Thus Pope by Curl and Dennis was destroyed, Dec. 1806. L'AMITIÉ EST L'AMOUR SANS AILES.3 I. WHY should my anxious breast repine, Because my youth is fled? Days of delight may still be mine; Affection is not dead. In tracing back the years of youth, Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat, Where first my heart responsive beat,— "Friendship is Love without his wings!" 1. [Robert Lloyd (1733-1764). The following lines occur in the first of two odes to Obscurity and Oblivion-parodies of the odes of Gray and Mason : Heard ye the din of modern rhymers bray? It was cool M-n and warm G- -y, Involv'd in tenfold smoke."] 2. [The Rev. Luke Milbourne (died 1720) published, in 1698, his Notes on Dryden's Virgil, containing a venomous attack on Dryden. They are alluded to in The Dunciad, and also by Dr. Johnson, who wrote (Life of Dryden), "His outrages seem to be the ebullitions of a mind agitated by stronger resentment than bad poetry can excite."] 3. [The MS. is preserved at Newstead.] 2. Through few, but deeply chequer'd years, What moments have been mine! Now half obscured by clouds of tears, Now bright in rays divine; Howe'er my future doom be cast, My soul, enraptured with the past, Friendship! that thought is all thine own, Worth worlds of bliss, that thought alone Where yonder yew-trees lightly wave Their branches on the gale, Unheeded heaves a simple grave, Which tells the common tale; Round this unconscious schoolboys stray, Till the dull knell of childish play From yonder studious mansion rings; But here, whene'er my footsteps move, My silent tears too plainly prove, "Friendship is Love without his wings!" 4. Oh, Love! before thy glowing shrine, My early vows were paid; My hopes, my dreams, my heart was thine, But these are now decay'd; For thine are pinions like the wind, Except, alas! thy jealous stings. Thou shalt not haunt my coming hour; 5. Seat of my youth ! thy distant spire My bosom glows with former fire,- Thy grove of elms, thy verdant hill, Thy every path delights me still, Fach flower a double fragrance flings; Again, as once, in converse gay, Each dear associate seems to say, 66 Friendship is Love without his wings!" 6. My Lycus ! wherefore dost thou weep? I. [Harrow.] 2. [Lord Clare had written to Byron, "I think by your last letter that you are very much piqued with most of your friends, and, if I am not much mistaken, a little so with me. In one part you say, 'There is little or no doubt a few years or months will render us as politely indifferent to each other, as if we had never passed a portion of our time together.' Indeed, Byron, you wrong me; and I have no doubt, at least I hope, you are wrong yourself."-Life, p. 25.] Rose whom the Deities above, From Jove to Hebe, dearly love, Flies lightly through the dance of Joy, And rosy wreaths their locks entwine. With dusky leaves my temples bound-- Along the mazes sportive fly, Will bend before thy potent throne Rose, Wine, and Beauty, all my own. 1805. [OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN IN OH! thou that roll'st above thy glorious Fire, Forth in thy Beauty here thou deign'st to shine! 1. [From an autograph MS. at Newstead, now for the first time printed. (See Ossian's Poems, London, 1819, pp. xvii. 119.)] Pallid and cold the Moon descends to cave A certain space to yonder Moon is given, She rises, smiles, and then is lost in Heaven. But thy bright beam unchanged for ever glows! Thou look'st from clouds and laughest at the Storm. Whether thy locks in Orient Beauty stream, No more yon azure vault with rays adorn, Age, dark unlovely Age, appears at length, As gleams the moonbeam through the broken cloud While mountain vapours spread their misty shroudThe Northern tempest howls along at last, And wayworn strangers shrink amid the blast. |