VI. TO HEBE. [A STATUETTE ON THE BOOKCASE.] GODDESS of Beauty, and eternal youth! Lovely ideal! Beatific beam! For which Canova made a house of clay! No more thou art to me a Poet's dream. Thou canst not die HOMER, thou art not dead! While beats one heart on this terrestrial sphere, That quickens to the spell of Poesy, Or, Fancy's smile illumes its chambers drear. Three thousand years have watched thy steady light Guiding the minstrel band to Fame's high goal, As Cynosura through the treacherous night, And Ilium's tears, and sighs, and struggles vast, And Troy's proud walls come tumbling to the ground. VIII. TO MY BOOKS. HALLOWED Companions! tutors ! ministers ! If sickness fling her pallid mantle round me, Oh! who would spurn the shrine which Wisdom tends― IX. TO MY GUITAR. So dear a friend as thou I never knew— Such truth, and faith, and love, and sympathy As I have drawn from thy soul-melody. When I am sad thou chant'st some Paynim story Until my woe is lost in woes of eld; When I am glad, thou sing'st of knightly glory, Beneath the power of thy delicious strains; And seraphs sing around the altars of my soul. X. THE OASES THINK not that I am hapless, ye who read Is not to prove all healthful germs expire. Is not to prove it hath nor herbs nor flowers. Of Fortune's ladder, that no oases Cheering the weary pilgrims as they go Not all the fires that Terra's breast consume, Can kill these emerald spots that mid my heart-waste bloom. |