Go, call him by his name! No fitter hand may crave To light the flame of a soldier's fame On the turf of a soldier's grave. WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. To Macaulay. THE dreamy rhymer's measured snore WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. But divine, melodious truth- Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; And the souls ye left behind you Teach us here the way to find you, Where your other souls are joying, Never slumbering, never cloying. Here your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though fled far away. Bards of passion and of mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Ye have souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new! JOHN KEATS. Ode. BARDS of passion and of mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! A POET'S THOUGHT. The king, enraptured by the strain, Commanded that a golden chain Be given the bard in guerdon. "Not so! Reserve thy chain, thy gold, "I sing as in the greenwood bush The cageless wild-bird carols; The tones that from the full heart gush They set it down; he quaffs it all "Oh! draught of richest flavor! Oh! thrice divinely happy hall Where that is scarce a favor! If Heaven shall bless ye, think on me; For this delicious wine-cup!" JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. (German.) Translation of JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. Sonnet. WHO best can paint th' enamelled robe of spring, With flow'rets and fair blossoms well bedight; Who best can her melodious accents sing, With which she greets the soft return of light; Who best can bid the quaking tempest rage, And make th' imperial arch of heav'n to groan Breed warfare with the winds, and finely wage Great strife with Neptune on his rocky throne Or lose us in those sad and mournful days With which pale autumn crowns the misty year, Shall bear the prize, and in his true essays A poet in our awful eyes appear; For whom let wine his mortal woes beguile, Gold, praise, and woman's thrice-endearing smile. LORD THURLOW. A Poet's Thought. TELL me, what is a poet's thought? Was it cradled in the brain? Chained awhile, or nursed in night? Was it wrought with toil and pain? Did it bloom and fade again, Ere it burst to light? No more question of its birth : Rather love its better part! "Tis a thing of sky and earth, Gathering all its golden worth From the poet's heart. 695 But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might To me that morning did it happen so; I heard the skylark warbling in the sky; Even as these blissful creatures do I fare; My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, We poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and mad ness. Now, whether it were by peculiar grace, A leading from above, a something given, Yet it befell that, in this lonely place, When I with these untoward thoughts had striven, Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven I saw a man before me unawares The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray hairs. As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie Couched on the bald top of an eminence, Wonder to all who do the same espy By what means it could hither come, and whence; So that it seems a thing endued with senseLike a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself |