ELEGIAC SONNET.
Ye worldly, hence! that have not drank the stream
Of deep affliction at the fountain head;
That have not fondly gaz’d the dying---dead!
’Till the set eye refus’d the conscious gleam
That fed Affection with its parting beam;
Nor kiss’d the cold lips, whence the spirit fled,
Of her you lov’d beyond a poets dream:
And who but lately blest your genial bed!---
This, has the mourner at Amelia’s tomb;
And but one star illumes his night of gloom:---
As from its parent dust the phœnix soar’d,
Her infant self surviving seems to say---
The Lord has giv’n---the Lord has ta’en away;
For ever blessed be his name,---the Lord!
To the Editor,
The following STANZA’S were recently written by that celebrated Genius and Traveller Governor Henry Ellis, on seeing an infirm old Man treated by a young rabble with indecent mockery in the Street at Pisa in Italy—a country where every inanimate vestage of antiquity is viewed with so much veneration.
The mould’ring Tower, the antique bust,
The ruin’d temple’s sacred dust,
Are view’d with rev’rence and delight;
But man decay’d and sunk with years
And sad infirmities, appears
An object of neglect and slight.
Ah, thoughtless race! in youthful prime,
You mock the ravages of time,
As if you could elude its rage;
That piteous form which you despise,
With wrinkled front and beamless eyes;
That form, alas! you’ll take with age.
Some vital sparks that every day,
Time’s rapid pinion sweeps away,
Prepare you for that hapless state;
When left and slighted in your turn,
Your former levities you’ll mourn,
And own the justice of your fate.