No art of selfishness
Thy generous nature knew;
Thy life all love, thy bliss the power to bless ;
Constant and true,
Content, if to thy lot the world should bring
Enduring suffering;
Unhappy, if permitted but to share
Part of my griefs, wouldst both our burthens bear.
My joy, my solace, and my pride
I found thee still :
Whatever change our fortunes might betide
Of good or ill,
Worthier I was life's blessing to receive
While thou didst live;
All that I had of good in others' sight, Reflected shone thy virtue's borrowed light.
The lute unstrung-the meals in silence ate
We wont to share;
The widowed bed-the chamber desolate,
Thou art not there;
The tear at parting, and the greeting kiss,
Who would not miss?
Endearments fond, and solaced hours, and all
The important trivial things men comfort call.
Oh! mayst thou, if permitted, from above
The starry sphere,
Encompass me with ever-during love,
As thou didst here:
Still be my guardian spirit, lest I be
Unworthy thee;
Still, as on earth, thy grace celestial give,
So guide my life as thou wouldst have me live.
Another by W. M. PRAED-many having been already placed in this collection.
ALAS! for that forgotten day
When Chivalry was nourish'd,
When none but friars learn'd to pray,
And beef and beauty flourish'd!
And fraud in kings was held accurst,
And falsehood sin was reckon'd,
And mighty chargers bore my first,
And fat monks wore my second!
Oh, then I carried sword and shield,
And casque with flaunting feather,
And earned my spurs in battle field,
In winter and rough weather;
And polish'd many a sonnet up
To ladies' eyes and tresses,
And learn'd to drain my father's cup,
And loose my falcon's jesses:
But dim is now my grandeur's gleam;
The mongrel mob grows prouder;
And everything is done by steam,
And men are killed by powder;
And now I feel my swift decay,
And give unheeded orders,
And rot in paltry state away,
With sheriffs and recorders.
Dr. MAGINN was the author of this very clever parody on Coleridge's famous poem. It professes to be the continuation of that mystical fragment; the third part, for which the lovers of poetry have sighed. It was published in Blackwood's Magazine, and well deserves a place here.
LISTEN! ye know that I am mad,
And ye will listen!-wizard dreams
Were with me!-all is true that seems !From dreams alone can truth be had
In dreams divinest lore is taught,
For the eye, no more distraught,
Rests most calmly, and the ear,
Of sound unconscious, may apply
Its attributes unknown, to hear
The music of philosophy;
Thus am I wisest in my sleep,
For thoughts and things, which daylight brings,
Come to the spirit sad and single,
But verse and prose, and joys and woes,
Inextricably mingle
When the hush'd frame is silent in repose!
Twilight and moonlight, mist and storm,
Black night, and fire-eyed hurricane,
And crested lightning, and the snows
That mock the sunbeam, and the rain
Which bounds on earth with big drops warm,
All are round me while I spell
The legend of sweet Christabel !
CHRISTABEL.-PART THIRD.
Nine moons have wax'd, and the tenth, in its wane, Sees Christabel struggle in unknown pain!
-For many moons was her eye less bright,
For many moons was her vest more tight.
And her cheek was pale, save when, with a start,
The life-blood came from the panting heart,
And fluttering, o'er that thin fair face
Past with a rapid nameless pace,
And at moments a big tear fill'd the eye,
And at moments a short and smother'd sigh
Swell'd her breast with sudden strain,
Breathed half in grief, and half in pain,
For her's are pangs, on the rack that wind
The outward frame and the inward mind.
-And when at night she did visit the oak,
She wore the Baron's scarlet cloak
(That cloak which, happy to hear and to tell,
Was lined with the fur of the leopard well),
And as she wander'd down the dell
None said 'twas the lady Christabel.--
Some thought 'twas a weird and ugsome elf,
Some deem'd 'twas the sick old Baron himself
Who wander'd beneath the snowy lift
To count his beads in solemn shrift-
(For his shape below was wide to see
All bloated with the hydropsie).
Oh! had her old father the secret known,
He had stood as stark as the statue of stone
That stands so silent, and white, and tall,
At the upper end of his banquet hall!
Am I aleep or am I awake?
In very truth I oft mistake,
As the stories of old come over my brain,
And I build in spirit the mystic strain :-
Ah! would to the Virgin that I were asleep!
But I must wake, and I must weep!
Sweet Christabel, it is not well
That a lady pure as the sunless snow
That lies so oft on the mountain's brow,
That a maiden of sinless chastity
In childbirth pangs should be doom'd to die!
Or live with a name of sorrow and shame,
And hear the words of blemish and blame!
-For the world that smiles at the guilt of man, Places woman beneath its ban;
Alas, that scandal thus should wreak
Its vengeance on the warm and weak,
That the arrows of the cold and dull
Should wound the breast of the beautiful!
Of the things that be, did we know but half,
Many, and many would weep, who laugh!
Tears would darken many an eye,
Or that deeper grief (when its orb is dry,
When it cannot dare the eye of day),
O'er the clouded heart would stray
Till it crumbled like desert dust away!
But here we meet with grief and grudge,
And they who cannot know us, judge!
Thus souls on whom good angels smile,
Are scoff'd at in our world of guile—
Let this, ladie, thy comfort be;
Man knows not us, good angels know
The things that pass in the world below;
And scarce, methinks, it seems unjust,
That the world should view thee with mistrust,
For who that saw that child of thine,
Pale Christabel, who could divine
That its sire was the Ladie Geraldine?
But in I rush, with too swift a gale,
Into the ocean of my tale!
Not yet, young Christabel, I ween,
Of her babe hath lighter been.
-'Tis the month of the snow and the blast,
And the days of Christmas mirth are past,
When the oak-roots heap'd on the hearth blazed bright,
Casting a broad and dusky light
On the shadowy forms of the warriors old,
Who stared from the wall, most grim to behold—
On shields where the spider his tapestry weaves,
On the holly boughs and the ivy leaves,
The few green glories that still remain
To mock the storm and welcome the rain,
Brighter and livelier, 'mid tempest and shower,
Like a hero in the battle hour!-
Brave emblems o'er the winter hearth,
They cheer'd our fathers' hours of mirth !—
Twelve solar months complete and clear
The magic circle of the year!
Each (the ancient riddle saith)
Children, two times thirty, hath!
Three times ten are fair and white,
Three times ten are black as night,
Three times ten hath Hecaté,
Three times ten the God of day;
Thus spoke the old hierophant
(I saw her big breast swelling pant),
What time I dream'd in ghostly wise
Of Eleusinian mysteries,
For I am the hierarch
Of the mystical and dark
And now, if I rightly do spell
Of the Lady Christabel,
She hates the three times ten so white,
And sickens in their searching light,
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