4.
And vain was each effort to raise and recall
The brightness of old to illumine our Hall;
And vain was the hope to avert our decline,
And the fate of my fathers had faded to mine.
5.
And theirs was the wealth and the fulness of Fame,
And mine to inherit too haughty a name;[r]
And theirs were the times and the triumphs of yore,
And mine to regret, but renew them no more.
6.
And Ruin is fixed on my tower and my wall,
Too hoary to fade, and too massy to fall;
It tells not of Time's or the tempest's decay,[]
But the wreck of the line that have held it in sway.
August 26, 1811.
[First published in Memoir of Rev. F. Hodgson, 1878, i. 187.]
EPISTLE TO A FRIEND,[27]
IN ANSWER TO SOME LINES EXHORTING THE AUTHOR
TO BE CHEERFUL, AND TO "BANISH CARE."