YE MEANER BEAUTIES. YE meaner beauties of the night, More by your numbers than your light: Ye violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Ye curious chanters of the wood, That warble forth Dame Nature's lays, By your weak accents!-what's your praise So when my mistress shall be seen In sweetness of her looks and mind, SIR HENRY WOTTON. WIND AND RAIN. RATTLE the window, Winds! There are tears and sighs in our hearts and eyes, The gray sea heaves and heaves, And the blasted limb of the churchyard yew, The dead are engulfed beneath it, Sunk in the grassy waves; But we have more dead in our hearts to-day Than the Earth in all her graves! RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. A HEALTH. I FILL this cup to one made up A woman of her gentle sex Her every tone is music's own, Affections are as thoughts to her, The image of themselves by turns, ABSENCE. On her bright face one glance will trace And of her voice in echoing hearts A sound must long remain; When death is nigh my latest sigh Her health and would on earth there stood Some more of such a frame, That life might be all poetry, And weariness a name. EDWARD COATE PINKNEY. ABSENCE. WHAT shall I do with all the days and hours How shall I charm the interval that lowers Shall I in slumber steep each weary sense, ABSENCE. Shall love for thee lay on my soul the sin O! how, or by what means, may I contrive To bring the hour that brings thee back more near? How may I teach my drooping hope to live I'll tell thee: for thy sake I will lay hold For thee I will arouse my thoughts, to try All heavenward flights, all high and holy strains; For thy dear sake I will walk patiently Through these long hours, nor call their minutes pains. I will this dreary blank of absence make To follow excellence, and to o'ertake More good than I have won since yet I live. So may this doomed time build up in me A thousand graces, which shall thus be thine! FRANCES KEMBLE BUTLER. |