ON READING SOME ELEGIES.
Hither your wreaths, ye drooping muses bring,
The short-liv’d rose, that blooms but to decay;
Love’s fragrant myrtles, that in paphos spring,
And deathless poetry’s immortal bay.
And oh! thou gentlest shade, accept the verse,
Mean though it be, and artlessly sincere,
That pensive thus attends thy silent hearse,
And steals, in secret shades, the pious tear.
What heart by heav’n with gen’rous softness blest,
But in thy lines its native language reads?
Where hapless love, in tender, plainness drest,
Gracefully mourns and elegantly bleeds.
In vain, alas, thy fancy fondly gay
Trac’d the fair scenes of dear domestic life;
The sportive loves forsook their wanton play,
To paint for thee the mistress, friend and wife.
Oh luckless lover! form’d for better days,
For golden years, and ages long ago:
For thee Persephone* impatient stays,
For thee the willow and the cypress grow.
* The Goddess of Death.
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.