On a Lady in Ickworth Church, Suffolk, by the Brother of the Deceased. (unpublished.)
Lie the poor shrunk, yet dear remains of one,
With merit humble, and with virtue fair,
With knowledge modest, and with wit sincere ;
Upright in all the social paths of life,
The friend, the daughter, sister, and the wife-
So just the disposition of her soul,
Nature left reason nothing to control!
Firm, pious, patient; affable of mind;
Happy in life, and yet in death resign'd;
Just in the zenith of those golden days,
When the mind ripens, 'ere the form decays,
The hand of Fate unkindly cut her thread,
And left the world, to weep that virtue fled,
Its pride when living, and its grief when dead.
Addressed to Earl Nugent, by the late Dean of Cork, Ersckine, then Cu rate of Gosfield, his Lordship's Seat, in Essex. (unpublished.)
Not published in his Works, from " Hayley's Life of Cowper," 3d Fol.
URVIVOR sole, and hardly such, of all
That once liv'd here thy brethren, at my birth,
(Since which I number three scores winters past)
A shatter'd veteran, hollow trunk'd, perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks, deform,
Relicts of ages! Could a mind, imbued
With truth from Heaven, created thing adore,
I might with rev'rence kneel, and worship thee!
It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagin'd sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act
Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Lov'd not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscrib'd, as to a refuge, fled!
Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs,
And all thy embryo vastness, at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed: autumnal rains,
Beneath thy parent trec, mellow'd the soil,
Design'd thy cradle, and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepar'd
The soft receptacle, in which secure
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.
So fancy dreams-disprove it if ye can
Ye reas'ners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employ'd too oft amiss,
Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!
Thou fell'st mature, and in the loamy clod
Swelling with vegetable force, instinct
Did'st burst thine egg, as their's the fabled twins,
Now stars; two lobes protruding pair exact:
A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,
And, all the elements thy puny growth
Fostering propitious, thou becam'st a twig.
Who liv'd when thou wast such? Oh! coulds't thou speak, As in Dodona once thy kindred trees
Oracular, I would not curious ask
The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past!
By thee I might correct, erroneous ‹
The clock of history, facts and even
Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts
Recov'ring, and mis-stated setting right-
Desp'rate attempt till trees shall speak again!
Time made thee what thou wast-king of the woods!
And time hath made thee what thou art—a cave
For owls to roost in! Once thy spreading boughs
O'erhung the champaign, and the numerous flock
That grazed it, stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe sheltered from the storm.
No flocks frequent thee now; thou hast outlir'd
Thy popularity, and art become
(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth!
While thus through all the stages thou hast push'd
Of treeship-first a seedling hid in grass;
Then twig; then sapling; and, as century roll'd
Slow after century, a giant-bulk
Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root
Upheav'd above the soil, and sides imboss'd
With prominent wens globose-till at the lasf
The rottenness, which time is charg'd to inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.
What exhibitions various hath the world
Witnessed, of mutability in all
That we account most durable below!
Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them-skies uncertain, now the heat
Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam
Now quenching, in a boundless sea of clouds-
Calm and alternate storm, moisture and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life
In all that live, plant, animal, and man,
And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads,
Fine passing thought, e'en in her coarsest works,
Delight in agitation-yet sustain
The force that agitates not unimpair'd,
But worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.
Thought cannot spend itself comparing still
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth
From almost nullity into a state
Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence
Slow into such magnificent decay.
Time was, when settling on thy leaf, a fly
Could shake thee to the root-and time has been
When tempests could not. At thy firmest age
Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents
That might have ribb'd the sides, and plank'd the deck
Of some flagg'd admiral, and tortuous arms,
The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present
To the four quarter'd winds, robust and bold,
Warp'd into tough knee timber,* many a load!
But the axe spared thee; in those thrifțier days
Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply
The bottomless demands of contest, waged
For senatorjal honours. Thus to time
The task was left to whittle thee away,
With his sly scythe, whose ever-nibbling edge,
Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more,
Disjoining from the rest, has unobserv'd
Achiev'd a labour, which had far and wide,
(By man perform'd) made all the forest ring.
Embowell'd now, and of thy ancient self
Possessing nought, but the scop'd rind, that seems
An huge throat calling to the clouds for drink,
Which it would give in rivulets to thy root;
Thou temptest none, but rather much forbid'st
The feller's toil, which thou could'st ill requite :
Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock,
A quarry of stout spurs, and knotted fangs,
Which, crook'd into a thousand whimsies, clasp
The stubborn soil, and hold thee still erect.
So stands a kingdom, whose foundation yet
Fails not, in virtue and in wisdom lay'd,
Though all the superstructure, by the tooth
Pulveriz'd of venality, a shell
Stands now-and semblance only of itself!
Thine arms have left thee; winds have rent them off
Long since, and rovers of the forest wild,
With bow and shaft, have burnt them. Some have left
A splinter'd stump, bleach'd to a snowy white;
And some, memorial none where once they grew.
Yet life still lingers in thee, and puts forth
Proof not contemptible of what she can,
Even when death predominates. The spring
Finds thee not less alive to her sweet from
Knee timber is found in the crooked arms of distortion, are easily adjusted to the angle formed
Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood,
So much thy juniors, who their birth receiv'd
Half a millennium since the date of thine.
But since, although well qualified by age
To teach, no spirit dwells in thee, nor voice
May be expected from thee, seated here,
On thy distorted root, with hearers none,
Or prompter, save the scene-I will perform
Myself the oracle, and will discourse
In my own ear, such matter as I may.
One man alone, the father of us all,
Drew not his life from woman; never gaz'd,
With mute unconsciousness of what he saw,
On all around him; learn'd not by degrees,
Nor ow'd articulation to his ear;
But moulded by his Maker into man
At once, upstood intelligent, survey'd
All creatures, with precision understood
Their purport, uses, properties, assign'd
To teach his name significant, and, fill'd
With love and wisdom, render'd back to Heaven,
In praise harmonious, the first air he drew.
He was excus'd the penalties of dull
Minority; no tutor charg'd his hand
With the thought-tracing quill, or task'd his mind
With problems; history, not wanted yet,
Lean'd on her elbow, watching time, whose course,
Eventful, should supply her with a theme.
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