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By quicker fancies and a keener feeling
Than those around, the cold and careless know?
What is to feed such feeling, but to culture
A soil whence pain will never more depart?
The fable of Prometheus and the Vulture
Reveals the poet's and the woman's heart.
Unkindly are they judged, unkindly treated,
By careless tongues and by ungenerous words;
While cruel sneer, and hard reproach repeated,
Jar the fine music of the spirit's chords.
Wert thou not weary, thou whose soothing numbers
Gave other lips the joy thine own had not?
Didst thou not welcome thankfully thy slumbers
Which closed around thy mourning human lot?
What on this earth could answer thy requiring,
For earnest faith—for love the deep and true,
The beautiful, which was thy soul's desiring,
But only from thyself its being drew!
How is the warm and loving heart requited
In this harsh world, where it awhile must dwell,
Its best affections wronged, betrayed and slighted—
Such is the doom of those who love too well.
Better the weary dove should close its pinion,
Fold up its golden wings, and be at peace,
Enter, Oh, Ladye! that serene dominion,
Where earthly cares and earthly sorrows cease.
Fame's troubled hour has cleared, and now replying,
A thousand hearts their music ask of thine.
Sleep with a light, the lovely and undying,
Around thy grave—a grave which is a shrine.
Drawing-room Scrap Book, 1838.
Intellectual strength, moral truth, and classical taste are strikingly exemplified in a series of poems lately published in the New Monthly Magazine, entitled "Subjects for Pictures;" where from historical or local circumstances, in themselves beautifully described, are also deduced, by the masterly use of the philosophical principle of generalization, sentiments universally applicable in their truth to the characteristics of human nature in all ages. Perhaps
