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.
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.
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind; A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, Ye could not Hester.
My sprightly neighbour! gone before To that unknown and silent shore, Shall we not meet, as heretofore Some summer morning-
When from thy cheerful eyes a ray Hath struck a bliss upon the day, A bliss that would not go away, A sweet fore-warning?
ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN
I SAW where in the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature's work; A flow'ret crushéd in the bud, A nameless piece of Babyhood, Was in her cradle-coffin lying;
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying: So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb!
She did but ope an eye, and put
A clear beam forth, then straight up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Through glasses of mortality,
Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?
Shall we say, that Nature blind
Check'd her hand, and changed her mind Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without fault? Could she flag, or could she tire,
Or lack'd she the Promethean fire
(With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd) That should thy little limbs have quicken'd? Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure Life of health, and days mature: Woman's self in miniature! Limbs so fair, they might supply (Themselves now but cold imagery) The sculptor to make Beauty by. Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry That babe or mother, one must die; So in mercy left the stock
And cut the branch; to save the shock Of young years widow'd, and the pain When Single State comes back again To the lone man who, reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maiméd life?
The economy of Heaven is dark,
And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark Why human buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral
That has his day; while shrivell'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. -Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss: Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells, and baby clothes; Coral redder than those lips Which pale death did late eclipse;
Music framed for infants' glee,
Whistle never tuned for thee;
Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them, Loving hearts were they which gave them. Let not one be missing; nurse,
See them laid upon the hearse
Of infant slain by doom perverse. Why should kings and nobles have Pictured trophies to their grave, And we, churls, to thee deny Thy pretty toys with thee to lie- A more harmless vanity?
O BRIGNALL banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there
Would grace a summer-queen.
And as I rode by Dalton-Hall Beneath the turrets high,
A Maiden on the castle-wall Was singing merrily:
'O Brignall Banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green; I'd rather rove with Edmund there Than reign our English queen.'
'If, Maiden, thou wouldst wend with me, To leave both tower and town,
Thou first must guess what life lead we That dwell by dale and down. And if thou canst that riddle read, As read full well you may,
Then to the greenwood shalt thou speed As blithe as Queen of May.' Yet sung she, 'Brignall banks are fair, And Greta woods are green;
I'd rather rove with Edmund there Than reign our English queen.
'I read you, by your bugle-horn And by your palfrey good, I read you for a ranger sworn
To keep the king's greenwood.' 'A Ranger, lady, winds his horn, And 'tis at peep of light; His blast is heard at merry morn, And mine at dead of night.'
Yet sung she, 'Brignall banks are fair, And Greta woods are gay;
I would I were with Edmund there To reign his Queen of May!
'With burnish'd brand and musketoon So gallantly you come,
I read you for a bold Dragoon
That lists the tuck of drum.' "I list no more the tuck of drum,
No more the trumpet hear;
But when the beetle sounds his hum My comrades take the spear. And O! though Brignall banks be fair And Greta woods be gay,
Yet mickle must the maiden dare Would reign my Queen of May!
'Maiden! a nameless life I lead, A nameless death I'll die;
The fiend whose lantern lights the mead Were better mate than I!
And when I'm with my comrades met Beneath the greenwood bough,- What once we were we all forget, Nor think what we are now.'
'Yet Brignall banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer-queen.?
TO A LOCK OF HAIR
THY hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright As in that well-remember'd night When first thy mystic braid was wove, And first my Agnes whisper'd love.
Since then how often hast thou prest The torrid zone of this wild breast, Whose wrath and hate have sworn to dwell With the first sin that peopled hell;
A breast whose blood's a troubled ocean, Each throb the earthquake's wild commotion! O if such clime thou canst endure
Yet keep thy hue unstain'd and pure,
What conquest o'er each erring thought
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