a quiet pleasure in
following up, in my solitary walks, the views which his conversations
had suggested; and in a copy of verses, the production of this time,
which, with all their poverty and stiffness, please me as true, and as
representative of the convalescent feeling, I find direct reference to
the beliefs which he had laboured to instil. My verses are written in a
sort of metre which, in the hands of Collins, became flexible and
exquisitely poetic, and which in those of Kirke White is at least
pleasing, but of which we find poor enough specimens in the
"Anthologies" of Southey, and which perhaps no one so limited in his
metrical vocabulary, and so defective in his musical ear, as the writer
of these chapters, should ever have attempted.

SOLACE.

No star of golden influence hailed the birth
Of him who, all unknown and lonely, pours,
As fails the light of eve,
His pensive, artless song;
Yea, those who mark out honour, ease, wealth, fame,
As man's sole joys, shall find no joy in him;
Yet of far nobler kind
His silent pleasures prove.
For not unmarked by him the ways of men;
Nor yet to him the ample page unknown,
Where, traced by Nature's hand,
Is many a pleasing line.
Oh! when the world's dull children bend the knee,
Meanly obsequious, to some mortal god,
It yields no vulgar joy
Alone to stand aloof;
Or when they jostle on wealth's crowded road,
And swells the tumult on the breeze, 'tis sweet,
Thoughtful, at length reclined,
To list the wrathful hum.
What though the weakly gay affect to scorn
The loitering dreamer of life's darkest shade,
Stingless the jeer, whose voice
Comes from the erroneous path.
Scorner, of all thy toils the end declare!
If pleasure, pleasure comes uncalled, to cheer
The haunts of him who spends
His hours in quiet thought.
And happier he who can repress desire,
Than they who seldom mourn a thwarted wish;
The vassals they of fate--
The unbending conqueror he,
And thou, blest Muse, though rudely strung thy lyre,
Its tones can guile the dark and lonesome day--
Can smooth the wrinkled brow,
And dry the sorrowing tear.
Thine many a bliss--oh, many a solace thine!
By thee up-held, the soul asserts her throne