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النشر الإلكتروني

Heaves my poor shatter'd bark. I go,
While darkness frowns and tempests blow,

Undaunted-whither? Morn shall shew,

Hope, farewell!

1810.

SONG.

WOMAN! dear Woman! in whose name

Wife, Sister, Mother meet:

Thine is the heart by earliest claim,

And thine its latest beat.

In thee the angel virtues shine;
To thee an angel's form is given:

Then be an angel's office thine,

And lead the soul to heaven.

From thee we draw our infant strength; Thou art our childhood's friend;

And when the man unfolds at length,

On thee his hopes depend.

For round the heart thy power has spun

A thousand dear mysterious ties.

Then take the heart thy charms have won, And nurse it for the skies.

SONG.

O GIVE me back the flower I brought
From shades beloved by Thee:

Its leaves, with nameless fancies fraught,

Breathe fragrant memory.

No, keep it it has bloom'd its hour;

Nor can I bear to see,

In dying languor, ev'n the flower

That lives the type of thee.

SONG.

O SPARE me not-for I can bear

To meet the sternness of thine eye;

And, if I meet affection there,

Can well endure its scrutiny.

I fear it not: within my mind
Whatever lurking error live,

That fault alone thou canst not find,
Which only thou couldst ne'er forgive.

Yes; spare me not. I would not be
Blindly beloved, but fully tried;

From every lighter failing free,

That might alarm or wound thy pride.

Yet, still believe, if e'er I seem

Absent or dull while thou art nigh, Ev'n then it is of thee I dream,

For thee, in deep abstraction, sigh.

If others, in that dreaming mood,

My idle thoughts appear to share,

I'm all thine own in solitude,

And find my sweetest converse there.

SONG.

THROW, Father Time, thy hour-glass by!

Can that tell how the minutes fly?

I smile to see thy wither'd hand

Mete out the moments sand by sand,

As if thou couldst, with tyrant power,

Fix the brief limits of an hour;

As if those sands that ebb away,

Hours, minutes, seconds, form'd a day.

Oh, not by measure, but by weight,
Thy favours, Time, we estimate.

Feelings and thoughts, and joys and fears'Tis these make up our days and years: These to each winged fugitive

Vitality and impulse give.

The plastic mind, by secret spell,
Framed within Feeling's inmost cell,

Shrinks or dilates the elfin shapes,
And, while the fleeting now escapes,
As joy or grief the scene engages,
Turns days to hours, or hours to ages;
Bids these to creep, and those to fly.

-Throw, Father Time, thy hour-glass by.

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