[Footnote 15: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the Abipones. [Note in Blackwood.]
LINES
Addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N., on the Perusal of his Volume of Travels in the Interior of Mexico
'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair,
Secure at home, to read descriptions rare
Of venturous traveller in savage climes;
His hair-breadth 'scapes, toil, hunger—and sometimes
The merrier passages that, like a foil
To set off perils past, sweetened that toil,
And took the edge from danger; and I look
With such fear-mingled pleasure thro' thy book,
Adventurous Hardy! Thou a diver[16] art,
But of no common form; and for thy part
Of the adventure, hast brought home to the nation
Pearls of discovery—jewels of observation.
ENFIELD, January, 1830.
[Footnote 16: Captain Hardy practised this art with considerable success. [Note in Athenaeum.]
LINES
[For a Monument Commemorating the Sudden Death by Drowning of a Family, of Four Sons and Two Daughters]
(1831)
Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom,
That seals a single victim to the tomb.
But when Death riots—when, with whelming sway,
Destruction sweeps a family away;
When infancy and youth, a huddled mass,
All in an instant to oblivion pass,
And parents' hopes are crush'd; what lamentation
Can reach the depth of such a desolation?
Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up and trust,
That HE who lays their mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal spirit in his keeping—
In Jesus' sight they are not dead but sleeping.