Part 5

Types of the volume where all secrets lie, Who hath not made ye confidants of woe? Whom have ye cheer’d not, beckoning from on high, Watched at their birth, and flash’d on death your glow? Witnesses to my woes, my thoughts, my sins, Attest, that sometimes I have conquered grief; If I have known what loss fulfilment wins, And yet striven on, then yield me some relief: Thou, blue escutcheon, on which worlds have painted The symbol, truth, hard for poor man to read; If I have lonely storm’d content, nor fainted, Nourish some flower from this uncertain seed: Though great my sins, not less my griefs have been, Bear witness, Truth, high arbitress and queen.

CXXXVII.

When man sinks awed, watching a myriad globes, How shrunk his purpose and his works appear! All his achievement ne’er can weave such robes; He can but gaze, despair confounds his fear: Yet there’s a link that binds weak man to God, And earth hath heavens as bright as all those stars; Beauty, ever-living, need but inspire the sod, And, lo! the substance of those golden cars. Spirit of Beauty, quicken, purge my soul; Raise it more near the substance of thy form; Then, mounting gradual, I shall reach the goal, Where individual life’s no longer warm; Where Beauty in itself transpicuous shines, And, universal, dazzles life’s dim mines.

CXXXVIII.

I cease, and bid farewell to who hath swayed, This tribute’s mite of unmelodious verse; With many a billow my bark’s idly play’d, My thoughts enamoured but of thee, their hearse; And think not, though life drags a tedious chain, And all it offers, shows on trial nought, Believe not, I will sorrow, or complain; Hast thou not stored all summer in my thought? And, watching the bright heavens, or the glad ocean, I’ll think thou look’st, and they repeat thy smile; Nor shall life’s utmost favour of commotion Bid homage spurn my Sovereign from love’s isle: To live in mortal’s mouths, be others’ aim; To dwell within thy heart, my only claim.

HERTFORD: PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN.