TRIBUTE

TO THE MEMORY OF THE SAME DOG.
LIE here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,

Or want of love, that here no Stone we raise;
More thou deserv'st; but this Man gives to Man,
Brother to Brother, this is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year:
This Oak points out thy grave; the silent Tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.

I grieved for thee, and wished thy end were past
And willingly have laid thee here at last :

For thou hadst lived till every thing that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years;
Extreme old age had wasted thee away,
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees, -
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath,
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.

It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed;
Both Man and Woman wept when Thou wert dead;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were,

Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree!
For love, that comes to all the holy sense,

Best gift of God — in thee was most intense,
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind:
Yea, for thy Fellow-brutes in thee we saw
The soul of Love, Love's intellectual law:
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name!

In the School of

is a Tablet, on which are inscribed

in gilt letters, the Names of the several Persons who have beer Schoolmasters there since the Foundation of the School, with the Time at which they entered upon and quitted their Office. Opposite to one of those Names the Author wrote the following Lines.

IF Nature, for a favourite Child,
In thee hath tempered so her clay,
That every hour thy heart runs wild,
Yet never once doth go astray,

Read o'er these lines; and then review
This tablet, that thus humbly rears
In such diversity of hue

Its history of two hundred years.

-When through this little wreck of fame,
Cipher and syllable! thine eye
Has travelled down to Matthew's name,
Pause with no common sympathy.

And, if a sleeping tear should wake,
Then be it neither checked nor stayed:
For Matthew a request I make,
Which for himself he had not made.

Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,
Is silent as a standing pool;
Far from the chimney's merry roar,
And murmur of the village school

Let Truth, stern Arbitress of all,
Interpret that Original,

And for presumptuous wrongs atone;
Authentic words be given, or none!

Time is not blind;-yet He, who spares
Pyramid pointing to the Stars,
Hath preyed with ruthless appetite
On all that marked the primal flight
Of the poetic ecstasy

Into the land of mystery.

No tongue is able to rehearse
One measure, Orpheus! of thy verse;
Museus, stationed with his lyre
Supreme among the Elysian quire,
Is, for the dwellers upon earth,
Mute as a Lark ere morning's birth.
Why grieve for these, though past away
The Music, and extinct the Lay?
When thousands, by severer doom,
Full early to the silent tomb
Have sunk, at Nature's call; or strayed
From hope and promise, self-betrayed;
The garland withering on their brows;
Stung with remorse for broken vows;
Franticelse how might they rejoice?
And friendless, by their own sad choice

Hail, Bards of mightier grasp! on you
I chiefly call, the chosen Few,

Who cast not off the acknowledged guide,
Who faltered not, nor turned aside;
Whose lofty Genius could survive
Privation, under sorrow thrive;
In whom the fiery Muse revered
The symbol of a snow-white beard,
Bedewed with meditative tears
Dropped from the lenient cloud of years.

Brothers in Soul! though distant times
Produced you, nursed in various climes,
Ye, when the orb of life had waned,
A plenitude of love retained;
Hence, while in you each sad regret
By corresponding hope was met,
Ye lingered among human kind,
Sweet voices for the passing wind;
Departing sunbeams, loth to stop,
Though smiling on the last hill top!

Such to the tender-hearted Maid
Even ere her joys begin to fade;
Such, haply, to the rugged Chief
By Fortune crushed, or tamed by grief,
Appears, on Morven's lonely shore,
Dim-gleaming through imperfect lore,

"The melancholy gates of Death

Respond with sympathetic motion; "Though all that feeds on nether air, "Howe'er magnificent or fair, "Grows but to perish, and intrust "Its ruins to their kindred dust;

"Yet, by the Almighty's ever-during care,

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Her procreant vigils Nature keeps "Amid the unfathomable deeps;

The Son of Fingal; such was blind
Mæonides of ampler mind;
Such Milton, to the fountain head
Of Glory by Urania led!

VERNAL ODE.

"Rerum Natura tota est nusquam magis quam in minimis." Plin. Nat. Hist.

1.

BENEATH the concave of an April sky,

When all the fields with freshest green were dight,
Appeared, in presence of that spiritual eye
That aids or supersedes our grosser sight,
The form and rich habiliments of One

Whose countenance bore resemblance to the sun,
When it reveals, in evening majesty,
Features half lost amid their own pure light.

Poised like a weary cloud, in middle air

He hung, then floated with angelic ease
(Softening that bright effulgence by degrees)
Till he had reached a summit sharp and bare,
Where oft the venturous heifer drinks the noon-tide

breeze.

Upon the apex of that lofty cone

Alighted, there the Stranger stood alone;
Fair as a gorgeous Fabric of the East
Suddenly raised by some Enchanter's power,
Where nothing was; and firm as some old Tower
Of Britain's realm, whose leafy crest
Waves high, embellished by a gleaming shower!

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3.

O, nursed at happy distance from the cares
Of a too-anxious world, mild pastoral Muse!
That, to the sparkling crown Urania wears,
And to her sister Clio's laurel wreath,
Prefer'st a garland culled from purple heath,
Or blooming thicket moist with morning dews;
Was such bright Spectacle vouchsafed to me
And was it granted to the simple ear
Of thy contented Votary
Such melody to hear!

Him rather suits it, side by side with thee,
Wrapped in a fit of pleasing indolence,
While thy tired lute hangs on the hawthorn tree
To lie and listen, till o'er-drowsed sense
Sinks, hardly conscious of the influence,
To the soft murmur of the vagrant Bee.
-A slender sound! yet hoary Time
Doth to the Soul exalt it with the chime
Of all his years;·
a company
Of ages coming, ages gone;
(Nations from before them sweeping,
Regions in destruction steeping,)
But every awful note in unison
With that faint utterance, which tells
Of treasure sucked from buds and bells,
For the pure keeping of those waxen cells;
Where She, a statist prudent to confer
Upon the public weal; a warrior bold,
Radiant all over with unburnished gold,
And armed with living spear for mortal fight.
A cunning forager