Classic Poem

The well-known weakness of the rhyming race
Is to be ready in and out of place;
No bashful glow, no timid begging off,
No sudden hoarseness, no discordant cough
(Those coy excuses which your singers plead,
When faintly uttering: “No, I can't, indeed”)
Impedes your rhymster in his prompt career.
Give him but hint; and won't the muse appear!

So, without blushing, when they asked, I came—
I whom the plough-share, not the quill, should claim—
The rural nymphs that on my labors smile
May mend my fence, but cannot mend my style.
The winged horse disdains my sober team,
And teeming fancy must forget to dream.
I harrow fields and not the hearts of men;
Pigs, and not poems, claim my humble pen.
And then to enter on so new a stage,
With the fair critics of this captious age,
Might lead a sceptic to the rude surmise
That cits, turned rustics, are not otherwise;
Or the bright verdure of the pastoral scene
Had changed my hue, and made me very green.

A few brief words that, fading as they fall,
Like the frail garlands of a banquet hall,
May lend one glow, one breath of fragrance pour,
Ere swept ungathered from the silent floor.
Such is my offering for your festal day:
These sprigs of rhyme; this metrical bouquet.

O my sweet sisters—let me steal the name
Nearest to love and most remote from blame—
How brief an hour of fellowship ensures
The heart's best homage at a shrine like yours.
As o'er your band our kindling glances fall,
It seems a life-time since I've known you all!
Yet on each face, where youthful graces blend,
Our partial memory still revives a friend;
The forms once loved, the features once adored,
In her new picture nature has restored.

Those golden ringlets, rippling as they flow,
We wreathed with blossoms many years ago.
Seasons have wasted; but remembered yet,
There gleams the lily through those braids of jet.
Cheeks that have faded, worn by slow decay,
Have caught new blushes from the morning's ray.
That simple ribbon, crossed upon the breast,
Wakes a poor heart that sobbed itself to rest;
Aye, thus she wore it; tell me not she died,
With that fair phantom floating by my side.
'T is as of old: why ask the vision's name:
All, to the white robe's folding, is the same;
On that white bosom burns the self-same rose.

Oh, dear illusion, how thy magic power
Works with two charms—a maiden and a flower!
Then blame me not if, lost in memory's dream,
I cheat your hopes of some expansive theme.
When the pale starlight fills the evening dim,
A misty mantle folds our river's brim.
In those white wreaths, how oft the wanderer sees
Half real shapes, the playthings of the breeze.
While every image in the darkening tide
Fades from its breast, unformed and undescried.
Thus, while I stand among your starry train,
My gathering fancies turn to mist again.
O'er time's dark wave aerial shadows play,
But all the living landscape melts away.