I have been told that I have incurred blame for having used in this short composition, terms that have become obnoxious to certain persons. Such remarks are hardly worth notice; and it is very little my ambition to obtain the suffrage of those who suffer party prejudice to influence their taste; or of those who desire that because they have themselves done it, every one else should be willing to sell their best birth-rights, the liberty of thought, and of expressing thought, for the promise of a mess of pottage. It is surely not too much to say, that in a country like ours, where such immense sums are annually raised for the poor, there ought to be some regulation which should prevent any miserable deserted being from perishing through want, as too often happens to such objects as that on whose interment these stanzas were written. It is somewhat remarkable that a circumstance exactly similar is the subject of a short poem called the Pauper's Funeral, in a volume lately published by Mr Southey. THE FEMALE EXILE. This little poem, of which a sketch first appeared in blank verse in a poem called "The Emigrants," was suggested by the sight of the group it attempts to describe-a French lady and her children. The drawing from which the print is taken I owe to the taste and talents of a lady, whose pencil has bestowed the highest honour this little book can boast. OCCASIONAL ADDRESS. WRITTEN FOR A PLAYER. The becca-fica seeks Italian groves, From an idea that the wheat-ear of the southern Downs is the becca-fica of Italy. I doubt it; but have no books that give me any information on the subject. Page 58. line 22. A hero now, and now a sans culotte. At this time little else was talked of. The singular scenery here attempted to be described, is almost the only part of this rock of stones worth seeing. On a high broken cliff hang the ruins of some very ancient building, which the people of the island call Bow and Arrow Castle, or Rufus' Castle. Beneath, but still high above the sea, are the half-fallen arches and pillars of an old church, and around are scattered the remains of tomb-stones, and almost obliterated memorials of the dead. These verses were written for, and first inserted in, a Novel, called Marchmont; and the close alludes to the circumstance of the story related in the Novel. VERSES Supposed to have been written in the New Forest in early Spring. These are from the Novel of Marchmont. Line 1. As in the woods where leathery lichen weaves Mosses and lichens are the first efforts of Nature to clothe the earth: as they decay, they form an earth that affords nourishment to the larger and more succulent vegetables: several species of lichen are found in the woods, springing up among the dead leaves, under the drip of forest trees; these, and the withered foliage of preceding years, afford shelter to the earliest wild flowers about the skirts of woods, and in hedge-rows and copses. The Pile-wort (Ranuncula Ficaria) and the Wood Anemone (Anemone Nemerosa) or Windflower, blow in the woods and copses. Of this latter beautiful species there is in Oxfordshire a blue one, growing wild, (Anemone pratensis pedunculo involucrato, petalis apice reflexis foliis bipinnatis -Lin. Sp. Pl. 760.) It is found in Whichwood Forest, near Cornbury quarry. (Vide Flora Oxoneinsis). I do not mention this by way of exhibiting C which our condition subjects us to, are light in Fell certain on the guilty head, none else- Or haply strike his high-toned harp, to swell Crowe. I have in these stanzas, entitled the Forest Boy, attempted the measure so successfully adopted in one of the poems of a popular novel, and so happily imitated by Mr Southey in " Poor Mary." ODE TO THE POPPY. This and the following poem were written (the first of them at my request, for a Novel) by a lady whose death in her thirty-sixth year was a subject of the deepest concern to all who knew her. Would to God the last line which my regret on that loss, drew from me, had been prophetic-and that my heart had indeed been cold, instead of having suffered within the next twelve months after that line was written, a deprivation which has rendered my life a living death APRIL Line 4. From their moss'd cradles, &c. The oak, and, in sheltered situations, the beech, retain the leaves of the preceding year till the new foliage appears. The return of the spring, which awakens many to new sentiments of pleasure, now serves only to remind me of past misery. This sensation is common to the wretched-and too many poets have felt it in all its force. "Zefiro torno, e'l bel tempo rimena, Ei fiori, e l'erbe, sua dolce famiglia; &c. &c. "Ma per me lasso !" Petrarch on the Death of Laura. And these lines of Guarini have always been celebrated. "O primavera gioventù dell' anno, Bella madre di fiori D'erbe novelle e di novelli amori;. Tu torni ben, ma teco Non tornano i sereni E fortunati di, delle mie gioje; Ma teco altro non torna Che del perduto mio caro tesoro, ODE TO DEATH. From the following sentence in Lord Bacon's Essays. "Death is no such formidable enemy, since a man has so many champions about him that can win the combat of him-Revenge triumphs over Death; Love slights it; Honour courts it; dread of Disgrace chooses it; Grief flies to it; Fear antici pates it." THE END. THE POETICAL WORKS OF THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE CANNING. LONDON: 3, ACTON PLACE, KINGSLAND ROAD. MDCCCXXVII. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following Pieces having already been before the Public some years ago, and as they excited very considerable attention at the time they appeared, it is presumed that no apology will be required for republishing them, in a form which will render them more easy of access to the general reader. The versatile talents of their author, perhaps never appeared to greater advantage than in the following pieces; and whether we view him as a grave or humorous writer, his effusions are equally instructive and entertaining. His attacks upon the Addington family, whom he facetiously styled the Family de Medici, may be considered as chefs-d'œuvre in their way, and though we cannot say much for the author's consistency of conduct, in joining the men who had formerly suffered so much from the severity of his satire, we must give him full credit for the variety of his wit, and the versatility of his genius. Indeed he rendered a certain set of grave politicians the complete laughing-stock of the country, and such they have continued ever since. His exertions against French Jacobinism are too well known to stand in need of much comment. The two principal of his pieces on this subject we have selected-viz. The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder, and New Morality; and though they were produced by the pressure of temporary circumstances, we conceive they are entitled to rank with the author's best productions. |