English

Immortal Newton never spoke
More truth than here you'll find;
Nor Pope himself e'er penned a joke
More cruel on mankind.

This picture, placed the busts between,
Gives Satire all his strength:
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.

Spare him, you say! So be it, then!
But I think it a maudlin kindliness,
And fear some day for better men
'Twill breed a villainous excess!

'Tis easy enough to be merciful,
But to be just is an excellence
Beyond all flight of sentiment!

G OD'S spice I was, and pounding was my due,
In fading breath my incense savoured best;
Death was my mean my kernel to renew,
By lopping shot I up to heavenly rest.

Some things more perfect are in their decay,
Like spark that going out gives clearest light;
Such was my hap whose doleful dying day
Began my joy and termèd Fortune's spite.

Alive a Queen, now dead I am a Saint;
Once Mary called, my name now Martyr is;
From earthly reign debarrèd by restraint,
In lieu whereof I reign in heavenly bliss.

In eastern lands a servile race
May bow to thrones and diadems;
And hide in dust the abject face,
Before the glare of gold and gems.

For us, we kneel to One alone;
And freemen worship only Him
Before the brightness of whose throne
The proudest pomps of earth are dim.

And therefore to his children here
This bright and blooming land He gave,
Where famine never blasts the year,
Nor plagues, nor earthquakes glut the grave;

A land where all the gifts unite
That Heaven bestows to make life sweet;

Who thinks of June's first rose to-day?
Only some child, perhaps, with shining eyes and rough bright hair will reach it down
In a green sunny lane, to us almost as far away
As are the fearless stars from these veiled lamps of town.
What's little June to a great broken world with eyes gone dim
From too much looking on the face of grief, the face of dread?
Or what's the broken world to June and him
Of the small eager hand, the shining eyes, the rough bright head?

Above rose the Coniston Fells
In their own shape and colour,
Not man's hills,
But all for themselves—
The sky, and the clouds,
And a few wild creatures.

I LOVE thee that thou dost inspire
My ice-bound heart with quickening fire,
And makest me forget,
One silver moment, that I'm old,
When warms thy breath my lips, from cold
Indifference to regret.

As in gray autumn's dreary days
Their pallid cheeks the asters raise,
To catch the sun's stray kiss,
So, ere the Arctic night sets in,
Thy radiance shall my last thread spin
With rapture's golden bliss.

O thrilling touch, O glowing eyes,
Whose beams, like stars in wintry skies,
Shine harmless on the snow!

There have been pictures that were reckoned fair
In ancient times by cunning painters wrought,
And far across the tides of ocean brought
To hang at last like jewels old and rare
In stately halls; but none that would compare
To some one woman, by the Graces taught,
With roses at her bosom, perfume-fraught
And motes of golden sunlight in her hair.

Time picks the crumbling canvas into shreds
Till, dust at length it sinks in the abyss,
And with the winds in errant circle blows;

For these of old the trader
Unpearled the Indian seas,
The nations of the nadir
Were diamondless for these;

A people prone and haggard
Beheld their lightnings hurled:
All round, like Sinai, staggered
The sceptre-shaken world.

But now their coins are tarnished,
Their towers decayed away,
Their kingdom swept and garnished
For haler kings than they;

Their arms the rust hath eaten,
Their statutes none regard:
Arabia shall not sweeten
Their dust, with all her nard.

Fight not with God, nor thwart his wiser will,
(Contending serves to aggravate an ill,)
But bravely bear those ills he's pleas'd to send;
Why should we blame the laws we cannot mend?