At the time that Mr Shield was most with him, he had been long in ill health, apparently in a decline; and this had given a deeper tinge of melancholy to the natural thoughtfulness of his disposition. A little before his death, he wrote the following lines, which seem to convey a presentiment of his fate.
‘Sweet object of the zephyr’s kiss,
Come rose, come, courted by the hours,
Queen of the banks, the garden’s bliss,
Come, and abash yon tawdry flow’rs.
“Why call us to revokeless doom,”
With grief the op’ning buds reply,
“Scarce suffer’d to expand our bloom,
Scarce born, alas! before we die.”
‘Man, having pass’d appointed years,