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Poems

By Edward Quillinan. With a Memoir by William Johnston

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IN AN ALBUM
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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113

IN AN ALBUM

[_]

Given to Miss Bayley (Allan Bank, Grasmere), by “An Old Man, C. W.,” and in which Mr. Wordsworth had written a stanza from his Dedication of the Duddon Sonnets.

An old man gave this little book
To young and blooming Fanny Bayley;
That fancies, brighten'd by her look,
Might decorate its pages gaily:
An older man, the Wizard Chief
Of Rydal's Heliconian Mount,
Is first to grace a favour'd leaf
With fancies born of Duddon's Fount.
But he has quaff'd of Hippocrene;
Then who to follow him shall dare,
Whose laurels are in age as green
As those that deck'd Apollo's hair?

114

I too am old, but never drank
The frenzy of that subtle spring;
Nor dare to sing for Allan Bank,
Where he, when young, was wont to sing;
Where every tree, and rock, and hill,
Were cheer'd by Wordsworth's voice so long;
Where every grove is haunted still
With sadden'd echoes of his song.
Let youthful bards his footsteps trace,
And cull the wreath for maiden brows!
Yet why should I refuse to place
A sprig thereon from Loughrigg boughs?
Such tribute, from December's bowers,
I yet may borrow without folly:
Though wintry age is bare of flowers,
'Twill yield at least a Christmas holly.
Loughrigg Holme, December 26, 1849.