Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oh thou whose lofty lineage flows
In streams where dimless glory glows,
Where monarchs shine, in ancient day,
Majestic with the Tuscan sway:
Thou, sheltered by whose princely power,
I calmly pass the careless hour,
Thy love at once my pride and pleasure,
My treasured glory, darling treasure,
Mæcenas! mark with curious ken
The various tastes of various men.
Some love to whirl with flying car
Clouds of Olympic dust afar;
And when the wheels have deftly rounded
The mark by which their course is bounded,
And when th' ennobling palm is given,
The Lords of Earth are Kings of Heaven!

And some there are whose sole desire
Is gained when changeful crowds conspire
On their aspiring heads to shower
The pomp and pride of civic power.
And other bosoms beat no more,
When gathered to their private store

What reapings rich of golden grain
Are largely swept from Lybia's plain.

Not all the luxuries wealth could bring,
Not all the splendours of a king,
Could lure the man, whose joy is still
The lands his father left to till—
Where many a silent summer sun
Hath seen him cheerly toiling on—
With timorous awkwardness to brave
The raging of the restless wave.

The merchant, lapt in rural ease,
While yet the dashing of the seas,
And howling of the angry breeze
The foamy billows buffeting—
In memory's ear discordant ring,
Enraptured boasts the scenery sweet,
And quiet of his calm retreat.
But soon before his dazzled eyes
Wealth's glittering visions brightly rise;
And little wills he to endure
The hardships that await the poor;
So fits his waveworn bark again,
And dauntless skims the heaving main.

Nor wanting some who gaily measure
The brimming cup of sparkling pleasure;

But little loth to wile away
Meet portion of the livelong day,
Stretched on the spot of shadow spread
By strawberry clustering over-head;
Or more reclined, in darker dell,
Where rising up with bubbling swell,
Some clearly-gushing crystal rill
Its sacred stream doth rippling fill.

And many a heart with rapture boundeth
When the lofty trumpet soundeth,
And the silver clarion waketh
Ardour nought but battle slaketh!
The rolling pride of war's array,
The joy intense of deadly fray—
Though they bid the mother's breast
Throb with fears which will not rest,
Source of fond and deep alarms—
For many bear resistless charms.

The huntsman plies his eager feet,
Full reckless or of cold or heat;
And well repaid for lost caresses
Of her his absence sore distresses,
If haply in his far career
His hounds espy the fallow deer;
Or mazy net give way before
The fury of the tusky boar.

Me, the wreathëd ivy-bough,
Fittest gift for learned brow,
Lifts far above a world like this,
And wafts into the fields of bliss!
Me the silent lonely rove,
The dewy freshness of the grove,
Across whose darkling shadows glancing,
Nymphs are seen with Satyrs dancing;
Eluding still the cheated eye,
On faëry footstep flitting by—
Never resting, ever changing,
Through each mazy measure ranging—
These, these can win me from among
The bustling of the selfish throng—
These, if Euterpe nor refrain,
From her sadly-pleasing strain,
Nor the many-hymnëd Muse
Touch of Lesbian lyre refuse.

But if, my friend, you number me,
With bards of lyric minstrelsy—
Though far on high the stars may shine,
Their glory shall not equal mine,
And brilliant though their lustre be,
A brighter fame shall welcome me!

August, 1829.