FEMININE GRACE, THE INCENTIVE TO
AND what were life, if woman's heart
Attemper'd with no guiding art
The moral beauty of the mind,
Whereby the world is kept refined,
And each soft hue opinion wears
Its lovely origin declares ?—
Go, find a land where female grace
Is honour'd by no gallant race,
And man's dominion deems it vile
To bend beneath a woman's smile,
But tramples with a brute delight
On mental rank and moral right,—
How darkly do her people sink!
How meanly act, how basely think!
No loftiness that clime reveals,
No purity the spirit feels;
Corruption cankers law and throne,
The language breathes a dungeon tone.
And seldom there hath Virtue smiled:-
But wither'd, weaken'd, and defiled,
It moulders on from age to age,
The scorn of hero, bard, and sage,
And seems on glorious earth to be
The plague-spot of her infamy!
FIRST LOVE.
OH, lovely pair!
Warm is the gush of young affection; sweet
The overflowing of affianced hearts,
Each into each with holy rapture pour'd;
Now is the spring-time of the soul, whose bloom
Is love, ne'er felt but once, and ne'er but once
Enjoy'd! On would ye float for ever thus,
O'er moonlight seas, in one immortal bliss.
FRENCH REVOLUTION.
ONCE, France and Freedom were a mingled name;
And now, when all their wrathful clouds are roll'd
Away, the shadows which they cast, endure,
Clothing the soul of memory with fear.—
Her Revolution, who that saw, forgets?
Or who that felt, and does not feel?-The storm
That makes a midnight of convulsed day,
Is weak, to that rebellion of despair,
When buried passions, like an earthquake, burst
From out an injured Nation's heart! And such
Was thine, afflicted France! the far-off thrones
Of tyrants stagger'd, distant empires quail'd,
When like th' embodied spirit of thy wrongs
The Revolution darken'd on the world,-
Ringing a peal that echoed Europe round,
And died in thunder o'er the Atlantic deep!—
But thou wert too unholy to be free,
Too grasping to be great; and when thy thirst
For havoc brutalized the scene of blood,-
As though re-action for all human wrong
Were centred in it for one dire revenge,
I heard Heaven curse thee, and exulting hail'd
The cry of Freedom, for the voice of Hell!
FIRST VIEW OF LONDON.
NIGHT roll'd away, and when with weary eye,
We watch'd the dawn awaking in the sky,
London the vast, the wonder of mankind,
The mart of Commerce, and the fount of mind,
Like an immortal vision rose in view,
Sublimely dimm'd with morning's misty blue!
How did the startled feelings rush and roll
In pleasing tumult o'er the prostrate soul,
When timidly, as on enchanted ground,
I mark'd the giant domes uprear'd around,
And heard the waves of life around me roar,
Like echoes wafted from a distant shore,
While bands of glorious spirits that have been
Sprang into life, and stalk'd the mighty scene!
LORD of all being! where can Fancy fly,
To what far realms, unmeasur'd by thine eye?
Where can we hide beneath Thy blazing sun,
Where dwell'st THOU not, the boundless, viewless
Shall Guilt couch down within the cavern's gloom,
And quiv'ring, groaning, meditate her doom?
Or scale the mountains where the whirlwinds rest,
And in the night-blast cool her fiery breast?
Within the cavern-gloom Thine eye can see,
The sky-clad mountains lift their heads to Thee!
Thy Spirit rides upon the thunder-storms,
Dark'ning the skies into terrific forms!
Beams in the lightning, rocks upon the seas,
Roars in the blast, and whispers in the breeze;
In calm and storm, in Heaven and Earth Thou art,
Trace but Thy works-they bring Thee to the
heart!
GORGEOUS SUNSET.
Bur lo! again the magic sunset woos:
The heavens are flow'ring with a rosy mass
Of splendour, richly hued; and, floating on,
It deepens round the dying sun, who glares
With fierce redundancy awhile, then sinks
Away, like glory from Ambition's eye.
Behind him-many a cloud-idolater
Will say,-what rocks, and hills, and waves of
Magnificent confusion! such as beam'd
[light! When the rash boy-god charioted the skies, And made a burning chaos of the clouds!
GLORIES OF THE MIND.
WHAT then alone omnipotently reigns,
When Empires grovel on deserted plains,
In morning lustre, to outdare the night
That time engenders o'er their vanish'd might?
'Tis mind! an immortality below,
That gilds the past, and bids the future glow;
'Tis mind! heroic, pure, devoted mind,
To God appealing for corrupt mankind,
Reflecting back the image that he gave
Ere sin began, or earth became a slave!
Exalting thought! when ages are no more,
Like sunken billows on a far-off shore,
A second life in lofty prose or song,
Their glories bear, to light the world along!—
And ever thus may spirit be refined;
For what is Godhead, but consummate mind?
Or Heaven, but one surpassing realm of thought,
With each perfection of His wisdom fraught?
Not that we have, but what our natures feel,
By truth unfolded for sublimest zeal,
Developes all which makes our being great,
And links a human to immortal state.
Than this, could fancy weave a darker curse?—
That man is meaner than the universe!
Creation is Eternal Will, express'd
In forms of matter which were deem'd the best;
Within, is spirit; all without, we know
Forms the frail vision of a fleeting show:
Nothing so vast amid creation found
As That which thinketh, when we gaze around!
Of Athos, whence the giant shadow sweeps,
As new-alighted from a cloud she stands,
Waving her wand triumphant o'er her scenes ;-
To hoar Parnassus, where the fabled spring
Of Castaly still flows, to time-awed wilds,
To mountain pass, and Marathonian plain,
To every haunt heroic feet have trod,
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