APPENDIX A
The following lines are taken from Lord Holland’s verses ‘To a lady on her Birthday, Florence, March 25, 1795.’[389]
When twice twelve times the rolling earth
Brought back the period of her birth,
Thus to the Genius of the day
A certain Dame was heard to pray:
‘Give me, indulgent Genius, give
’Midst learned cabinets to live,
’Midst curiosities, collections,
Specimens, medals, and dissections,
With books of every tongue and land
All difficult to understand,
With instruments of various sorts,
Telescopes, air pumps, tubes, retorts,
With friends, fair wisdom to pursue,
Fontana, Macie, Blagden, Drew.’
*****
Such are thy wishes, but if kind
The Gods, and of a mortal’s mind,
These sacrifices they will spare,
And long preserve you what you are;
And when obdurate time besprinkles
Your head with grey, your face with wrinkles,
When sickness and when age shall come
And wither transient beauty’s bloom,
Still shall the beauties of your mind,
By reading and by time refin’d,
Still shall thy wit and polish’d ease
In spite of fickle nature please;
And then th’ enchanted world shall see
Rochefoucauld’s laws belied in thee,
See female merit youth outlive,
And loveliness thy charms survive.
So when old Time’s relentless page
At full threescore shall mark thy age,
With equal truth but better verse
Some Bard thy merits shall rehearse,
And like myself be proud to pay
A tribute to this happy day.
Thirty-six years afterwards, on March 25, 1831, Lord Holland gave his wife another copy of verses, and the reader will probably be interested in seeing a short selection from them.
I promised you, ’tis long ago,
Some six and thirty years or so,
Another Bard your praise should sing
When you had reached your sixtieth Spring.
That sixtieth spring has come—to you,
My Dearest Soul, the verse is due.
Nor ever thine more fit t’inspire
The heart’s delight, the Poet’s fire,
Than Charms, unfading Charms, like yours,
Than merit which the test endures
Of health and sickness, smiles and tears,
And all that chequers lengthened years.
Nor will you frown, tho’ my prediction
In one sole point turn out a fiction,
And this so late reviving lay
Raised to record your natal day
Prove no strange minstrel’s ode or hymn,
But the unaltered vows of him,
Whose earliest and whose last emotion
Has been and must be warm devotion
To all the Charms he sees combined
In thy dear frame and lovely Mind.
*****
I write not, I, for prize or fame,
Nor bays nor triumph is my aim;
To you, My Love, my strains belong,
To you I dedicate my song:
And all my hope and all my due
Is one kind happy smile from You.
Content if on this blessed day
My simple rugged lines convey
One truth, which be it verse or prose,
From my heart’s heart sincerely flows:
‘I loved you much at twenty-four,
I love you better at threescore.’