hue of health, or dimpled smile;
Pale Melancholy triumph'd in their stead,
The rose had wither'd, and the smile was fled.
Tho' Guilt had laid the flutt'ring empire waste,
Her wish was loyal, and her thought was chaste:
Still modest Habit claim'd her better part;
Still Delicacy clung about her heart.

In rude dismay, allied to social strife,
She hung upon the edge of shelving life:
Like a bruis'd reed, whose sorrow wounded head,
Is bent by tempests, o'er the pool's green bed;
To fructify that womb from whence it rose,
And sleep secure from elemental foes.

Her vest flow'd loose, by Negligence imbrown'd,
Her auburn ringlets trail'd th' unconscious ground;
Lovely in ruin, tho' by Feeling slain,
She aw'd rude Insult, and repell'd Disdain:
Sublime Distress awoke a latent grace,
And pensive Thought bedim'd her bloodless face.
My fibres trembled at her matchless grief,
I claim'd Omnipotence to yield relief.

The immolated nymph thus breath'd her wrong;
In elegiac note and mournful song;
Which babbling Echo told the vagrant wind,
As sympathetic Philomela pin'd.—

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Oh, woman! hapless woman! doom'd to bear
The fool's entreaty, and the despot's prayer;
Whose worth is martyr'd on each vain pretence,
The slave of passion, and the toy of sense:
By Heaven uprais'd, when kindred ties began,
The weak associate of capricious man;
Who chains her judgment by erroneous rule,
And shuts her from the philosophic school;
Narrows her influence by partial laws,
And pleads the force of Custom as the cause:
If ductile Prudence slumbers on her post,
Gaunt Vice assails her with a hideous host;
Calls forth each wile her faculties to blind,
And steals the bright palladium of her mind;
Darkens those rays which had illum'd her soul,
Then spurns the wretch for wanting what he stole.

Is there no eminent revenge above,
For violated oaths and perjur'd love?
Shall ruthless man our miseries begin,
Yet wanton irresponsive to the sin?
The brilliant reptile marshall'd every art,
To brave the prejudice and seize my heart.
False as Amphissian waves his accents flow'd,
Which hide Destruction 'neath the liquid road:
With cruel skill he bent the servile knee,
And stood, like Ruin, 'twixt my good and me.
His toils, like furies in th' Æolian wind,
Bestorm'd the placid current of my mind;

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And made th' ideal billows, raging, rise,
Till their rude vehemence had brav'd the skies:
So quick th' Enormities ingulph'd me in,
I look'd a Demon ere I knew the sin.
Once Hope, in garish raiments, cheer'd my eye,
Renerv'd my wish, and check'd the unborn sigh:
Ah, sweet Seducer! whither art thou flown?
While social Demons seize thy silver throne;
'Tis thine to sprinkle manna o'er the mind,
'Tis thine to temper the ferocious wind,
'Tis thine to renovate the fancy's springs,
Raise the worn maid, and glad despairing kings.

That system once becalm'd by lenient Grace,
Is irritable, changeful, torn and base.
Now couchant Guilt may lord it unalarm'd,
For Rage is breathless and her fiends disarm'd:
That savage minister by Heav'ns decree,
Triumphant shower'd all her darts on me.
See my poor heart, behold its bleeding state,
And then you'll own that I've exhausted Fate.

Ah me, how limitless my darings flow!
Presumption hails the utterance of woe:
We most are prompt to blaze a seeming wrong,
When Reason shudders at the angry song.
Oh blot from Mem'ry's seat that baneful hour,
When Love assail'd me with a tyrant's power;

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My virgin mind an easy captive found,
And my young breast receiv'd the fatal wound.
Can no harsh penance expiate my pain,
Or tears of Grief obliterate the stain?
Not all the waters of the pregnant deep,
Not all the streams which issue when I weep,
Can perpetrate an act so good, so kind,
Or cleanse the tablet of a sullied mind.

When, to renew his bright creative reign,
The solar God emerges from the main;
Wiping his tresses, while the matchless steeds,
Shake from their golden manes the saline weeds:
He leaves his Thetis in the briny deep,
To give a wretch to Sight who only wakes to weep.
How panting Rumour will her clarion tear,
To pour my tale upon the general ear:
Then will my ills be magnified in brass,
Then will my attributes of honor pass:
Or should some valued deed survive my end,
Charge but the language of a pitying friend.
Who'll say that nymph did thus, and having said,
Both tongue and testimonial meet the dead.
For Envy's eloquent to mad the throng,
Sickly their peace, and modulate their song;
She cleaves adhesively to human pride,
As tendrils circumvolve the oaks rough side:
Not the parch'd glebe which Phœbus has opprest,
By opening fissures in its yielding breast;

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So pleas'd, so eager drinks the gushing rain,
As Envy's ear the ill-directed strain:
The noxious stream thro' every cranny flies,
Poisons their elements, and dims their eyes.
As Hate enhances the insidious tale,
And ductile Faith bids Infamy prevail.
When Hesperus twinkles from his pendant sphere,
He beams to witness a repentant tear.
Ah me! where are those happy hours flown,
When Guilt, when Shame, to Ella were unknown?
Then the swift foot of Time was led along,
By sportive Purity and festive song:
Careless I slept, unconscious of a moan,
My Peace unwounded, and my heart my own;
Then Heaven with pride my guileless being saw,
God was my guide and Virtue gave me law.

When Jove to being call'd that ruthless boy,
Who undermines the base of temp'ral Joy;
Ere he was arm'd to bid his millions fall,
Vengeance immers'd his baneful darts in gall:
Inconstancy arose to mould his will,
And Discord led him to the fane of Ill.
Tho' the resistless Winds have rudely broke
A nation's battlements, and riv'd the oak;
Tho' the vast Behemoth tremendous laves,
Ingulphing half the tenants of the waves;
Tho' fierce Convulsions shook Sicilia's shore,
Tho' the keen Panther gluts on human gore;

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Yet is that God who toils but to enthrall,
More fierce, more fell, more terrible than all.

Oh, smiling Innocence, how sweet thy charms,
Fed by Delight, and fearless of alarms.
Like Eden's groves portray'd in holy dreams,
Her mild demeanour dwells between extremes:
Her jocund hours peculiar transports bring,
Her beauties bloom in one eternal spring.
Warm'd by Integrity that nymph defies,
The foaming billows and the angry skies:
No peccant humours live within her veins,
The sickly nursery of unborn pains.
Her words, which meek Theology refin'd,
Sublime the frail ideas of the mind:
She gathers dignity from mould'ring age,
And laughs at Time and all his feeble rage.

Bending with woe I pass the cheerless day,
As life's dimm'd lamp is hast'ning to decay:
The triple Sisters scare my aching eye,
Their dusky pinions beat the yielding sky.
They knit in dreadful congress o'er my head,
To catch the nod from Fate and cut my mortal thread.

Then thrice the nymph essay'd, but could no more,
Her body trembled and her pangs were o'er;
Her polish'd faculties no more could please,
The finer senses faded by degrees;

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The grosser still maintained a tardy sway,
Like lofty columns at the waning day:
Pleading on bended knee to be forgiven,
She fixt her languid tearless eyes on heaven;
The grace of resignation to impart,
And ease the tumults of a broken heart!
No liquid drops in pearly pride remain'd,
The springs were dried, the envied fount was drain'd;
The streams of life, like lazy currents flow'd,
The flaccid arteries scarce sustain their load;
No music now upon her periods hung,
She would have pray'd, but Speech forsook her tongue;
Raising her arms, sweet Mercy to implore,
She sunk in death and Ella was no more.

I see the Virtues frown upon the deed,
And Innocence witholds her brilliant meed;
Go, ye calm Sisters, with our woes at strife,
Who spurn the weaknesses of human life.
Seek, with success, some unimpassion'd fair,
Whom roseate youth ne'er labour'd to ensnare;
Govern that Nymph with rational controul,
And guide the movements of her torpid soul:
Lead her thro' paths of Peace, unknown to Shame,
And gild the evening of her virgin fame.
Then give her to the dust, in virtuous pride,
Who blameless triumph'd, and who joyless died.

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How small the weakness when our Ills commence,
How great the error in the consequence.
Thus, when a traveller selects his way,
To cross the forest at the dawn of day;
Tho' a few mingling shrubs, of texture slight,
Divide the precincts of the wrong and right,
Yet should he hapless meet Delusion's snare,
Hoodwink'd perambulates he knows not where,
Till sombrous Evening, with a keen delight,
Presents repulsive objects to his sight:
Who having journey'd thro' the mazy gloom,
Finds, when fatigu'd, a Desart or a tomb.

Be ours to execute an envied toil,
And cultivate, with care, the mental soil:
Prune the wild axioms of the rising race,
And turn their feet from Anguish and Disgrace;
Correct the efforts of the callow will,
And shew the vile deformities of Ill:
The milder Virtues to the mind endear,
And guide the plaints of Reason to the ear;
Marshall the rash intemperance of youth,
And press the judgment with this moral truth,
Ere the firm habits of their lives begin,
That Peace is incompatible with Sin.