Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 123

Here famed for cunning, and in crimes grown old, Hangs his gray brush, the felon of the fold.

Oft as the rent-feast swells the midnight cheer, The maudlin farmer kens him o'er his beer, And tells his old, traditionary tale, Though known to every tenant of the vale.

Here, where of old the festal ox has fed, Marked with his weight, the mighty horns are spread: Some ox, O Marshall, for a board like thine, Where the vast master with the vast sirloin Vied in round magnitude--Respect I bear To thee, though oft the ruin of the chair.

These, and such antique tokens that record The manly spirit, and the bounteous board, Me more delight than all the gewgaw train, The whims and zigzags of a modern brain, More than all Asia's marmosets to view, Grin, frisk, and water in the walks of Kew.

Through these fair valleys, stranger, hast thou strayed, By any chance, to visit Harewood's shade, And seen with lionest, antiquated air, In the plain hall the magistratial chair?

There Herbert sat--The love of human kind, Pure light of truth, and temperance of mind, In the free eye the featured soul displayed, Honour's strong beam, and Mercy's melting shade: Justice that, in the rigid paths of law, Would still some drops from Pity's fountain draw, Bend o'er her urn with many a generous fear, Ere his firm seal should force one orphan's tear; Fair equity, and reason scorning art, And all the sober virtues of the heart-- These sat with Herbert, these shall best avail Where statutes order, or where statutes fail.

Be this, ye rural magistrates, your plan: Firm be your justice, but be friends to man.

He whom the mighty master of this ball We fondly deem, or farcically call, To own the patriarch's truth, however loth, Holds but a mansion crushed before the moth.

Frail in his genius, in his heart too frail, Born but to err, and erring to bewail, Shalt thou his faults with eye severe explore, And give to life one human weakness more?

Still mark if vice or nature prompts the deed; Still mark the strong temptation and the need: On pressing want, on famine's powerful call, At least more lenient let thy justice fall.

For him who, lost to every hope of life, Has long with fortune held unequal strife, Known to no human love, no human care, The friendless, homeless object of despair; For the poor vagrant feel, while he complains, Nor from sad freedom send to sadder chains.

Alike, if folly or misfortune brought Those last of woes his evil days have wrought; Believe with social mercy and with me, Folly's misfortune in the first degree.

Perhaps on some inhospitable sh.o.r.e The houseless wretch a widowed parent bore; Who then, no more by golden prospects led, Of the poor Indian begged a leafy bed.

Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery, baptized in tears!

GIPSIES.

FROM THE SAME.

The gipsy-race my pity rarely move; Yet their strong thirst of liberty I love: Not Wilkes, our Freedom's holy martyr, more; Nor his firm phalanx of the common sh.o.r.e.

For this in Norwood's patrimonial groves The tawny father with his offspring roves; When summer suns lead slow the sultry day, In mossy caves, where welling waters play, Fanned by each gale that cools the fervid sky, With this in ragged luxury they lie.

Oft at the sun the dusky elfins strain The sable eye, then snugging, sleep again; Oft as the dews of cooler evening fall, For their prophetic mother's mantle call.

Far other cares that wandering mother wait, The mouth, and oft the minister of fate!

From her to hear, in evening's friendly shade, Of future fortune, flies the village-maid, Draws her long-h.o.a.rded copper from its hold, And rusty halfpence purchase hopes of gold.

But, ah! ye maids, beware the gipsy's lures!

She opens not the womb of time, but yours.

Oft has her hands the hapless Marian wrung, Marian, whom Gay in sweetest strains has sung!

The parson's maid--sore cause had she to rue The gipsy's tongue; the parson's daughter too.

Long had that anxious daughter sighed to know What Vellum's sprucy clerk, the valley's beau, Meant by those glances which at church he stole, Her father nodding to the psalm's slow drawl; Long had she sighed; at length a prophet came, By many a sure prediction known to fame, To Marian known, and all she told, for true: She knew the future, for the past she knew.

A CASE WHERE MERCY SHOULD HAVE MITIGATED JUSTICE.

FROM THE SAME.

Unnumbered objects ask thy honest care, Beside the orphan's tear, the widow's prayer: Far as thy power can save, thy bounty bless, Unnumbered evils call for thy redress.

Seest thou afar yon solitary thorn, Whose aged limbs the heath's wild winds have torn?

While yet to cheer the homeward shepherd's eye, A few seem straggling in the evening sky!

Not many suns have hastened down the day, Or blushing moons immersed in clouds their way, Since there, a scene that stained their sacred light, With horror stopped a felon in his flight; A babe just born that signs of life expressed, Lay naked o'er the mother's lifeless breast.

The pitying robber, conscious that, pursued, He had no time to waste, yet stood and viewed; To the next cot the trembling infant bore, And gave a part of what he stole before; Nor known to him the wretches were, nor dear, He felt as man, and dropped a human tear.

Far other treatment she who breathless lay, Found from a viler animal of prey.

Worn with long toil on many a painful road, That toil increased by nature's growing load, When evening brought the friendly hour of rest, And all the mother thronged about her breast, The ruffian officer opposed her stay, And, cruel, bore her in her pangs away, So far beyond the town's last limits drove, That to return were hopeless, had she strove; Abandoned there, with famine, pain, and cold, And anguish, she expired,--The rest I've told.

'Now let me swear. For by my soul's last sigh, That thief shall live, that overseer shall die.'

Too late!--his life the generous robber paid, Lost by that pity which his steps delayed!

No soul-discerning Mansfield sat to hear, No Hertford bore his prayer to mercy's ear; No liberal justice first a.s.signed the gaol, Or urged, as Camplin would have urged, his tale.

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE.

This is not the place for writing the life of the great lawyer whose awful wig has been singed by the sarcasm of Junius. He was born in London in 1723, and died in 1780. He had early coquetted with poetry, but on entering the Middle Temple he bade a 'Farewell to his Muse' in the verses subjoined. So far as lucre was concerned, he chose the better part, and rose gradually on the ladder of law to be a knight and a judge in the Court of Common Pleas. It has been conjectured, from some notes on Shakspeare published by Stevens, that Sir William continued till the end of his days to hold occasional flirtations with his old flame.

THE LAWYER'S FAREWELL TO HIS MUSE.

As, by some tyrant's stern command, A wretch forsakes his native land, In foreign climes condemned to roam An endless exile from his home; Pensive he treads the destined way, And dreads to go, nor dares to stay; Till on some neighbouring mountain's brow He stops, and turns his eyes below; There, melting at the well-known view, Drops a last tear, and bids adieu: So I, thus doomed from thee to part, Gay queen of Fancy, and of Art, Reluctant move, with doubtful mind Oft stop, and often look behind.

Companion of my tender age, Serenely gay, and sweetly sage, How blithesome were we wont to rove By verdant hill, or shady grove, Where fervent bees, with humming voice, Around the honeyed oak rejoice, And aged elms with awful bend In long cathedral walks extend!

Lulled by the lapse of gliding floods, Cheered by the warbling of the woods, How blessed my days, my thoughts how free, In sweet society with thee!

Then all was joyous, all was young, And years unheeded rolled along: But now the pleasing dream is o'er, These scenes must charm me now no more.

Lost to the fields, and torn from you,-- Farewell!--a long, a last adieu.

Me wrangling courts, and stubborn law, To smoke, and crowds, and cities draw: There selfish faction rules the day, And pride and avarice throng the way; Diseases taint the murky air, And midnight conflagrations glare; Loose Revelry and Riot bold In frighted streets their orgies hold; Or, where in silence all is drowned, Fell Murder walks his lonely round; No room for peace, no room for you, Adieu, celestial nymph, adieu!

Shakspeare no more, thy sylvan son, Nor all the art of Addison, Pope's heaven-strung lyre, nor Waller's ease, Nor Milton's mighty self, must please: Instead of these a formal band, In furs and coifs, around me stand; With sounds uncouth and accents dry, That grate the soul of harmony, Each pedant sage unlocks his store Of mystic, dark, discordant lore; And points with tottering hand the ways That lead me to the th.o.r.n.y maze.

There, in a winding close retreat, Is Justice doomed to fix her seat; There, fenced by bulwarks of the law, She keeps the wondering world in awe; And there, from vulgar sight retired, Like eastern queens, is more admired.

Oh, let me pierce the sacred shade Where dwells the venerable maid!

There humbly mark, with reverent awe, The guardian of Britannia's law; Unfold with joy her sacred page, The united boast of many an age; Where mixed, yet uniform, appears The wisdom of a thousand years.

In that pure spring the bottom view, Clear, deep, and regularly true; And other doctrines thence imbibe Than lurk within the sordid scribe; Observe how parts with parts unite In one harmonious rule of right; See countless wheels distinctly tend By various laws to one great end: While mighty Alfred's piercing soul Pervades, and regulates the whole.

Then welcome business, welcome strife, Welcome the cares, the thorns of life, The visage wan, the poreblind sight, The toil by day, the lamp at night, The tedious forms, the solemn prate, The pert dispute, the dull debate, The drowsy bench, the babbling Hall, For thee, fair Justice, welcome all!

Thus though my noon of life be pa.s.sed, Yet let my setting sun, at last, Find out the still, the rural cell, Where sage Retirement loves to dwell!

There let me taste the homefelt bliss.

Of innocence and inward peace; Untainted by the guilty bribe; Uncursed amid the harpy tribe; No orphan's cry to wound my ear; My honour and my conscience clear; Thus may I calmly meet my end, Thus to the grave in peace descend.

JOHN SCOTT.