Early on I wished to seek out famous mountains,
But the date awaited the completion of my son's and daughter's weddings.
Then, although these two events were over,
Quite aside from these, I still was of two minds.
But suddenly I heard the Dragon Chart of a new dynasty had come,
And even now I see its glorious radiance spread.
Assisting at the court, I head the Eight High Officers;
I've opened land, am paid with taxes from a thousand households.
My official capstrings never have been bathed in dew,
Nor have the wind and rain yet combed my hair;

Obiit Saturday, 10 September 1830

Beneath this stone does William Hazlitt lie,
Thankless of all that God or man could give,
He lived like one who never thought to die,
He died like one who dared not hope to live.
[From ms]

Beneath these poppies buried deep,
The bones of Bob the bard lie hid;
Peace to his manes; and may he sleep
As soundly as his readers did!

Through every sort of verse meandering,
Bob went without a hitch or fall,
Through epic, Sapphic, Alexandrine,
To verse that was no verse at all;

Till fiction having done enough,
To make a bard at least absurd,
And give his readers quantum suff.,
He took to praising George the Third,

And now, in virtue of his crown,
Dooms us, poor whigs, at once to slaughter;

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring's unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year's friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:
Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;

ET ARUNDINEM IN DEXTERA EJUS

Beneath the Memnonian shadows of Memphis, it rose from the slime,
A reed of the river, self-hid, as though shunning the curse of its crime,
And it shook as it measured in whispers the lapses of tide and of time.

It shuddered, it stooped, and was dumb, when the kings of the earth passed along.
For what could this reed of the river in the race of the swift and the strong, —
Where the wolf met the bear and the panther, blood-bathed, at the banquets of wrong?

King Solomon walked a thousand times
Forth of his garden-close;
And saw there spring no goodlier thing,
Be sure, than the same little rose.

Under the sun was nothing new,
Or now, I well suppose.
But what new thing could you find to sing
More rare than the same little rose?

Nothing is new; save I, save you,
And every new heart that grows,
On the same Earth met, that nurtures yet
Breath of the same little rose.

Beneath the evening gold,
above the golden corn,
the mill moves slow
its jagged sails.

Above the golden corn
hugely it shovels down
from sky to earth
the evening hoard.

Beneath the curious gaze of all the dead,
To enter heaven (O my beads unsaid!
Sins unconfessed!)
Dressed
In a gown woven of your fealty!
Oh, poor and lone and frighted I may be,
— But every woman there will look at me.

Beneath the burning brazen sky,
The yellowed tepees stand.
Not far away a singing river
Sets through the sand.
Within the shadow of a lonely elm tree
The tired ponies keep.
The wild land, throbbing with the sun's hot magic,
Is rapt as sleep.

From out a clump of scanty willows
A low wail floats, —
The endless repetition of a lover's
Melancholy notes,
So sad, so sweet, so elemental,
All lovers' pain
Seems borne upon its sobbing cadence, —
The love-song of the plain.
From frenzied cry forever falling,

At year's end is there anything one can depend on?
Helter-skelter, grief and sickness come by turns.
Were it not for bath-leave, who could ever find relief?
How to preserve oneself has surely never been transmitted.
If you clutch an orchid, it will vainly fill your grasp;
If you await the water-clock, it never flows completely out.
Tumult and uproar both are rife before our eyes,
While records and directives multiply upon our laps.
What use is there for eloquence that talks of heaven?