SONNETS, BY DR JOHN LEYDEN.
HAIL to the placid venerable mora,
That slowly wakes while all the fields are still ; A pensive calm on every breeze is borne, A graver murmur gurgles from the rill, And echo answers softer from the hill; While softer sings the linnet from the thorn, The sky-lark warbles in a tone less shrill. Hail, light serene! hail, holy Sabbath morn!
The gales that lately sigh'd along the grove
Have hush'd their downy wings in dead repose;
The rooks float silent by in airy drove,
The sun a mild but solemn lustre throws;
The clouds that hover'd slow forget to move :
Thus smil❜d the day when the first morn arose.
ON PARTING WITH A FRIEND.
WHILE far, dear friend, your parting steps recede,
I frequent turn to gaze with fond delay;
How faint your lineaments and form decay,
Diminish'd to a dim unbodied shade.
Alas! that thus our early friendships fade !
While through the busy vale of life we stray,
And hold the separate tenor of our way,
Thus imperceptibly our minds secede.
Yet sure too soon, thou brother of my heart,
So lately found, but therefore loved the more;
Too soon the moments of affection fly!
Too soon by nature's rigid laws we part;
Surviving friends may o'er our tomb deplore,
But never hear a soft responsive sigh.
WHEN I with antiquarian care review
The earliest lines in Memory's tablet traced,
By length of time now partially defaced,
What characters arise of darkest hue,
When Pleasure's signs I vainly would renew;
While each fond thought that once my mind solaced,
The anxious days and weary nights have chaced,
The lines of happiness, alas! how few.
O'er symbols strange, and hieroglyphics rude,
Deep-sculptured on th' enormous marble block,
Or on the granite's everlasting rock,
Amid the sandy Lybian solitude,
The sage thus pores with keen creative eye,
But time's uncertain rust refuses still to fly.
HARK! how the merry lark's sweet carols ring,
While the bright sun, from æther's southern cope,
Streams brilliant on the mountain's heathy top!
Soaring, resoaring high on twinkling wing,
Her lively notes to sad remembrance bring
The keen sensations raised by youthful hope,
That gave my inexperienced fancy scope,
When Nature smiled, and life was in her spring.
But see what clouds invest the face of day ;
Down stoops the lark and terminates her song,
And softly sleeps, her music at a close :-
Alas! so vanish'd these illusions gay,
So sunk my heart before the saddening throng
Of griefs, from which I ne'er have Lund repose.
TO A MOSSY GRAVESTONE IN CAVERS CHURCHYARD.
WHERE waves the grass beneath yon cypress shade,
A shapeless mossy time-corroded stone,
Rain-drill'd, with furrowy surface, stands alone :-
I wish my head at last may there be laid,
Without sepulchral pomp or vain parade;
Such mockery vile the dead refuse to own,
Ill suited to the unseemly yellow bone
That lies beneath the grassy rind to fade.
Yet there the peasant's sober steps shall pass,
Whene'er the sacred Sabbath morn shall rise,
And the slow bell to morning prayer
shall toll;
And while his staff divides the rustling grass,
"Here sleeps a youth unknown to fame," he cries;
"Calm be his sleep, and heaven receive his soul!"
GENIUS! if such may chance to dwell
Within the excavated bound
That rudely shapes this oaken cell,
And closes in its knotty round;
Genius! with acorn chaplet crown'd,
Thy hoar antiquity might well,
If fraught it were with mortal sound,
Of elder days a legend tell.
For many a course of sun and shade,
Tempest and calm, thy growth matured;
And many a year its circle made,
The while thy summer prime endured:
To flood and flame of heaven inured,
Slow centuries hast thou o'erstaid,
By stain, nidjesuc might secured
From storms that wreck, or blights that fade,
And for long date Insured.
Thou, like a hermit sad and sage,
In silence lone thy dwelling hast;
Thine aspect is a living page,
Where times o'erflown their annals cast:
For through the watches of the past,
Thou hast beheld, as age on age
Dawn'd-hast beheld them setting fast,
And Time, on his long pilgrimage,
Still hurrying to the last.
And thou, that saw'st them wear away,
Dost fail. Even as the seasons glide,
Thy grandeur creeps to sure decay,
Ámid the devastation wide:
For Time thy giant strength has tried,
And, sparely decked, thy branches grey
Hang, like old banners, at thy side,
To mark his conquering sway.
Fleet ages dawn and disappear,
Revolving in their course sublime.
"The voice of years would tire to tell What desolating waste has been; What generations rose and fell
Since erst these aged limbs were green.
"For swift as o'er the changing skies Sunshine and winter whirlwinds sweep, The mortal race to being rise,
And rest them in their slumber deep:
"Some in the early bud are reft,
And some in blossom immature;
Of those to summer ripeness left,
How few till Nature's fall endure !
"For countless are the forms of fate That lurk in silent ambushment, The term so brief to antedate,
To quench the flame so quickly spent,
"O seek not, in the dust of years, The fragments strew'd by man's decay ; Enough in every hour appears,
To tell that all things wear away,
"Even while the curious search is gone
In quest of hosts and legions fled,
Thy own brief term is hasting on
To join the phalanx of the dead.
"For it is not the rushing flight
Of seasons soaring to the sun;
And it is not the wasted might
Of ages when their march is done ;
"It is the sand that hourly keeps
Its silent ebb from day to day,
Which plunders, while it slowly creeps,
The golden hoard of life away.
“The winds in destined courses fly,
Though secret be their way
and dark ;
The sunbeam ceases not on high,
Although no shade the dial mark.
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