Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Verses about Friend

Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first
I scanned that face of feeble infancy;
For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
All I had been, and all my babe might be!
But when I saw it on its Mother's arm,
And hanging at her bosom (she the while
Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile),
Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warm
Impressed a Father's kiss: and all beguiled
Of dark remembrance, and presageful fear,
I seemed to see an Angel's form appear--
'Twas even thine, beloved Woman mild!
So for the Mother's sake the Child was dear,
And dearer was the Mother for the Child.

Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus is chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted - ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from painting -
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary see now flows between; -
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been

Away, those cloudy looks, that lab'ring sigh,
The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!
Nor meanly thus complain of fortune's power,
When the blind gamester throws a luckless die.

Yon setting sun flashes a mournful gleam
Behind those broken clouds, his stormy train:
To-morrow shall the many-colord main
In brightness roll beneath his orient beam!

Wild as th' autumnal gust, the hand of Time
Flies o'er his mystic lyre! in shadowy dance
Th' alternate groups of joy and grief advance,
Responsive to his varying strains sublime!

Bears on its wing each hour a load of fate.
The swain, who lulled by Seine's wild murmurs, led
His weary oxen to their nightly shed,
To-day may rule a tempest-troubled State.

Nor shall not fortune with a vengeful smile
Survey the sanguinary despot's might,
And haply hurl the pageant from his height,
Unwept to wander in some savage isle.

There, shiv'ring sad beneath the tempest's frown,
Round his tired limbs to wrap the purple vest;
And mixed with nails and beads, an equal jest!
Barter for food the jewels of his crown.

Oh! not by Cam or Isis, famous streams
In arched groves, the youthful poet's choice;
Nor while half-listening, mid delicious dreams,
To harp and song from lady's hand and voice;

Nor yet while gazing in sublimer mood
On cliff, or cataract, in Alpine dell;
Nor in dim cave with bladdery sea-weed strewed,
Framing wild fancies to the ocean's swell;

Our sea-bard sang this song! which still he sings,
And sings for thee, sweet friend! Hark, Pity, hark
Now mounts, now totters on the tempest's wings,
Now groans, and shivers, the replunging bark!

'Cling to the shrouds!' In vain! The breakers roar--
Death shrieks! With two alone of all his clan
Forlorn the poet paced the Grecian shore,
No classic roamer, but a ship-wrecked man!

Say then, what muse inspired these genial strains
And lit his spirit to so bright a flame?
The elevating thought of suffered pains,
Which gentle hearts shall mourn; but chief, the name

Of gratitude! remembrance of friend,
Or absent or no more! shades of the Past,
Which Loves make substance! Hence to thee I send,
O dear as long as life and memory last!

I send with deep regards of heart and head,
Sweet maid, for friendship formed! this work to thee
And thou, the while thou canst not choose but shed
A tear for Falconer, wilt remember me.

Thus far my scanty brain hath built the rhyme
Elaborate and swelling; ­ yet the heart
Not owns it. From thy spirit-breathing powers
I ask not now, my friend! the aiding verse
Tedious to thee, and from thy anxious thought
Of dissonant mood. In fancy (well I know)
From business wand'ring far and local cares,
Thou creepest round a dear-loved sister's bed
With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,
Soothing each pang with fond solicitude,
And tenderest tones medicinal of love.
I, too, a sister had, an only sister --
She loved me dearly, and I doted on her;
To her I pour'd forth all my puny sorrows;
(As a sick patient in a nurse's arms,)
And of the heart those hidden maladies ­
That e'en from friendship's eye will shrink ashamed.
O! I have waked at midnight, and have wept
Because she was not! ­ Cheerily, dear Charles!
Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year;
Such warm presages feel I of high hope!
For not uninterested the dear maid
I've view'd ­ her soul affectionate yet wise,
Her polish'd wit as mild as lambent glories
That play around a sainted infant's head.
He knows (the Spirit that in secret sees,
Of whose omniscient and all-spreading love
Aught to implore were impotence of mind!)
That my mute thoughts are sad before his throne, ­
Prepared, when He his healing ray vouchsafes,
Thanksgiving to pour forth with lifted heart,
And praise him gracious with a brother's joy!

Dec. 1794

Dear Charles! whilst yet thou wert a babe, I ween
That Genius plunged thee in that wizard fount
High Castalie: and (sureties of thy faith)
That Pity and Simplicity stood by.
And promised for thee that thou shouldst renounce
The world's low cares and lying vanities,
Steadfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse,
And washed and sanctified to Poesy.
Yes -- thou wert plunged but with forgetful hand
Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior son:
And with those recreant unbaptized heels
Thou'rt flying from thy bounden minist'ries--
So sore it seems and burthensome a task
To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed:
For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed boy,
And I have arrows mystically dipt,
Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead?
And shall he die unwept, and sink to earth
'Without the meed of one melodious tear?'
Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved bard,
Who to the 'Illustrious of his native Land,
So properly did look for patronage.'
Ghost of Maecenas! hide thy blushing face!
They snatched him from the sickle and the plough--
To gauge ale-firkins.
Oh! for shame return!
On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian mount,
There stands a lone and melancholy tree,
Whose aged branches to the midnight blast
Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,
Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled,
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's tomb.
Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,
Pick the rank henbane and the dusky flowers
Of night-shade, or its red and tempting fruit,
These with stopped nostril and glove-guarded hand
Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine,
The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility.

Edmund! thy grave with aching eye I scan,
And inly groan for heaven's poor outcast, man!
'Tis tempest all or gloom: in early youth,
If gifted with the Ithuriel lance of truth,
We force to start amid her feigned caress
Vice, siren-hag! in native ugliness,
A brother's fate will haply rouse the tear:
Onward we move in heaviness and fear!
But if our fond hearts call to pleasure's bower
Some pigmy folly in a careless hour,
The faithless guest shall stamp th' enchanted ground
And mingled forms of mis'ry rise around:
Heart-fretting fear, with pallid look aghast,
That courts the future woe to hide the past;
Remorse, the poisoned arrow in his side;
And loud lewd mirth, to anguish close allied:
Till frenzy, fierce-eyed child of moping pain,
Darts her hot lightning flash athwart the brain.

Rest, injured shade! Shall slander squatting near
Spit her cold venom in a dead man's ear?
'Twas thine to feel the sympathetic glow
In merit's joy, and poverty's meek woe;
Thine all, that cheer the moment as it flies,
The zoneless cares, and smiling courtesies.
Nursed in thy heart the firmer virtues grew,
And in thy heart they withered! Such chill dew
Wan indolence on each young blossom shed;
And vanity her filmy net-work spread,
With eye that rolled around in asking gaze,
And tongue that trafficked in the trade of praise.
Thy follies such! the hard world mark'd them well--
Were they more wise, the proud who never fell?

Rest, injured shade! the poor man's grateful prayer
On heaven-ward wing thy wounded soul shall bear.
As oft at twilight gloom thy grave I pass,
And oft sit down upon its recent grass,
With introverted eye I contemplate
Similitude of soul, perhaps of -- fate!

To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assign'd
Energetic reason and a shaping mind,
The daring ken of truth, the patriot's part,
And pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart--
Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand
Drop friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in the morning's fev'rish doze.

Is this piled earth our being's passless mound?
Tell me, cold grave! is death with poppies crown'd?
Tired sentinel! mid fitful starts I nod,
And fain would sleep, though pillowed on a clod!

Scene--A spacious drawing-room, with music-room adjoining.

Katharine. What are the words ?

Eliza. Ask our friend, the Improvisatore ; here he comes. Kate has a favour
to ask of you, Sir ; it is that you will repeat the ballad [Believe me if
all those endearing young charms.--EHC's ? note] that Mr. ____ sang so
sweetly.

Friend. It is in Moore's Irish Melodies ; but I do not recollect the
words distinctly. The moral of them, however, I take to be this :--

Love would remain the same if true,
When we were neither young nor new ;
Yea, and in all within the will that came,
By the same proofs would show itself the same.

Eliza. What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher, which my
mother admired so much ? It begins with something about two vines so close
that their tendrils intermingle.

Friend. You mean Charles' speech to Angelina, in The Elder Brother.

We'll live together, like two neighbour vines,
Circling our souls and loves in one another !
We'll spring together, and we'll bear one fruit ;
One joy shall make us smile, and one grief mourn ;
One age go with us, and one hour of death
Shall close our eyes, and one grave make us happy.

Katharine. A precious boon, that would go far to reconcile one to old
age--this love--if true ! But is there any such true love ?

Friend. I hope so.

Katharine. But do you believe it ?

Eliza (eagerly). I am sure he does.

Friend. From a man turned of fifty, Katharine, I imagine, expects a
less confident answer.

Katharine. A more sincere one, perhaps.

Friend. Even though he should have obtained the nick-name of
Improvisatore, by perpetrating charades and extempore verses at
Christmas times ?

Eliza. Nay, but be serious.

Friend. Serious ! Doubtless. A grave personage of my years giving a
Love-lecture to two young ladies, cannot well be otherwise. The
difficulty, I suspect, would be for them to remain so. It will be
asked whether I am not the `elderly gentleman' who sate `despairing
beside a clear stream', with a willow for his wig-block.

Eliza. Say another word, and we will call it downright affectation.

Katharine. No ! we will be affronted, drop a courtesy, and ask pardon for
our presumption in expecting that Mr. ___ would waste his sense on two
insignificant girls.

Friend. Well, well, I will be serious. Hem ! Now then commences the
discourse ; Mr. Moore's song being the text. Love, as distinguished
from Friendship, on the one hand, and from the passion that too often
usurps its name, on the other--

Lucius (Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the
Friend). But is not Love the union of both ?

Friend (aside to Lucius). He never loved who thinks so.

Eliza. Brother, we don't want you. There ! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the
flower vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman.

Lucius. I'll have my revenge ! I know what I will say !

Eliza. Off ! Off ! Now, dear Sir,--Love, you were saying--

Friend. Hush ! Preaching, you mean, Eliza.

Eliza (impatiently). Pshaw !

Friend. Well then, I was saying that Love, truly such, is itself not
the most common thing in the world : and that mutual love still less
so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated
by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the
well-known ballad, `John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a
depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes
a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature ; a constitutional
communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul ; a delight in the
detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament
within--to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But
above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide
of life--even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt
oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away and which,
in all our lovings, is the Love ;----

Eliza. There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to
understand you, but wants the word that would make it understand itself.

Katharine. I, too, seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for
us.

Friend. ---- I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the
self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the
total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own
;--that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved
object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and,
finding, again seeks on ;--lastly, when `life's changeful orb has
pass'd the full', a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus
brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly
experience ; it supposes, I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not
the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by
familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty
which will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of
possessing the same or the correspondent excellence in their own
characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the
beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of
love appropriates it, can call Goodness its Playfellow ; and dares
make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a
thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged Virtue the
caressing fondness that belongs to the Innocence of childhood, and
repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been
dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in
feminine loveliness or in manly beauty.

Eliza. What a soothing--what an elevating idea !

Katharine. If it be not only an idea.

Friend. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are
rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it
be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world
under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife. A
person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as a
neighbour, friend, housemate--in short, in all the concentric circles
of attachment save only the last and inmost ; and yet from how many
causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this ! Pride,
coldness, or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or
ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper,--one or
the other--too often proves `the dead fly in the compost of spices',
and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction.
For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort
of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself
alive by sucking the paws of its own self-importance. And as this high
sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part,
grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of
preserving the same but by negatives--that is, but not doing or saying
any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical
;--or, (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which
some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most
worthless object they could be employed in remembering.

Eliza (in answer to a whisper from Katharine). To a hair ! He must have
sate for it himself. Save me from such folks ! But they are out of the
question.

Friend. True ! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too
general insensibility to a very important truth ; this, namely, that
the MISERY of human life is made up of large masses, each separated
from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child ;
years after, a failure in trade ; after another longer or shorter
interval, a daughter may have married unhappily ;--in all but the
singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum total
of the unhappiness of a man's life, are easily counted, and distinctly
remembered. The HAPPINESS of life, on the contrary, is made up of
minute fractions--the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a
smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a
playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of
pleasurable thought and genial feeling.

Katharine. Well, Sir ; you have said quite enough to make me despair of
finding a `John Anderson, my Jo, John', with whom to totter down the hill
of life.

Friend. Not so ! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good
women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find
in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession
of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue.

Eliza. Surely, he, who has described it so well, must have possessed it ?

Friend. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly
anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment !

(Then, after a pause of a few minutes),

--------------------------------------
ANSWER, ex improviso

Yes, yes ! that boon, life's richest treat
He had, or fancied that he had ;
Say, 'twas but in his own conceit--
The fancy made him glad !
Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish !
The boon, prefigured in his earliest wish,
The fair fulfilment of his poesy,
When his young heart first yearn'd for sympathy !
But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain
Unnourished wane ;
Faith asks her daily bread,
And Fancy must be fed !
Now so it chanced--from wet or dry,
It boots not how--I know not why--
She missed her wonted food ; and quickly
Poor Fancy stagger'd and grew sickly.
Then came a restless state, 'twixt yea and nay,
His faith was fix'd, his heart all ebb and flow ;
Or like a bark, in some half-shelter'd bay,
Above its anchor driving to and fro.

That boon, which but to have possess'd
In a belief, gave life a zest--
Uncertain both what it had been,
And if by error lost, or luck ;
And what is was ;--an evergreen
Which some insidious blight had struck,
Or annual flower, which, past its blow,
No vernal spell shall e'er revive ;
Uncertain, and afraid to know,
Doubts toss'd him to and fro :
Hope keeping Love, Love Hope alive,
Like babes bewildered in a snow,
That cling and huddle from the cold
In hollow tree or ruin'd fold.

Those sparkling colours, once his boast
Fading, one by one away,
Thin and hueless as a ghost,
Poor Fancy on her sick bed lay ;
Ill at distance, worse when near,
Telling her dreams to jealous Fear !
Where was it then, the sociable sprite,
That crown'd the Poet's cup and deck'd his dish !
Poor shadow cast from an unsteady wish,
Itself a substance by no other right
But that it intercepted Reason's light ;
It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow,
A peevish mood, a tedious time, I trow !
Thank Heaven ! 'tis not so now.

O bliss of blissful hours !
The boon of Heaven's decreeing,
While yet in Eden's bowers
Dwelt the first husband and his sinless mate !
The one sweet plant, which, piteous Heaven agreeing,
They bore with them thro' Eden's closing gate !
Of life's gay summer tide the sovran Rose !
Late autumn's Amaranth, that more fragrant blows
When Passion's flowers all fall or fade ;
If this were ever his, in outward being,
Or but his own true love's projected shade,
Now that at length by certain proof he knows,
That whether real or a magic show,
Whate'er it was, it is no longer so ;
Though heart be lonesome, Hope laid low,
Yet, Lady ! deem him not unblest :
The certainty that struck Hope dead,
Hath left Contentment in her stead :
And that is next to Best !

Scene--A spacious drawing-room, with music-room adjoining.

Katharine. What are the words ?

Eliza. Ask our friend, the Improvisatore ; here he comes. Kate has a favour
to ask of you, Sir ; it is that you will repeat the ballad [Believe me if
all those endearing young charms.--EHC's ? note] that Mr. ____ sang so
sweetly.

Friend. It is in Moore's Irish Melodies ; but I do not recollect the
words distinctly. The moral of them, however, I take to be this :--

Love would remain the same if true,
When we were neither young nor new ;
Yea, and in all within the will that came,
By the same proofs would show itself the same.

Eliza. What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher, which my
mother admired so much ? It begins with something about two vines so close
that their tendrils intermingle.

Friend. You mean Charles' speech to Angelina, in The Elder Brother.

We'll live together, like two neighbour vines,
Circling our souls and loves in one another !
We'll spring together, and we'll bear one fruit ;
One joy shall make us smile, and one grief mourn ;
One age go with us, and one hour of death
Shall close our eyes, and one grave make us happy.

Katharine. A precious boon, that would go far to reconcile one to old
age--this love--if true ! But is there any such true love ?

Friend. I hope so.

Katharine. But do you believe it ?

Eliza (eagerly). I am sure he does.

Friend. From a man turned of fifty, Katharine, I imagine, expects a
less confident answer.

Katharine. A more sincere one, perhaps.

Friend. Even though he should have obtained the nick-name of
Improvisatore, by perpetrating charades and extempore verses at
Christmas times ?

Eliza. Nay, but be serious.

Friend. Serious ! Doubtless. A grave personage of my years giving a
Love-lecture to two young ladies, cannot well be otherwise. The
difficulty, I suspect, would be for them to remain so. It will be
asked whether I am not the `elderly gentleman' who sate `despairing
beside a clear stream', with a willow for his wig-block.

Eliza. Say another word, and we will call it downright affectation.

Katharine. No ! we will be affronted, drop a courtesy, and ask pardon for
our presumption in expecting that Mr. ___ would waste his sense on two
insignificant girls.

Friend. Well, well, I will be serious. Hem ! Now then commences the
discourse ; Mr. Moore's song being the text. Love, as distinguished
from Friendship, on the one hand, and from the passion that too often
usurps its name, on the other--

Lucius (Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the
Friend). But is not Love the union of both ?

Friend (aside to Lucius). He never loved who thinks so.

Eliza. Brother, we don't want you. There ! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the
flower vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman.

Lucius. I'll have my revenge ! I know what I will say !

Eliza. Off ! Off ! Now, dear Sir,--Love, you were saying--

Friend. Hush ! Preaching, you mean, Eliza.

Eliza (impatiently). Pshaw !

Friend. Well then, I was saying that Love, truly such, is itself not
the most common thing in the world : and that mutual love still less
so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated
by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the
well-known ballad, `John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a
depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes
a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature ; a constitutional
communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul ; a delight in the
detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament
within--to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But
above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide
of life--even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt
oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away and which,
in all our lovings, is the Love ;----

Eliza. There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to
understand you, but wants the word that would make it understand itself.

Katharine. I, too, seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for
us.

Friend. ---- I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the
self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the
total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own
;--that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved
object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and,
finding, again seeks on ;--lastly, when `life's changeful orb has
pass'd the full', a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus
brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly
experience ; it supposes, I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not
the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by
familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty
which will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of
possessing the same or the correspondent excellence in their own
characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the
beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of
love appropriates it, can call Goodness its Playfellow ; and dares
make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a
thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged Virtue the
caressing fondness that belongs to the Innocence of childhood, and
repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been
dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in
feminine loveliness or in manly beauty.

Eliza. What a soothing--what an elevating idea !

Katharine. If it be not only an idea.

Friend. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are
rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it
be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world
under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife. A
person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as a
neighbour, friend, housemate--in short, in all the concentric circles
of attachment save only the last and inmost ; and yet from how many
causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this ! Pride,
coldness, or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or
ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper,--one or
the other--too often proves `the dead fly in the compost of spices',
and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction.
For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort
of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself
alive by sucking the paws of its own self-importance. And as this high
sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part,
grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of
preserving the same but by negatives--that is, but not doing or saying
any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical
;--or, (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which
some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most
worthless object they could be employed in remembering.

Eliza (in answer to a whisper from Katharine). To a hair ! He must have
sate for it himself. Save me from such folks ! But they are out of the
question.

Friend. True ! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too
general insensibility to a very important truth ; this, namely, that
the MISERY of human life is made up of large masses, each separated
from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child ;
years after, a failure in trade ; after another longer or shorter
interval, a daughter may have married unhappily ;--in all but the
singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum total
of the unhappiness of a man's life, are easily counted, and distinctly
remembered. The HAPPINESS of life, on the contrary, is made up of
minute fractions--the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a
smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a
playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of
pleasurable thought and genial feeling.

Katharine. Well, Sir ; you have said quite enough to make me despair of
finding a `John Anderson, my Jo, John', with whom to totter down the hill
of life.

Friend. Not so ! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good
women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find
in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession
of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue.

Eliza. Surely, he, who has described it so well, must have possessed it ?

Friend. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly
anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment !

(Then, after a pause of a few minutes),

--------------------------------------
ANSWER, ex improviso

Yes, yes ! that boon, life's richest treat
He had, or fancied that he had ;
Say, 'twas but in his own conceit--
The fancy made him glad !
Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish !
The boon, prefigured in his earliest wish,
The fair fulfilment of his poesy,
When his young heart first yearn'd for sympathy !
But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain
Unnourished wane ;
Faith asks her daily bread,
And Fancy must be fed !
Now so it chanced--from wet or dry,
It boots not how--I know not why--
She missed her wonted food ; and quickly
Poor Fancy stagger'd and grew sickly.
Then came a restless state, 'twixt yea and nay,
His faith was fix'd, his heart all ebb and flow ;
Or like a bark, in some half-shelter'd bay,
Above its anchor driving to and fro.

That boon, which but to have possess'd
In a belief, gave life a zest--
Uncertain both what it had been,
And if by error lost, or luck ;
And what is was ;--an evergreen
Which some insidious blight had struck,
Or annual flower, which, past its blow,
No vernal spell shall e'er revive ;
Uncertain, and afraid to know,
Doubts toss'd him to and fro :
Hope keeping Love, Love Hope alive,
Like babes bewildered in a snow,
That cling and huddle from the cold
In hollow tree or ruin'd fold.

Those sparkling colours, once his boast
Fading, one by one away,
Thin and hueless as a ghost,
Poor Fancy on her sick bed lay ;
Ill at distance, worse when near,
Telling her dreams to jealous Fear !
Where was it then, the sociable sprite,
That crown'd the Poet's cup and deck'd his dish !
Poor shadow cast from an unsteady wish,
Itself a substance by no other right
But that it intercepted Reason's light ;
It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow,
A peevish mood, a tedious time, I trow !
Thank Heaven ! 'tis not so now.

O bliss of blissful hours !
The boon of Heaven's decreeing,
While yet in Eden's bowers
Dwelt the first husband and his sinless mate !
The one sweet plant, which, piteous Heaven agreeing,
They bore with them thro' Eden's closing gate !
Of life's gay summer tide the sovran Rose !
Late autumn's Amaranth, that more fragrant blows
When Passion's flowers all fall or fade ;
If this were ever his, in outward being,
Or but his own true love's projected shade,
Now that at length by certain proof he knows,
That whether real or a magic show,
Whate'er it was, it is no longer so ;
Though heart be lonesome, Hope laid low,
Yet, Lady ! deem him not unblest :
The certainty that struck Hope dead,
Hath left Contentment in her stead :
And that is next to Best !