A riddle of riddles: Who'll give it a name?
A portrait of God in a worm-eaten frame.
A mount in his own eye—in others' a mite;
The foot-boy of Wrong, and the headsman of Right;
A vaunter of Virtue—yet dallies with Vice;
From the cope to the basement bought up at a price;
A vane in his friendship—in folly a rock;
In custom a time-piece—in manners a mock;
A fib under fashion—a fool under form;
In charity chilly—in wealth-making warm:
In hatred satanic—a lambkin in love;
A hawk in religion with coo of a dove;
A riddle unravelled—a story untold;
A worm deemed an idol if covered with gold.
A dog in a gutter—a God on a throne:
In slander electric—in justice a drone:
A parrot in promise, and frail as a shade;
A hooded immortal in life's masquerade;
A sham-lacquered bauble, a bubble, a breath:
A boaster in life-time—a coward in death.
TO A FLY:
BURNED BY A GAS-LIGHT.
Poor prostrate speck! Thou round and round
With wildering limp dost come and go;
Thy tale to me, devoid of sound,
Bears the mute majesty of woe.
In bounding pride of revelry,
Seared by the cruel, burning blast,
Thy fall instructive is to me
As fall of States and Empires vast.
No sounding theme from lips of fire,
No marvel of the immortal quill,
Can teach a moral, sterner—higher,
Than thou, so helpless and so still.
Reft as thou art by blistering burn—
Blinded and shorn—poor stricken Fly!
The wise may stoop and lessons learn
From thy unmeasured agony.
It tells how maid, in guileless youth,
Flies tow'rds her Love with trusting wing,
Bruises her heart 'gainst broken truth,
And falls, like thee, a crippled thing.
How man in bacchanalian sphere
Soars to the heat of Pleasure's sun,
Then, by gradations dark and drear,
Sinks low as thee, poor wingless one:
How hearts from proud Ambition's height
Have drooped to darkest, lowest hell—
From blazing noon to pitchy night,
With pangs a demon-tongue may tell:
How aspirations glory-fraught
Have gained the goal in dark despair;
How golden hopes have come to nought
But wailings in the midnight air.
There! and the life I ne'er could give
In pitying tenderness I've ta'en;
Far better thus to die, than live
A life of helpless, hopeless pain.
Ambitious hearts—high-vaulting pow'rs—
That aim to grasp life's distant sky,
See through the spirit-blinding hours
What wrought the fall of yonder Fly.
TO A FRIEND.
I fear to name thee. If I were
To do so, I could never tell
What virtues crown thy nature rare;
'Twould pain thy heart—I know it well.
Thou dost not ask for thy reward
In words that all the world may hear,
For thoughtful acts and kind regard
By thee for others everywhere.