The Sibyl speaks, the dream is o'er, Breathing a prophetic flame. The cavern frowns; its hundred mouths unclose! And in the thunder's voice, the fate of empire flows! III. 1. Mona, thy Druid-rites awake the dead! Rites thy brown oaks would never dare Rites that have chain'd old Ocean on his bed. III. 2. Lo, steel-clad War his gorgeous standard rears! In cloister'd solitude she sits and sighs, Lord of each pang the nerves can feel, Pure as the mountain-snows: She smiles! and where is now the cloud 1 See Tacitus, 1. xiv, c. 29. This remarkable event happened at the siege and sack of Jerusalem, in the last year of the eleventh century. Matth. Paris, p. 34. Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above, And lo! it visits man with beams of light and love, VERSES WRITTEN TO BE SPOKEN BY MRS. SIDDONS.' YES, 't is the pulse of life! my fears were vain; I wake, I breathe, and am myself again. Still in this nether world; no seraph yet! Nor walks my spirit, when the sun is set, With troubled step to haunt the fatal board, Where I died last-by poison or the sword; Blanching each honest cheek with deeds of night, Done here so oft by dim and doubtful light. -To drop all metaphor, that little bell Call'd back reality, and broke the spell. No heroine claims your tears with tragic tone; A very woman-scarce restrains her own! Can she, with fiction, charm the cheated mind, When to be grateful is the part assign'd? Ah no! she scorns the trappings of her Art; No theme but truth, no prompter but the heart! But, Ladies, say, must I alone unmask? Is here no other actress? let me ask. Believe me, those, who best the heart dissect, Know every Woman studies stage-effect. She moulds her manners to the part she fills, As Instinct teaches, or as Humor wills; And, as the grave or gay her talent calls, Acts in the drama till the curtain falls. First, how her little breast with triumph swells, When the red coral rings its golden bells! To play in pantomime is then the rage, Along the carpet's many-color'd stage; Or lisp her merry thoughts with loud endeavor, Now here, now there-in noise and mischief ever! A school-girl next, she curls her hair in papers, And mimics father's gout, and mother's vapors; Discards her doll, bribes Betty for romances; Playful at church, and serious when she dances; Tramples alike on customs and on toes, And whispers all she hears to all she knows; Terror of caps, and wigs, and sober notions! A romp! that longest of perpetual motions! -Till tamed and tortured into foreign graces, She sports her lovely face at public places; And with blue, laughing eyes, behind her fan, First acts her part with that great actor, MAN. Too soon a flirt, approach her and she flies! Frowns when pursued, and, when entreated, sighs! Plays with unhappy men as cats with mice; Till fading beauty hints the late advice. Her prudence dictates what her pride disdain'd, And now she sues to slaves herself had chain'd! Then comes that good old character, a Wife, With all the dear distracting cares of life; A thousand cards a day at doors to leave, And, in return, a thousand cards receive; Rouge high, play deep, to lead the ton aspire, With nightly blaze set Portland-place on fire; Snatch half a glimpse at Concert, Opera, Ball, A meteor, traced by none, though seen by all; 1 After a Tragedy, performed for her benefit, at the Theatre Royal in Drury-lane, April 27, 1795. And, when her shatter'd nerves forbid to roam, In very spleen-rehearse the girls at home. Last, the grey Dowager, in ancient flounces, With snuff and spectacles the age denounces; Boasts how the Sires of this degenerate Isle Knelt for a look, and duell'd for a smile. The scourge and ridicule of Goth and Vandal, Her tea she sweetens, as she sips, with scandal ; With modern Belles eternal warfare wages, Like her own birds that clamor from their cages; And shuffles round to bear her tale to all, Like some old Ruin, " nodding to its fall!" Thus Woman makes her entrance and her exit; Not least an actress, when she least suspects it. Yet Nature oft peeps out and mars the plot, Each lesson lost, each poor pretence forgot; Full oft, with energy that scorns control, At once lights up the features of the soul; Unlocks each thought chain'd down by coward Art, And to full day the latent passions start! -And she, whose first, best wish is your applause, Herself exemplifies the truth she draws. Born on the stage-through every shifting scene, Obscure or bright, tempestuous or serene, Still has your smile her trembling spirit fired! And can she act, with thoughts like these inspired? Thus from her mind all artifice she flings, All skill, all practice, now unmeaning things! To you, uncheck'd, each genuine feeling flows; For all that life endears-to you she owes. -Tis she, 't is she herself! she waves her hand! TO AN OLD OAK. Immota manet; multosque nepotes, Multa virum volvens durando sæcula, vincit. Virg. ROUND thee, alas, no shadows move! And the wolf howl beneath. There once the steel-clad knight reclined, Then Culture came, and days serene; Father of many a forest deep, Wont in the night of woods to dwell, The holy Druid saw thee rise; And, planting there the guardian spell, Sung forth, the dreadful pomp to swell Of human sacrifice! Thy singed top and branches bare TO TWO SISTERS.' WELL may you sit within, and, fond of grief, Oh she was great in mind, though young in years! Changed is that lovely countenance, which shed Light when she spoke, and kindled sweet surprise, As o'er her frame each warm emotion spread, Play'd round her lips, and sparkled in her eyes. Those lips so pure, that moved but to persuade 1 On the death of a younger sister. Yet has she fled the life of bliss below, And now in joy she dwells, in glory moves! ON A TEAR. OH! that the Chemist's magic art Sweet drop of pure and pearly light! Benign restorer of the soul! The sage's and the poet's theme, That very law which moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course. TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST. Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor? Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum. Ausonius. ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul, Once more we hail thy soft control. -Yet whither, whither didst thou fly? To what bright region of the sky? Say, in what distant star to dwell? (Of other worlds thou seem'st to tell) Or trembling, fluttering here below, Resolved and unresolved to go, In secret didst thou still impart Thy raptures to the pure in heart? Perhaps to many a desert shore, Thee, in his rage, the Tempest bore; Thy broken murmurs swept along, 'Mid Echoes yet untuned by song; Arrested in the realms of Frost, Far happier thou! 'twas thine to soar, Yet round her couch indulgent Fancy drew She moved her lips to bless thee, and expired. To thee, how changed! comes as she ever came, Nor less, less oft, as on that day, appears, And nursed thy infant years with many a strain For ever lovely in the light of Youth! FROM A GREEK EPIGRAM. WHILE on the cliff with calm delight she kneels, TO THE FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES, AND dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone, What though the Spirits of the North, that swept TO АH! little thought she, when, with wild delight, That in her veins a secret horror slept, That her light footsteps should be heard no more, 1 Mrs. Sheridan's. THE BOY OF EGREMOND.' "SAY, what remains when Hope is filed?" At Embsay rung the matin-bell, In tartan clad and forest-green, There now the matin-bell is rung; 1 In the twelfth century William Fitz-Duncan laid waste the valleys of Craven with fire and sword; and was afterwards Ju-established there by his uncle, David, King of Scotland. 2 In the gardens of the Vatican, where it was placed by lius II. it was long the favorite study of those great men to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Carracci. 3 Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an ancient epigram on the Guidian Venus.-Analecta Vet. Poetarum, III. 200. 4 On the death of her sister. of Egremond, dying before him in the manner here related; He was the last of the race; his son, commonly called the Boy when a Priory was removed from Embsay to Bolton, that it happened. That place is still known by the name of the Strid; might be as near as possible to the place where the accident and the mother's answer, as given in the first stanza, is to this day often repeated in Wharfedale.-See Whitaker's Hist. of Craven. And holy men in cowl and hood Are wandering up and down the wood. Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping, Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping; TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE. As on she moves with hesitating grace, Spare the fine tremors of her feeling frame! At each response the sacred rite requires, O'er her fair face what wild emotions play! Ah soon, thine own confest, ecstatic thought! That hand shall strew thy summer-path with flowers; And those blue eyes, with mildest lustre fraught, Gild the calm current of domestic hours! THE ALPS AT DAY-BREAK. THE sun-beams streak the azure skies, From rock to rock, with giant-bound, The goats wind slow their wonted way I There are passes in the Alps, where the guides tell you to move on with speed, and say nothing, lest the agitation of the ur should loosen the snows above. And while the torrent thunders loud, IMITATION OF AN ITALIAN SONNET. But now as Rage the God appears! A CHARACTER. As through the hedge-row shade the violet steals, TO THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF LADY ****. AH! why with tell-tale tongue reveal For this presumption, soon or late, AN EPITAPH 2 ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST. TO THE GNAT. WHEN by the greenwood side, at summer eve, 1 Alluding to some verses which she had written on an elder sister. 2 Inscribed on an urn in the flower-garden at Hafod. |