ANNE HATHAWAY.

TO THE IDOL OF MY EYE AND DELIGHT OF MY HEART,

ANNE HATHAWAY.

THREE Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed ;
The next in majesty ; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.

JOHN DKYDEN.

WOULD ye be taught, ye feathered throng,
With love's sweet notes to grace your song,
To pierce the heart with thrilling lay,
Listen to mine Anne Hathaway !
She hath a way to sing so clear,
Phæbus might wondering stop to hear.
To melt the sad, make blithe the gay,
And nature charm, Anne hath a way ;

She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway ; To breathe delight Anne hath a way. When Envy's breath and rancorous tooth Do soil and bite fair worth and truth, And merit to distress betray, To soothe the heart Anne hath a way. She hath a way to chase despair, To heal all grief, to cure all care, Turn foulest night to fairest day. Thou know'st, fond heart, Anne hath a way ;

She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway ;
To make grief bliss, Anne hath a way.
Talk not of gems, the orient list,
The dianiond, topaz, amethyst,
The emerald mild, the ruby gay ;
Talk of my gem, Anne Hathaway !
She hath a way, with her bright eye,
Their various lustres to defy,
The jewels she, and the foil they,
So sweet to look Anne hath a way ;

She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway ;
To shame bright gems, Anne hath a way.

TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON.

THE Muse's fairest light in no dark time,
The wonder of a learnéd age; the line
Which none can pass ; the most proportioned

wit,
To nature, the best judge of what was fit ;
The deepest, plainest, highest, clearest pen ;
The voice most echoed by consenting men ;
The soul which answered best to all well said
By others, and which most requital made ;
Tuned to the highest key of ancient Rome,
Returning all her music with his own ;
In whom, with nature, study claimed a part,
And yet who to himself owed all his art :
Here lies Ben Jonson ! every age will look
With sorrow here, with wonder on his book.

JOHX CLEVELAND.

But were it to my fancy given
To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;
For though a mortal made of clay,
Angels must love Anne Hathaway ;
She hath a way so to control,
To rapture, the imprisoned soul,

TO MACAULAY.

The dreamy rhymer's measured snore Falls heavy on our cars no more ;

INSCRIPTION FOR BROWNRIGG'S CELL.

A PARODY.

(Canning, who was retained by the other side, parodied Southey's honest lines in the "Anti-Jacobin," November 20, 1797, by the fol. lowing verses, entitled: "Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg the 'Prentice-cide was confined previous to her Execution.'')

For one long term, or ere her trial

came, Here Brownrigg lingered. Often have these cells Echoed her blasphemies, as with shrill voice She screamed for fresh geneva.

Not to her Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street, St. Giles, its fair varieties expand; Till at the last in slow-drawn cart she went To execution. Dost thou ask her crime ? She whipped two female 'prentices to death, And hid them in the coal-hole. For her mind Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage

schemes! Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog The little Spartans ; such as erst chastised Our Milton, when at college. For this act Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws ! but time

shall come When France shall reign, and laws be all repealed.

And streams their diamond mirrors hold

To summer's face returning,
To say we're thankful that his sleep

Shall nevermore be lighter,
In whose sweet-tongued companionship

Stream, bower, and beam grew brighter ! But all the more intensely true

His soul gave out each feature Of elemental love, — each hue

And grace of golden nature, The deeper still beneath it all

Lurked the keen jags of anguish ; The more the laurels clasped his brow

Their poison made it languish.
Seemed it that, like the nightingale

Of his own mournful singing,
The tenderer would his song prevail

While most the thorn was stinging.
So never to the desert-worn

Did fount bring freshness deeper Than that his placid rest this morn

Has brought the shrouded sleeper.
That rest may lap his weary head

Where charnels choke the city,
Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed

The wren shall wake its ditty ;
But near or far, while evening's star

Is dear to hearts regretting, Around that spot admiring thought

Shall hover, unforgetting.

GEORGE CANNING.

SMOLLETT.

BARTHOLOMEW SIMMONS

BURNS.

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM.

WHENCE could arise the mighty critic spleen,
The muse a trifler, and her theme so mean?
What had I done that angry heaven should send
The bitterest foe where most I wished a friend ?
Oft hath my tongue been wanton at this name,
And hailed the honors of thy matchless fame.
For me let hoary Fielding bite the ground,
So nobler Pickle stands superbly bound ;
From Livy's temples tear the historic crown,
Which with more justice blooms upon thy own.
Compared with thee, be all life-writers dumb,
But he who wrote the life of Tommy Thumb.
Who ever read the Regicide but sware
The author wrote as man ne'er wrote before ?
Others for plots and underplots may call,
Here's the right method, — have no plot at all!

JOHN CHURCHILL.

No more these simple flowers belong

To Scottish maid and lover; Sown in the common soil of song,

They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,

The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers

He sang of live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns !

The moorland flower and peasant ! How, at their mention, memory turns

Her pages old and pleasant ! The gray sky wears again its gold

And purple of adorning, And manhood's noonday shadows hold

The dews of boyhood's morning. The dews that washed the dust and soil

From off the wings of pleasure,

TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS HOOD.

TAKE back into thy bosom, earth,

This joyous, May-eyed morrow, The gentlest child that ever mirth

Gave to be reared by sorrow ! 'Tis hard while rays half green, half gold,

Through vernal bowers are burning,

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil

With golden threads of leisure.

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills

The sweet-brier and the clover; With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,

Their wood-hymns chanting over.

I call to mind the summer day,

The early harvest mowing, The sky with sun and clouds at play,

And flowers with breezes blowing.

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,

I saw the Man uprising ;
No longer common or unclean,

The child of God's baptizing.

I hear the blackbird in the corn,

The locust in the haying; Anıl, like the fableil hunter's horn,

Old tunes my heart is playing.

With clearer eyes I saw the worth

Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth

Had made my own more holy.

And if at times an evil strain,

To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain

Of pure and healthful feeling,

It died upon the eye and ear,

No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear

The discord and the staining.

Let those who never erred forget

His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song !- I own my debt

Uncancelled by his failings !

Lament who will the ribald line

Which tells his lapse from duty, How kissed the maddening lips of wine,

Or wanton ones of beauty;

How oft that day, with fond delay,

I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,

Forgetful of the meadow !
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead

I heard the squirrels leaping ;
The good dog listened while I read,

And wagged his tail in keeping.
I watched him while in sportive mood

I read “The Twa Dogs' " story,
And half believed he understood

The poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs ! — The golden hours

Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers

A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,

New glory over Woman ;
And daily life and duty seemed

No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth

Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth

A still repining debtor :
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,

The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart

In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,

Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl

Were wandering there already ?
I saw through all familiar things

The romance underlying ;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings

Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,

The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,

And sank on crystal Devon.

But think, while falls that shade between

The erring one and Heaven, That he who loved like Magdalen,

Like her may be forgiven.

Not his the song whose thunderous chime

Eternal echoes render, The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,

And Milton's starry splendor ;

But who his human heart has laid

To Nature's bosom nearer ? Who sweetened toil like him, or paid

To love a tribute dearer ?

Through all his tuneful art, how strong

The human feeling gushes ! The very moonlight of his song

Is warm with smiles and blushes !

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,

So “ Bonny Doon " but tarry; Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary !

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER