Newstead! what saddening change of scene is thine!
Thy yawning arch betokens slow decay;
The last and youngest of a noble line
Now holds thy mouldering turrets in his sway.
Deserted now, he scans thy gray worn towers;
Thy vaults, where dead of feudal ages sleep; Thy cloisters, pervious to the wintry showers; These, these he views, and views them but to weep.
Yet are his tears no emblems of regret:
Cherished affection only bids them flow.
Pride, hope, and love, forbid him to forget,
But warm his bosom with impassioned glow.
Yet he prefers thee to the gilded domes
Or gewgaw grottos of the vainly great; Yet lingers 'mid thy damp and mossy tombs,
Nor breathes a murmur 'gainst the will of fate.
Haply the sun, emerging, yet may shine,
Thee to irradiate with meridian ray;
Hours splendid as the past may still be thine,
And bless thy future as thy former day.
ON A CHANGE OF MASTERS AT A GREAT
WHERE are those honors, Ida! once your own,
When Probus filled your magisterial throne?
As ancient Rome, fast falling to disgrace,
Hailed a barbarian in her Cæsar's place,
So you, degenerate, share as hard a fate,
And seat Pomposus where your Probus sate.
Of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul,
Pomposus holds you in his soft control;
Pomposus, by no social virtue swayed,
With florid jargon, and with vain parade;
With noisy nonsense, and new-fangled rules,
Such as were ne'er before enforced in schools,
Mistaking pedantry for learning's laws,
He governs, sanctioned but by self-applause.
With him the same dire fate attending Rome,
Ill-fated Ida! soon must stamp your doom:
Like her o'erthrown, for ever lost to fame,
No trace of science left you but the name.
WHEN slow Disease, with all her host of pains,
Chills the warm tide which flows along the veins;
When Health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing,
And flies with every changing gale of spring;
Not to the aching frame alone confined,
Unyielding pangs assail the drooping mind:
What grisly forms, the spectre-train of woe,
Bid shuddering Nature shrink beneath the blow,
With Resignation wage relentless strife,
While Hope retires appalled, and clings to life.
Yet less the pang when through the tedious hour
Remembrance sheds around her genial power,
Calls back the vanished days to rapture given,
When love was bliss, and Beauty formed our heaven;
Or, dear to youth, portrays each childish scene,
Those fairy bowers, where all in turn have been.
As when through clouds that pour the summer storm
The orb of day unveils his distant form,
Gilds with faint beams the crystal dews of rain,
And dimly twinkles o'er the watery plain;
Thus, while the future dark and cheerless gleams,
The sun of memory, glowing through my dreams,
Though sunk the radiance of his former blaze,
To scenes far distant points his paler rays;
Still rules my senses with unbounded sway,
The past confounding with the present day.
Oft does my heart indulge the rising thought, Which still recurs, unlooked for and unsought; My soul to Fancy's fond suggestion yields, And roams romantic o'er her airy fields; Scenes of my youth, developed, crowd to view, To which I long have bade a last adieu! Seats of delight, inspiring youthful themes; Friends lost to me for aye except in dreams; Some who in marble prematurely sleep, Whose forms I now remember but to weep; Some who yet urge the same scholastic course Of early science, future fame the source; Who, still contending in the studious race, In quick rotation fill the senior place! These with a thousand visions now unite, To dazzle, though they please, my aching sight.
IDA! blest spot, where Science holds her reign, How joyous once I joined thy youthful train! Bright in idea gleams thy lofty spire,
Again I mingle with thy playful choir;
Our tricks of mischief, every childish game,
Unchanged by time or distance, seems the same;
Through winding paths, along the glade, I trace
The social smile of every welcome face;
My wonted haunts, my scenes of joy and woe,
Each early boyish friend or youthful foe,
Our feuds dissolved, but not my friendship past:-
I bless the former, and forgive the last.
Hours of my youth! when, nurtured in my breast,
To love a stranger, friendship made me blest ;-
Friendship, the dear peculiar bond of youth,
When every artless bosom throbs with truth;
Untaught by worldly wisdom how to feign,
And check each impulse with prudential rein;
When all we feel, our honest souls disclose —
In love to friends, in open hate to foes;
No varnished tales the lips of youth repeat,
No dear-bought knowledge purchased by deceit.
Hypocrisy, the gift of lengthened years,
Matured by age, the garb of prudence wears.
When now the boy is ripened into man,
His careful sire chalks forth some wary plan;
Instructs his son from candor's path to shrink,
Smoothly to speak, and cautiously to think;
Still to assent, and never to deny —
A patron's praise can well award the lie:
And who, when Fortune's warning voice is heard,
Would lose his opening prospects for a word?
Although against that word his heart rebel,
And truth, indignant, all his bosom swell.
Away with themes like this! not mine the task From flattering fiends to tear the hateful mask; Let keener bards delight in satire's sting: My fancy soars not on Detraction's wing: Once, and but once, she aimed a deadly blow, To hurl defiance on a secret foe;
But when that foe, from feeling or from shame,
The cause unknown, yet still to me the same,
Warned by some friendly hint, perchance, retired,
With this submission all her rage expired.
From dreaded pangs that feeble foe to save,
She hushed her young resentment, and forgave;
Or, if my muse a pedant's portrait drew,
Pomposus' virtues are but known to few:
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