“Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain;
Dear shalt thou be to future men,
As in old time.”
Does the reader, now that I have brought before him, in company with each other, “this child of the year,” and the gentlest and most eloquent of all her lovers, desire to hear a few more of the compliments that he has paid to her, without the trouble of leaving the fields, and opening a book? I can afford but a few; for beneath yonder hedgerow, and within the twilight of the copse behind it, there are flocks of other sweet flowers, waiting for their praise.
“When soothed awhile by milder airs,
Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly shades his few gray hairs;
Spring cannot shun thee;
And Autumn, melancholy wight,
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.”
[By the by, I cannot let pass this epithet, “melancholy,” without protesting most strenuously against the above application of it. Seldom, indeed, is it that the poet before us falls into an error of this kind; and it is therefore that I point it out.]
“In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
Thou greet’st the traveller in the lane.
* * * *
And oft alone in nooks remote
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.
Be violets, in their secret mews,
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;
Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;
* * * *
Thou art the poet’s darling.
If to a rock from rains he fly,
Or some bright day of April sky
Imprisoned by hot sunshine lie
Near the green holly,
And wearily at length should fare,
He need but look about, and there
Thou art, a friend at hand, to scare
His melancholy!
If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy, that heeds
The common life our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.”
And then do but see what “fantastic tricks” the poet’s imagination plays, when he comes to seek out similies for his fair favourite:
“A nun demure, of lowly port;
A sprightly maiden of love’s court,
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
A queen in crown of rubies drest;
A starveling in a scanty vest;
Are all, as seem to suit thee best,
Thy appellations.