Classic Poem

He must have
Droll fancies sometimes cross his quiet thoughts,
Who in my vagrant verse shall look to find
A holiday from study or from toil,
And consolation to his mortal care.
Such idler will not be a man of name,
But must be, & therein resembles me,
A little liable to ridicule,
Because he cares a particle too much
For the opinion of the fickle world;
And notes how Merit does not swim to place
In th' tides of this world, — & feels the scandal oft
Of low salute to men of meaner mould;
And yet has felt, albeit with scorn the while,
A kind of justice in the Seneschal,
The uncivil fate, that made his fortunes vile.
I am frank, my friend, your eye has found
A gipsy muse that reads your lineaments
To tell the faithful fortunes of your life.
Go to, I'll feed my humour to the full,
And still expand the pleasant commentary.
Who loves my verse is one whose roving eye
Detects more beauty than his tongue will own
In art & nature. Nay his traitor tongue
Sometimes consenting to the coxcomb's jest,
Derides the beauty which delights his soul.
He is a man, who, though he told it not,
Mourned in the hour of manhood whilst he saw
The rich imagination which had tinged
Each earthly thing with hues from paradise
Forsake forever his instructed eye,
Bewailed its loss & felt how dearly bought
Is wisdom at the price of happiness.
Ah me, sometimes in
And sometimes when the dainty southwind blew
Its soft luxurious airs, & called the clouds
Mustering their hosts from all the sunny bays, —
Then when the piping wind & sounding sea
And tossing boughs combined their cadences,
The sweet & solemn melody they made
Enticed him oft in heady wantonness
To scoff at knowledge, mock the forms of life,
Cast off his years & be a boy again.
Then has he left his books, & vulgar cares,
And sallied forth across the freshened fields
With all the heart of highborn cavalier
In quest of forest glades hid from the sun,
And dim enchantments that therein abide.

I had rather follow him than talk to him;
Fast fast he leaves the villages behind,
As one who loathed them, yet he loathes them not,
And snuffs the scents which on the dallying gale
The woods send out as gentle harbingers
Bro't from their inmost glens to lure the step
Of the pleased pilgrim to their alleys green.
I know the pleasures of this humour well
And, please you, reader, I'll remember them.
First the glad sense of solitude, the sure
The absolute deliverance from the yoke
Of social forms, that are as tedious
Oft to a fretful & romantic man
As a musquito's song at summer eve.
In the wood he is alone, & for the hollow chat
Of men that do not love, & will not think,
He has the unpretending company
Of birds & squirrels & the fine race of flowers.
He forms his friendships with the flowers
Whose habits or whose hue may please him best,
Goes by the red & yellow populace
That with their vulgar beauty spot the plain
To find the honoured orchis — seldom seen,
The low pyrola with a lilac's smell,
Or the small cinque-foil, the wild strawberry's friend.
He speculates with love on Natures forms
Admires a calyx much as Winkelmann
The architecture of a Doric Pile
Not more he doated on the [ ]
Of frieze or triglyph or on architrave,
Than doth this dreamer, on the slender shaft
With awns & stipules graced, that lifts in air
The lily or the loosestrife, tapestried with leaves.
And close below
The faithful capsule to transmit its race
Like from its like to another year of flowers,
Once more to be the food of tuneful bird
Low stooping on swift wing, or busy bee,
Or the small nameless eaters that can find
A country in a leaf. —