Feel’st a sharp and sudden woe
For visions vanished long ago!
And then thou think’st how time has fled
Over thy unsilvered head,
Snatching many a fellow mind
Away, and leaving—what?—behind!
Nought, alas! save joy and pain
Mingled ever, like a strain
Of music where the discords vie
With the truer harmony.
So, perhaps, with thee the vein
Is sullied ever,—so the chain
Of habits and affections old,
Like a weight of solid gold,
Presseth on thy gentle breast,
Till sorrow rob thee of thy rest.
Ay:
so’t must be!—Ev’n I, (whose
lot
The
fairy Love so long forgot,)
Seated
beside this Sherris wine,
And
near to books and shapes divine,
Which
poets, and the painters past
Have
wrought in lines that aye shall last,—
Ev’n
I, with Shakspeare’s self beside me,
And
one whose tender talk can guide me
Through
fears, and pains, and troublous themes,
Whose
smile doth fall upon my dreams
Like
sunshine on a stormy sea,—
Want
something—when I think of thee!
LIST OF LETTERS
ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED
Aders, Charles, to
Jan. 8, 1823
Ainsworth, W. Harrison, to
May 7, 1822
Dec.
9, 1823
Dec.
29, —
Aitken, J., to
July 5, 1825
Allsop, Thomas, to
July 13, 1820
?
1821
?
—
March
30, —
Oct.
21, —
July,
1823
Sept.
6, —
Sept.
9, —
Sept.
10, —
Sept.
—
?
Oct. —
Jan.
17, 1825
Sept.
9, —
Sept.
24, —
Dec.
5, —
?
Middle
Dec.,
1827
Dec.
20, —
Jan.
9, 1828
May
1, —
Jan.
28, 1829
Late
July, —
July
2, 1832
Mrs. Thomas, to
April 13, 1824
Arnold, S.J., to (from Charles and Mary Lamb)
No date.
Asbury, Jacob Vale, to
? April, 1830
No
date.
Athenaeum, printer of, to
No date. 1834
Ayrton, William, to
May 12, 1817
Oct.
27, 1821
March
14, 1830
Mrs. William, to
Jan. 23, 1821
March
15, —
(from Mary Lamb)
No date.
April
16, 1833
Barton, Bernard, to
Sept. 11, 1822
Oct.
9, —
Dec.
23, —
Jan.
9, 1823
Feb.
17, —
March
11, —
April
5, —
May
3, —
July
10, —
Sept.
2, —
Sept.
17, —
Nov.
22, —
Jan.
9, 1824