TO A POSTHUMOUS INFANT. CHILD of woman, and of Heaven, Father's tear with baby smile, Never laugh on father's knee, May the spirit of the Blest, Look upon its earthly nest? Breathe upon thine infant slumbers, To form," to kindle, or controul?" His own, the new-born fatherless? HOMER. Far from all measured space, yet clear and plain Illumes extremest Heaven. Beyond the throng One steadfast light gleams through the dark, and long, How fortified with all the numerous train Of human truths, Great Poet of thy kind, When Priam wept, or shame-struck Helen pined. VALENTINE. TO A FAIR ARTISTE. Written in 1813. These, if not the first verses that I ever wrote, are the first with which I succeeded in pleasing even myself:-in fact, the first in which I was able to express a preconceived thought in metre. I have selected them from a mass of juvenile, or more properly, puerile poetry, not as any better, or much worse, than the rest, but from the pleasant associations connected with them. It will do nobody any harm, and to some may be an agreeable remembrancer of old times. The young lady to whom it was addressed is the eldest daughter of the late William Green, an artist of great merit, who possessed a true sense of the beautiful in nature. The lady is now a wife and mother, and probably regards the pictorial skill of her youth, and the compliments it may have gained her, as things that have been. O, MISTRESS of that lovely art Which can to shadows form impart Can fix those evanescent tints, Fainter by far than lovers' hints, And bring the scenes we love to mind, How proud 'twould make a connoisseur THE FORSAKEN TO THE FAITHLESS. I Do not write to bid thee come unto me- A thing which few, with all their toil and trouble, That still is Folly's mouth-piece, Custom's slave. Not for my name I mourn-but thou hast ta'en T |