“O!  I should think—­that fragrant bed Might I but hope with you to share—­[A] Years of anxiety repaid By one short hour of transport there.

  “More blest than me, thus shall ye live
  Your little day; and when ye die,
  Sweet flowers! the grateful Muse shall give
  A verse; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.

  “While I alas! no distant date,
  Mix with the dust from whence I came,
  Without a friend to weep my fate,
  Without a stone to tell my name.”

We subjoin one more specimen of these “wild strains"[B] said to be “Written two years after the preceding.”  ECCE ITERUM CRISPINUS.

  “I wish I was where Anna lies;
  For I am sick of lingering here,
  And every hour Affection cries,
  Go, and partake her humble bier.

  “I wish I could! for when she died
  I lost my all; and life has prov’d
  Since that sad hour a dreary void,
  A waste unlovely and unlov’d.

  “But who, when I am turn’d to clay,
  Shall duly to her grave repair,
  And pluck the ragged moss away,
  And weeds that have “no business there?”

  “And who, with pious hand, shall bring
  The flowers she cherish’d, snow-drops cold,
  And violets that unheeded spring,
  To scatter o’er her hallow’d mould?

  “And who, while Memory loves to dwell
  Upon her name for ever dear,
  Shall feel his heart with passion swell,
  And pour the bitter, bitter tear?

  “I did it; and would fate allow,
  Should visit still, should still deplore—­
  But health and strength have left me now,
  But I, alas! can weep no more.

  “Take then, sweet maid! this simple strain,
  The last I offer at thy shrine;
  Thy grave must then undeck’d remain,
  And all thy memory fade with mine.

  “And can thy soft persuasive look,
  That voice that might with music vie,
  Thy air that every gazer took,
  Thy matchless eloquence of eye,

  “Thy spirits, frolicsome as good,
  Thy courage, by no ills dismay’d,
  Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued,
  Thy gay good-humour—­can they “fade?”

  “Perhaps—­but sorrow dims my eye: 
  Cold turf, which I no more must view,
  Dear name, which I no more must sigh,
  A long, a last, a sad adieu!”

It may be said in extenuation of the low, mechanic vein of these impoverished lines, that they were written at an early age—­they were the inspired production of a youthful lover!  Mr. Gifford was thirty when he wrote them, Mr. Keats died when he was scarce twenty!  Farther it may be said, that Mr. Gifford hazarded his first poetical attempts under all the disadvantages of a neglected education:  but the same circumstance, together with a few unpruned redundancies of fancy and quaintnesses of expression, was made the plea on which Mr. Keats was hooted out of the world, and his fine talents and wounded sensibilities