For the Table Book.
SONNET
To T. Hood, Esq. written after reading his “Plea of the Midsummer Fairies.”
Delightful bard! what praises meet are thine,
More than my verse can sound to thee belong;
Well hast thou pleaded, with a tongue divine,
In this thy sweet and newly breathed song,
Where, like the stream, smooth numbers gliding throng;
Gather’d, methinks I see the elfin race,
With the Immortal standing them among,
Smiling benign with more than courtly grace;
Rescued I see them,—all their gambols trace,
With their fair queen Titania in her bower,
And all their avocations small embrace,
Pictur’d by thee with a Shakspearean power—
O when the time shall come thy soul must flee,
Then may some hidden spirit plead for thee.
Edward Moxon.
For the Table Book.
THE QUINTAIN.
———— My better parts
Are all thrown down; and that which here stands up,
Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.