Oh! lay me where my Rosa lies,
  And love shall o’er the moss-grown bed,
When dew-drops leave the weeping skies. 
  His tenderest tear of pity shed.

And sacred shall the willow be,
  That shades the spot where virtue sleeps;
And mournful memory weep to see
  The hallow’d watch affection keeps.

Yes, soul of love! this bleeding heart
  Scarce beating, soon its griefs shall cease;
Soon from his woes the sufferer part,
  And hail thee at the Throne of Peace

THE SIBYL.

A SKETCH.

So stood the Sibyl:  stream’d her hoary hair
Wild as the blast, and with a comet’s glare
Glow’d her red eye-balls ’midst the sunken gloom
Of their wild orbs, like death-fires in a tomb. 
Slow, like the rising storm, in fitful moans,
Broke from her breast the deep prophetic tones. 
Anon, with whirlwind rash, the Spirit came;
Then in dire splendour, like imprison’d flame
Flashing through rifted domes or towns amazed,
Her voice in thunder burst; her arm she raised;
Outstretch’d her hands, as with a Fury’s force,
To grasp, and launch the slow descending curse: 
Still as she spoke, her stature seem’d to grow;
Still she denounced unmitigable woe: 
Pain, want, and madness, pestilence, and death,
Rode forth triumphant at her blasting breath: 
Their march she marshall’d, taught their ire to fall—­
And seem’d herself the emblem of them all!

LOVE.

Love!—­what is love? a mere machine, a spring
For freaks fantastic, a convenient thing,
A point to which each scribbling wight most steer,
Or vainly hope for food or favour here;
A summer’s sigh; a winter’s wistful tale: 
A sound at which th’ untutor’d maid turns pale;
Her soft eyes languish, and her bosom heaves,
And Hope delights as Fancy’s dream deceives.

Thus speaks the heart which cold disgust invades,
When time instructs, and Hope’s enchantment fades;
Through life’s wide stage, from sages down to kings,
The puppets move, as art directs the strings: 
Imperious beauty bows to sordid gold,
Her smiles, whence heaven flows emanent, are sold;
And affectation swells th’ entrancing tones,
Which nature subjugates, and truth disowns.

I love th’ ingenuous maiden, practised not
To pierce the heart with ambush’d glances, shot
From eyelashes, whose shadowy length she knows
To a hair’s point, their high arch when to close
Half o’er the swimming orb, and when to raise,
Disclosing all the artificial blaze
Of unfelt passion, which alone can move
Him whom the genuine eloquence of love
Affected never, won with wanton wiles,
With soulless sighs, and meretricious smiles;
By nature unimpress’d, uncharm’d by thee,
Sweet goddess of my heart, Simplicity!