Слике страница
PDF
ePub

Imagination's world of air,

And our own world, its gloom and glee, Wit, pathos, poetry, are there,

And death's sublimity.

And Burns-though brief the race he ran, Though rough and dark the path he trodLived, died, in form and soul a man,

The image of his God.

Through care, and pain, and want, and woe,
With wounds that only death could heal,
Tortures-the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel;

He kept his honesty and truth,

His independent tongue and pen,

And moved, in manhood as in youth,

Pride of his fellow-men.

Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong,
A hate of tyrant and of knave,
A love of right, a scorn of wrong,
Of coward and of slave;

A kind, true heart, a spirit high,

That could not fear and would not bow,

88

92

96

100

104

Were written in his manly eye

And on his manly brow.

Praise to the bard! his words are driven,
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,

108

Where'er beneath the sky of heaven,

The birds of fame have flown.

Praise to the man! a nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,
As when a loved one dies.

112

116

And still, as on his funeral-day,

[blocks in formation]

Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star,
Are there-o'er wave and mountain come,
From countries near and far;

136

Pilgrims, whose wandering feet have pressed
The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand,
Or trod the piled leaves of the West,
My own green forest-land.

All ask the cottage of his birth,

140

Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung, And gather feelings not of earth

His fields and streams among.

They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there.

But what to them the Sculptor's art,

His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns?

Wear they not graven on the heart
The name of Robert Burns?

1822.

144

148

152

Fitz-Greene Halleck.

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school

days;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

3

I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a Love once, fairest among women: Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her,All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

6

9

12

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood;

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

15

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces.

For some they have died, and some they have

left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

1798.

Charles Lamb.

18

21

HESTER

WHEN maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try
With vain endeavour.

A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led

To think upon the wormy bed,
And her together.

A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate

Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flush'd her spirit:

I know not by what name beside

8

12

I shall it call: if 't was not pride,

16

It was a joy to that allied,

She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool;
But she was train'd in Nature's school;

Nature had blest her.

20

« ПретходнаНастави »