The sunny temper, bright where all is strife.
The simple heart above all worldly wiles;
Light wit that plays along the calm of life,
And stirs its languid surface into smiles;
Pure charity that comes not in a shower,
Sudden and loud, oppressing what it feeds,
But, like the dew, with gradual silent power,
Felt in the bloom it leaves along the meads;
The happy grateful spirit, that improves
And brightens every gift by fortune given;
That, wander where it will with those it loves,
Makes every place a home, and home a heaven:
All these were his.—Oh, thou who read'st this stone,
When for thyself, thy children, to the sky
Thou humbly prayest, ask this boon alone,
That ye like him may live, like him may die!
GENIUS AND CRITICISM.
scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur.
SENECA.
Of old, the Sultan Genius reigned,
As Nature meant, supreme alone;
With mind unchekt, and hands unchained,
His views, his conquests were his own.
But power like his, that digs its grave
With its own sceptre, could not last;
So Genius' self became the slave
Of laws that Genius' self had past.
As Jove, who forged the chain of Fate,
Was, ever after, doomed to wear it:
His nods, his struggles all too late—
"Qui semel jussit, semper paret."
To check young Genius' proud career,
The slaves who now his throne invaded,
Made Criticism his prime Vizir,
And from that hour his glories faded.