The fate thou didst so well foresee
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy silence was his sentence,
And in his soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
III.

Thy godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit :

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To mortals of their fate and force,
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence :
To which his spirit may oppose
Itself-an equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concentered recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

STANZAS TO

I.

THOUGH the day of my destiny 's over
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me,

And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

2.

Then when nature around me is smiling
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,

If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.

3.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver❜d,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd
To pain-it shall not be its slave.

There is many a pang to pursue me :

They may crush, but they shall not contemn, They may torture, but shall not subdue me--'Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

4.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake,-
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.

5.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one-

If

my soul was not fitted to prize it, 'Twas folly not sooner to shun : And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could foresee, I have found that, whatever it lost me It could not deprive me of thee.

6.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desart a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,

And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

ON THE DEATH

OF SIR PETER PARKER, BART.

THERE is a tear for all that die,

A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And triumph weeps above the brave.

For them is sorrow's purest sigh

O'er Ocean's heaving bosom sent :
In vain their bones unburied lie,
All earth becomes their monument !

A tomb is theirs on every page,
An epitaph on every tongue.
The present hours, the future age,

For them bewail, to them belong.

For them the voice of festal mirth

Grows hushed, their name the only sound; While deep Remembrance pours to Worth The goblet's tributary round.

A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,

Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose ?

And, gallant Parker! thus enshrined

Thy life, thy fall, thy fame shall be;

And early valour, glowing, find

A model in thy memory.

But there are breasts that bleed with thee
In woe, that glory cannot quell;
And shuddering hear of victory,

Where one so dear, so dauntless, fell.

Where shall they turn to mourn thee less?
When cease to hear thy cherished name?
Time cannot teach forgetfulness,
While Grief's full heart is fed by Fame.

Alas! for them, though not for thee,
They cannot choose but weep the more;
Deep for the dead the grief must be,
Who ne'er gave cause to mourn before.

WRITTEN AT ATHENS.

JANUARY 16, 1810.

THE spell is broke, the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life's fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan;
Delirium is our best deceiver.

Each lucid interval of thought

Recalls the woes of Nature's charter, And he that acts as wise men ought,

But lives, as saints have died, a martyr.