"Yet was the muse not always seen
In poverty's dejected mien,
Not always did repining rue,
And misery her steps pursue.
Time was, when nobles thought their titles graced
By the sweet honours of poetic bays,
When Sidney sung his melting song,
When Sheffield join'd the harmonious throng,
And Lyttelton attuned to love his lays.
Those days are gone—alas, for ever gone!
No more our nobles love to grace
Their brows with anadems, by genius won,
But arrogantly deem the muse as base;
How differently thought the sires of this degenerate race!"
I. 2.
Thus sang the minstrel:—still at eve
The upland's woody shades among
In broken measures did he grieve,
With solitary song.
And still his shame was aye the same,
Neglect had stung him to the core;
And he with pensive joy did love
To seek the still congenial grove,
And muse on all his sorrows o'er,
And vow that he would join the abjured world no more.
II. 2.
But human vows, how frail they be!
Fame brought Carlisle unto his view,
And all amazed, he thought to see
The Augustan age anew.
Fill'd with wild rapture, up he rose,
No more he ponders on the woes
Which erst he felt that forward goes,
Regrets he'd sunk in impotence,
And hails the ideal day of virtuous eminence.
III. 2.
Ah! silly man, yet smarting sore
With ills which in the world he bore,
Again on futile hope to rest,
An unsubstantial prop at best,
And not to know one swallow makes no summer!
Ah! soon he'll find the brilliant gleam,
Which flash'd across the hemisphere,
Illumining the darkness there,
Was but a single solitary beam,
While all around remained in custom'd night.
Still leaden ignorance reigns serene,
In the false court's delusive height,
And only one Carlisle is seen
To illume the heavy gloom with pure and steady light.
TO CONTEMPLATION.
Come, pensive sage, who lovest to dwell
In some retired Lapponian cell,
Where, far from noise and riot rude,
Besides sequester'd solitude.
Come, and o'er my longing soul
Throw thy dark and russet stole,
And open to my duteous eyes
The volume of thy mysteries.
I will meet thee on the hill,
Where, with printless footsteps still,
The morning in her buskin gray
Springs upon her eastern way;
While the frolic zephyrs stir,
Playing with the gossamer,
And, on ruder pinions borne,
Shake the dewdrops from the thorn.
There, as o'er the fields we pass,
Brushing with hasty feet the grass,
We will startle from her nest
The lively lark with speckled breast,
And hear the floating clouds among
Her gale-transported matin song,
Or on the upland stile, embower'd
With fragrant hawthorn snowy flower'd,
Will sauntering sit, and listen still
To the herdsman's oaten quill,
Wafted from the plain below;
Or the heifer's frequent low;
Or the milkmaid in the grove,
Singing of one that died for love.
Or when the noontide heats oppress,
We will seek the dark recess,
Where, in the embower'd translucent stream,
The cattle shun the sultry beam,
And o'er us on the marge reclined,
The drowsy fly her horn shall wind,
While echo, from her ancient oak,
Shall answer to the woodman's stroke;
Or the little peasant's song,
Wandering lone the glens among,
His artless lip with berries dyed,
And feet through ragged shoes descried.