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DOMESTIC POEMS.

PROEM.

As through the mazy path of life I stray,
While Youth and Hope as yet my steps attend,
I love at times to pause, and strew the way
With the wild blossoms that luxuriant pend
From Spring's gay branches; that whene'er I send
My Memory to retrace my pilgrimage,

She by those flowers her winding course may bend

Back through each twilight path and weary stage,

And with those early flowers wreathe the white brow of Age.

1811.

DOMESTIC POEMS.

ΤΟ

I.

THOU Lady dear, for whom I wake the string,

With hand well nigh forgetful of its art,

Thou only one for whom I care to sing,

Who first didst make the thrill of music dart

Through every chord that vibrates in my heart,
By thee attuned to gladness! Lady, say,
What tuneful mode may best my love impart,

This hallow'd morn,-the sweetly solemn lay,

Or numbers wild and free, my heart as light as they?

II.

They said that I was grave.

Dear Lady, yes:

Joy may assume the pensive brow of Care.

F

The tear of rapture and the sigh of bliss,

The deep and earnest feeling best declare. When fresh with sunny showers the soften'd air

First breathes of Spring, when first the milder skies Reveal that bright blue heaven, while lessening there, Th' exultant lark trills his loud melodies,

And to the voice of Hope the echoing vale replies ;

III.

Perchance, from distance borne, the merry peal
Swells on the ear, accordant with the scene :
Is it then sadness which doth strangely steal
On the full heart, changing the gayest mien

To seeming sorrow? No: 'tis too serene

For grief, for mirth too solemn, too refined. Then, Dearest, know by this, what oft have been

My feelings, when, to pensiveness resign'd,

The thought, the sense of thee has fill'd my raptured

mind.

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