Shall I the morn's sweet blushes No more with pleasure view? Or lightly tread the rushes, Drench'd in ambrosial dew? Or climb the rugged mountain, To watch the sun's last ray? Or linger where the fountain Reflects the parting day? For thee, O Health, I languish, And nature blooms in vain; Dispel this potent anguish, And light my smiles again : Not rains to with'ring flowers, Can half so pleasing be; Or sunshine after showers, As thy dear smiles to me. THE ADIEU. ON LEAVING A FAVOURITE PLACE. "TIS ev'ning, the voice of the lab'rer is still; The songsters are hush'd into rest; And thro' the green meadow slow murmurs the rill, With Cynthia's bright beam on its breast. To the heart of the poet, how dear is the grove; For soon I must quit the lone thickets I love, Yet still as o'er bleak barren mountains I go, On the scenes of my childhood a tear I'll bestow, Perhaps ere again the young showers of May, The turf shall emboŝom this mansion of clay, If so, shall my sighs and afflictions be o'er? Shall I reach the blest haven, and land on the shore O, thanks to the Author of life, I may say, Then why do I weep? tho' on earth we must part, Yet scenes of my childhood, one tender adieu, Sweet bowers of bliss, when ye flit from my view, O say, when I roam to the crimson-streak'd west, Shall contentment and piety gladden my breast, Yes, yes, tho' I rove to the earth's farthest bound, If clasp'd in the arms of Religion I'm found, THE GRAVE. There the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." WHEN sorrow weighs the spirit down, And wrongs oppress the brave; The grave can calm the troubled mind, A sweet oblivion there. In lucid robes of spotless white, Religion's angel form Dispels the shades of death's dark night, Then why should Christians fear to die? What tho' extinction in the grave, The hopeless sceptic fear? Can that best gift th' Eternal gave, Claim but its being here? The earth shall be dissolv'd by fire, The soul, immortal as its Sire, CORYDON. AN ELEGY. INSCRIBED TO MARY. THE day is departed, and twilight appears, And softens the shades on the plain; Now, Mary, while silence steals over the grove, To yon weeping willow we'll pensively rove, A young gentleman, who died at Providence, R I. A friend of the Author, but still nearer to her friend Mary He was a student in the University, and died of a lingering hectic, contracted by a too intense application to study. He wrote a beautiful Pastoral, some time before his death, under the signature of Corydon. |